2010 Anglers In Action Championship

Day One: We were greeted by a thin layer of fog on Saturday morning but it wasn't thick enough to keep anyone from running safely.  After 73 boats and a thumbs up from Randy and Charlie we headed North.  The ride to our first spot wasn't bad, but the ride back would be a little different story.

Our first spot was one of the last brushpiles we'd found in practice, it was the closest to PB2, and with a thick fog bank hanging over the Gravois arm it made sense to make a quick stop.  We'd only fished it when the sun was overhead so we didn't know what to expect this early in the morning.  After 5-10 casts through the brush with a jig and shaky head it started to feel like this particular pile needed some sun on it to position the fish.  We checked the shallow side of the surrounding docks to see if the fish that called it home moved up in the morning but didn't have any luck, so we pulled up the trolling motor and kept heading North.

Our second spot was much more diverse than our first.  Instead of one pile in about 15ft, there were multiple scattered pieces of brush from 10ft all the way down to 25-30ft.  Figuring the fish were on the shallower side, we positioned ourself to cast in that direction, but Kris drug his first cast all the way back to the boat and stuck a short in about 20ft of water.  A minute or two later he put his jig in the same spot and got the same result, but this time his fish bumped the line and we threw it in the livewell.  It's always good to get the monkey off your back and put one in the box, but we both knew 8-9lb limits wouldn't mean much on Sunday afternoon.  After the one keeper and a few more shorts, we agreed to make a few more casts on the deeper edge and move on.  I crawled my BTT Shaky Head over a big log, let it sink, and shook it in place for what seemed like an hour.  The thump came and my line shot towards a dock stall so I reeled up the slack and eased into what felt like a hawg...the kind we needed.  The fish shook it's head and peeled drag for about 10 seconds and even with the drag set right I didn't have a chance.  The line snapped and I was gonna spend the next 7 hours trying to convince myself it was a flathead. 

The rest of the day never really panned out like we had hoped it would.  To be honest it was so forgettable that it took me a second to recall where our next two keepers came from.  We started on the point leading in to a stretch of docks that had given up some promising fish in practice.  The first dock in had a small Christmas tree on the shallow corner.  Kris stuck and boated a nice 3lb fish with a crankbait run along the side of the dock.  While he was digging the fish out of the net, I pitched my shaky head just past the brush, crawled it through, and hooked up with keeper # 3...a fat largemouth that was around 3.5lbs.  It started to feel like these docks were going to produce like they had in practice, but what started off hot quickly cooled off.  We fished the stretch from 2ft down to 20ft and couldn't buy another bite.  The identical stretch that was one cut up the creek...it didn't produce either.  A series of brushpiles we'd found in Mill Creek was also fruitless, so we motored back to the spot we had started on to see if the sun had positioned those fish to bite like they had the other day.  We'd caught a nice 3.5lb fish out of this brush and shook off a few more.  We worked the pile for a solid 20 minutes before heading back to weigh-in and while I was able to boat another small keeper on the shaky head, 4 fish was a HUGE disappointment considering the practice we'd had. 

We gave ourselves a few extra minutes on the way in and it turned out to be a wise move.  The air temp was up in the 80s, the sun was shining, and you would have swore it was the middle of July on that damn lake...big cruisers, people tubing, jet-skis, and 4-5ft rollers...in the middle of October!  A couple pins inside the trolling motor shaft broke, the power disconnected down inside the prop housing, my phone broke in my pocket, and I lost skin on my thumb and lower back from rubbing up against the seat and holding on for dear life.  After weighing in our little 9-something pound bag we booked it to the parking lot of the hardware store to take the trolling motor apart and figure out what needed to be done to fix it.  Luckily the broken pins were something Kris had handled before so we were good there, but taking the head apart to re-connect the power was a different story.  My buddy's neighbor "Rooster" was kind enough to lend a hand and let us use his shop...and another neighbor even came over to lend a hand.  I don't know if the Keystone Lights I tried to bribe him with helped or not, but we appreciated his help regardless.  It was frustrating, but trying to figure it out with the help of a couple old-timers was pretty hilarious, and knowing how a Minn Kota is put together will probably come in handy in the future.  By the time everything was patched up and back on the boat the sun had gone down and we still had rods to restring and rig up, but with a late boat number and no pressure there wasn't much to worry about.

Day Two: We woke up later than normal, put the boat in a little later than normal, but we knew a check was a long-shot at this point so we decided to stay loose and take it easy.  Our plan was to rotate through some of the same spots, expand around those areas a little bit, and capitalize on every bite.  Yeah...we changed our plan pretty early in the day.

After we caught a few shorts out of some brush we'd fished on day one, we hit a point that had produced back to back 3-4 pound fish earlier in the week.  The shad were there, and if the bass were there they weren't hungry so we moved on.  While idling out to open water and chewing on a granola bar, one of us suggested we run one creek East and fish Lick Branch for a little while.  We spent some time in there in practice, only boated one solid fish, but at this point we were flying by the seat of our pants.  I knew of a couple deeper brushpiles from the hot summer days I've spent fishing out of a belly boat off a friend's dock so we fished those first.  I showed Kris the lineup and he boated a keeper in fairly short order, lost another that probably wouldn't have helped.  I boated one more line-burner and we moved across the creek to a massive brushpile we'd fished in practice.  You've probably heard people describe a big brushpile as being, "the size of a school bus."  Well...this one is more like a 747. 

We fished this brushpile PAINFULLY slow.  The fish were eating my shaky head a little funny, so I made a couple changes that ended up loading our livewell.  I had quite a few spit out the bait when they felt me on the other end.  Sometimes there's a little room for error on this, but on this day there wasn't so I put down my G.Loomis Shaky Head rod and picked up my drop-shot model.  It's the same length and every bit as sensitive, but with a softer action the fish would be less likely to feel me when I'm getting ready to swing.  I also upsized my shaky head to a 1/4oz model.  The wind had picked up a little and it was getting harder to feel the light bite so I boxed the 3/16oz head I'd been throwing and went with more weight for some added feel.  Bam...bam...bam...and 3 more keepers were in the livewell on my shaky head and we'd finished off our limit.  It ended up weighing 10.36lbs, but we were able to hang in there and get close to finishing in the top 1/3rd of the field.  That didn't mean we were getting paid, but it didn't mean we'd completely bombed either.

After the truck was packed and we were KC-bound on 52, I had some time to look back on this year and think about all of the highs, lows, and goals I'd set for myself last winter.  I wanted to qualify for a BFL Regional...check!  I wanted to qualify for the AiA Championship and learn Truman better in the process...check!  I wanted to notch another BFL Top 10...check (3 times)!!!  It wasn't until that moment that I realized I'd accomplished every goal I had set for myself at the beginning of the 2010 season.  It was a pretty good feeling.  Without all of the support from my soon-to-be wife, my family, and of course my sponsors I couldn't have done what I set out to do. 

Probably 80% of the fish I weighed in this year were on a Bass Team Tackle Shaky Head or jig.  It's a quality product, and those heads are definitely gonna slay some fish for me next year.  With the exception of 2 or 3 squarebill fish that I caught on mono, Seaguar Fluorocarbon kept me connected until the fish hit the net.  I can't say enough about the quality of their product.  Whether you want to spend $4 for a spool of line or $40 for a spool of line, you're not going to find a better fluorocarbon.  I've tried just about everything out there and while they might have some competition, there can only be one leader.  In my mind that's Seaguar...Red Label, Inviz-X, Abraz-X and Tatsu get the job done!  Last but not least, none of this would be possible without 724Outdoors.com.  The opportunity that Lou and Mike have given me is tremendous, and without their support I wouldn't be taking some of the steps that I'm taking.

Thanks again to everyone who's supported me, rooted for me, helped me, and listened while I rambled for hours and hours about chasing green fish...looking forward to 2011!!!