Howdy clubbers,
Terry Steffensen and I decided to throw ourselves at the wolves again and fish our third NW Bass event of the season at Tri-Cities this last Saturday. Considering that we only had a total of five days on that body of water water EVER between us, we were happy with the day. We ended with 5 smallies for 13.13 pounds and 19th place out of 80 boats. We were out of the money by a half pound. We just couldn't cull out a 2-4. The great news is it appears we took the lead in the rookie-team-of-the-year race. It isn't official, but that is our guess based on the weights we saw from other rookie teams.
All of our fish came from one spot in the Snake River. We had about three other spots lined up for tournament day, but because of either a lack of current, low water level, or way too much current, these other spots just didn't pan out. Our little sweet spot was near an island with a 5 foot flat and beautifully defined weedline. Most of our fish came on a shoreline ledge dropping into the flat in 2-3 feet of water. Plastics were the ticket of the day, either dropshotted or texas-rigged. We couldn't get any fish to go on reaction bites, and although we caught a few fish that were probably late spawners, it appears the post-spawn blues are upon us. It was tricky finding larger fish.
The winning team ran away with the tournament by weighing in 5 largemouth for 21+ pounds. They dominated the field, as second and third places were at 17+ pounds. The big fish was a 6.71 pound largemouth weighed by the winning team. They said they were mainly catching what they thought were spawning fish in reed pockets on senkos and jigs. Terry and I would sure love to know what makes a good reed pocket, because we fished our fair share!
We couldn't find any largemouth in prefish.
That's the NW Bass report! On to Potholes next month!!!
Chris