My day on Baw Beese

Since this is my blog page I think I should at least break down how my tournament day went even though it was not what I had hoped for. Any one that knows me understands that I am consumed with bass fishing and having six months to think about our first event of the season at Baw Beese understands how I have analyzed over and over how this tournament should go. When I saw this lake on the schedule all I could think about was covering mass amounts of water with jerkbaits and fast moving lures, something I have perfected during early season outings. I thought this lake set up perfectly for my style of fishing and all those worm draggin', senko throwing guys would have a hard time keeping up with my run and gun style right? I couldn't have been more wrong.

Most guys know that in early spring the spawning areas are key and once they are identified then just work backwards from there. If the fish aren't on beds then move out to the first break adjacent to the spawning flats and start fishing. Trish, Jimbo and most of the others that finished high at Hillsdale all fished close to these spawning areas and did well. I on the other hand targeted areas that looked like spawning grounds and continued to wait for fish that never showed up.

Hindsight is always awesome and the way fish were caught last Sunday made perfect sense. Second and Third lake were shallow somewhat murky lakes that were a little warmer than the much bigger and deeper BawBeese. There were visible beds on these small lakes as well as lilly pad stems which are magnets for early season stagers and even spawners. I knew the lakes and saw the beds and should have identified this pattern but did not. Instead I stayed on the main lake way too long and threw jerkbaits until I had blisters, waiting for what I thought would be the pattern.

Congrats to those that figured it out, it sounds easy now but at the time wasn't so obvious. Fishing tournaments is very humbling and I learned a good lesson last weekend and hope someday when the same conditions are present that I will be able to adjust and catch fish instead of doing what the magazines say I should be doing.