Potholes Open

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Eric DeLay on April 19, 2009 at 10:34pm

So who won it? What was the weight? What were the big fish? How did Mark Maderos do?

Permalink Reply by Mark Wells on April 19, 2009 at 11:39pm

My partner put us on the board both days. Too bad I couldn't help him this year. I caught a 7-3 on Fri, my partner caught a 6-6 on Sat and a 5-4 on Sun. Two fish for two days. My partner's first day fish missed big fish by 1.5 oz.
Congrats Nick.
45 lbs and change was the winning weight.
Mark

Permalink Reply by Ron Baugher on April 20, 2009 at 6:55am

My partner and I finished 20 th with 26.50 # It was a great tourny with the weather and Potholes Bass Club makes it fun.

Permalink Reply by NickBarrFishing.com on April 20, 2009 at 7:05am

Totally forgot about the details...it was late...give me a break...lol..

Maderos fished with Russ Baker and they didn't have a very good tournament, but they sure as hell made the raffle fun.

Permalink Reply by P.J. Koshi on April 20, 2009 at 7:56am

Does anybody know who won it? I know Levi Mese and Kelly Ross were fishing it, that team would probably know more about Potholes at high water than most, since they live there. Glad everyone enjoyed the beautiful weather! Hope nobody got pink (:

Permalink Reply by Mark Maderos on April 20, 2009 at 8:11am

Team WE SUCK,
Upon further review, Team WE SUCK, stunk up the place. Lessons learned. Dont win the prefish. LOL :-( Friday's prefish went great for us. Checked out Russ B's spot and seen alot of fish and caught two off his stuff. We felt good about his spot's. Moved to my stuff in the afternoon, first spot bam, 4lb fish, excellent.( first missed clue ) Moved to a back bay to see if fish moved shallow and seen nothing, moved out to outer bays and see a couple of real nice fish and moved around to find more water similar. Found two more bays with exactly the same water and stick a 5lb fish and shake off another fish the same size. Everything going great. Explore more water and eliminate some area's and add some more stuff.
Weather on Friday was cloudy and overcast in the morning and clearing and warmer in the afternoon. Saturday breaks clear, calm and warming. Run to Winchester, first spot see a couple of fish cruising ( not nearly as many from Friday ) Cruiser are REAL spooky. Spend 45 mins nothing. Move to next spot, see nothing, catch nothing. Same store on the next 4 spots in Winchester. See alot of boats, see no one catching, not seeing cruisers. Fish had moved over nite from the cruising in open water and edges to burying themselves into the thickest nastiest stuff. Move to my Crab creek stuff. Run spots, nothing. 4th spot finally pays off with a small 2.5lb male. ( missed 2nd clue ) Run back to Winchester for last 2hrs and Russ get's a small 1.25 cruiser on job corp dyke. End the first day with 2 fish for 3.9lbs.
Shake our heads and lick our wounds and come up with game plan for day 2. I would work the brush flipping, Russ would work the edges and flats for cruiser's with senko's. Nothing is working. Keep running and gunning spots, finally get a 4lb'er on a shakey head and worm combo. Come back to weighin heads held low.
Lesson's learned. Missed clue's. I had found most of my big fish stageing not all the way back in bays but a little further out under dead wood that had matted up on shore. These spots were not the furthest bay back you could get but the next one out.These fish were sitting right under the floating dead wood, sitting in shade but getting warm from the dead wood that was absorbing the sun. The bite was not aggressive but they hit it on the initial fall. During prefish we got the one 4lb off sparse living willow's. The fish I caught on Saturday came off similar sparse willows. What myself and Russ didn't piece together was the fish had moved from the dead floating mats to a little deeper water and were around light small willows. What caused this move I believe was the bright, high sun, no cloud cover and no wind. The stuff we fished up in Winchester was super clear water and heavy cover. These fish I believe moved just further back into the super nasty stuff and generally were unreachable. The crab creek fish moved out a little deeper to the sparse willow cover. My aba partner Daryll Snodgrass did well up crab as he figured out where the fish were and managed 12th pl with 31+pounds. Overall the bite was tough. Most boats were getting only a couple of fish a day. Those that did figure it out, also didn't get alot of bites but did get quality on the bites they had. Winning weight was 45, 2nd and 3rd were ounces apart with 42. Best stringers on Saturday had two 25lb bags, and Sunday, best bag was 23lbs.

Mark
Ps I will take my beating like a man. "Thank you sir, may I have another."

Permalink Reply by Dave Massey on April 20, 2009 at 8:42am

This was my first Potholes open and all I can say is atleast I got to go fishing for a couple of days. Not that I caught much, but atleast I was fishing. Like Mark, my best day was prefish. Shook off a few and accidentally landed a few including a decent 5lber. The three that my partner and I landed would have made about a 9lb bag just with those. Tournament day rolled around and fish had moved and we were not able to figure out exactly where they went. We brought in one on Saturday and two on Sunday. Oh well, maybe next year.

Permalink Reply by Ronald Hobbs, Jr. on April 20, 2009 at 8:44am

Andy Smith and Brian McHenry won the tournament. These two guys are both class acts to the sport.

Permalink Reply by Mark Maderos on April 20, 2009 at 10:51am

Yes, Andy Smith and McHenry won it, class acts all the way. Ron please feel free to call and schedule my beating at your convience.

Mark

Permalink Reply by Brian Walters on April 20, 2009 at 10:51am

Well another great turn out 122 boats. And yes it was tough. We only caugth smallies. Prefish was ok in the fact that we just looked for fish and only stuck two. Both well over 3. Check a few more spots to see if the fish were there and they were. So after pre fish we had around 6 or 7 spots. Sat morning head to a spot to just a few mins to see if we could get a big fish, no go, so on our way to our main spot, noticed no one was on a spot that usually holds fish thought that was weird figured we would check it out. After 2 back to back 3's we left to finally go to our main spot were we pretty much spent the day. Did leave here and there to check others but nothing. So after first day we had 12. something and only 5 fish. Day 2 we hear that 8 lbs is in 45 place, we say what the hell...... that is crazy. So we head to our main spot, boat on it, but we fish a secondary spot close to it to wait them out. They moved off we came in and about 2 mins later had a fish almost 4lbs, about 15 mins later a 3 now we are talking. So we stick it out on our two points back and forth all day. Every pass we would get hit or catch a fish. But again we only get 5 in the boat. I lost 2 and miss one that should have been a for sure fish. Lost the 2 on a jerk bait one of them was 3-4 lbs. So tough yes fun yes and we ended up with 13.15 for day 2 with a total of 25.?? for 22nd place a couple of hats and some money. Well done to all of you and hope to be there next year.

BIG FISH OF TOURNAMENT WAS 6.52 and a 6.50 largemouth

Brian

Permalink Reply by Brian McHenry on April 20, 2009 at 7:04pm

Ronald Hobbs, Jr. said:

Andy Smith and Brian McHenry won the tournament. These two guys are both class acts to the sport.

Permalink Reply by Brian McHenry on April 20, 2009 at 7:11pm

Mighty nice of you Ron, thank you! We had an awful prefish and completely changed our game plan going into Saturday. Luckily we found some fish and Andy figured out how to catch get them without spooking them. We caught only 6 fish each day but they were all quality. Needed one more fish on Saturday to fill a limit and Andy hooked a 5.57 smallie. Caught all largemouth on Sunday and weighed in 19.23 to follow up the 25.58 from Saturday. As usual it was a well run, fun tournament. I look forward to fishing it every year. See some of you at Moses Lake in a few week!

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page