TBF Nationals and BFL All American

Well, it's been a great and fun run fishing these events this year.  Now that it's all over with I wanted to share my experience of fishing these events.

  First a big thanks to my travelling partner for both of these, Brian Merlini.  What a great angler and all around good guy to go on these events.  Made the experience that much better.

  Second, Thank you Washington State Bass Federation.  You have a great organization, you suppport us well, and the TBF does a great job in putting this all together.

  The TBF nationals on Grand Lake.  Wow what a great event.  Met some great guys and fished with 3 really super cool guys. Day one Dave from Conneticut was alot of fun. Day two was a gentleman from Massachusetts and the finals I drew Johnny Babb from Oklahoma.

  Grand Lake just had a Rayovac event with 200 boats on it the week leading up to our event.  Brian and I followed the results and seen that the top 10 were all bed fishing in the south end of the Lake.  Grand Lake is a huge lake with arms that come off the main lake that our as big as Lake Sammamish to give you an idea of the size of the body of water that we were trying to disect.

  The first day of practice we launched in Catchem Cove. This cove is about the size of 1/2 of Sammamish.  We seen beds all over with alot of 2 to 4 lb fish.  The other challenge with Grand Lake is that every cove you go into, you have to idle once you are in the cove.  So time management was crucial in picking the area's you wanted to fish, as alot of time can be chewed up just idling into fishable waters.  We looked at Catchem Cove, Duck creek and a few other major arms in the area.  I spotted one 3lb bass guarding a bed and wanted to see how receptive they were to dropshotting.  On the 4th cast caught the fish and felt pretty confident about getting fish to go fairly quickly once we targetted a fish.  We marked about 50 solid waypoints of fish in the 3lb + catagory that day.  We also fished a swimbait pattern that day as a backup to the sight fishing and caught some decent fish with the SB 

  Day two, we launched from the tourney launch and ran down south again as I wanted to see the amount of time needed to make the run south.  Looked at a bunch of water and fished our way north and looked at some dirty shallow water with no success.  We were off the water at 2 pm as the registration / banquest takes place that afternoon.  Short unproductive day because of the time constraints.  Met my day one partner, Dave and set out that evening to move all the tackle from my Phoenix into the Ranger.  It is a very difficult thing to manage your tackle organization process at these events. 10 rods / reel combo's is all you get.  

  Dave and I set out on day 3 practice. The run day 3 just like the tourney launch. 7 am blast off in your flight, off the water at 3 pm.  We ran down south and I used the day to develope my milk run of beds I wanted to fish and dial in the times needed to make all the different idle time into the area's I would be fishing.  Also switching from my Hummingbirds in the Phoenix to the Lowrance's in the Rangers proved to be a challenge as the two systems don't talk with each other.  I used day 3 to mark waypoints of the area's to run to on the tourney.

  Day one of the tourney brought a weather change and the fish moved off beds!!!  So much for sight fishing.  Damn weather. Clouds, light rain and fish moving off beds.  Not a plan for success.  I fished mainly Catchem Cove and dropshotted the bed area's without being able to see fish.  I caught 7 fish that day from males that were still around the bed area's but not actively sitting on beds. Day one Dave managed 4 fish.

  Day two brought more clouds and some wind.  I moved to a narrow cove that Brian and I  practice in a little further north.  My thought was to fish a narrower deeper pocket for the spawner that moved off beds and that they would be easier to target in this cove. Blank. Moved to another cove that was absolutely loaded in practice, fish gone.  Time to make a major adjustment.  Moved to Mid lake coves that were dirty and started to find some prespawn fish half way back. Dropshotted a 5.5 largie in 15ft of water, swimbait fish and then another 5 lber with a jig in 12 ft.  I only caught 3 fish but with 2 of them being over 5 pounds is what propelled my to the Northwest division finals.  My day two partner caught 5 fish all on a brown jig with green pumpkin trailer.

  I was on to the finals for Saturday.  Brian like wise did an outstanding job and made finals as the non boater throwing a jig.  We made a bee line to a local tackle store where we bought a bunch of jigs to prep for the final day.

  Day 3 brought another weather change. Clear blue bird skies, wind and a lake that drop almost a foot over night.  I know that I would have to wreck a big bag to have a chance. I fished the cove that produced the big fish in the morning with a jig.  No luck at all.  I did catch my one fish off a bed in the back of that cove on the dropshot.  The big female that was with the male moved off as soon as I caught the male.  With that info I decided that the deeper bite wasn't going to pan out and made the run back to catchem cove with the bright sun, I figured the fish would move back to the beds.  They did, the problem was that with the cleaner water down south, and the fish being really spooky, I could not get any fish to go down in my primary cove.  Seen 20lbs worth of fish on beds but could not get any of them to go.

  Off the water on 1 o'clock for the final day and off to the weigh in at Rogers Ark with the FLW boys who were fishing Beaver Lake.  Talk about a whirlwind of events. Once at Rogers we were told we have 15 min to get everything out of our boats.  I had already switched from my day 1 and 2 boat to the finals boat that night. Big Mess.  Now we had to literally throw everything from the finals boat into the back of the truck.

  It wasn't until I was standing at the weight tanks to go up on stage that I was even able to try to soak in the experience.  Brian felt the same way.  What a fantastic event. Standing around with the likes of Brian Thrift, Ish Monroe, and Larry Nixon waiting to weigh your fish was cool.

  In hind sight I should have spent more time up in the dirty water fishing shallow as this was how the tourney was won.  The problem was getting sucked into bed fishing as this was how the Rayovac boys won the tourney the previous week.  Looking at a weather forecast more closely would have told me to abandon the bed fishing and concentrate on prespawn dirty water with squarebills and chatterbaits.  Lesson learned.  I seen the quality fish to win during practice on beds, but not knowing how much these fish would pull off with the weather change proved to be my undoing.

  The other learning lesson is trying to disect a BIG body of water.  This lake was huge. You have to make critical decisions in a compressed time frame and manage your time on the water in order to be successful in these type of events.  The winner was from Arkansas and had fished the lake a bunch and was able to use that local knowledge in order to make the right decision on the final day.  He fished down south the first two days, but with the falling water levels, blue bird skies, he caught his winning bag just a few miles from the launch throwing a squarebill  in dirty water.

Mark