A tale of 2 days

Aug. 18 F-3 Bassmasters had a tournament on Percy Priest East of Nashville, TN.  My partner Lawrence Watson and the rest of us launched from Hurricane Creek ramp.  I had originally decided to run the up the East and West fork of Stones River past the 840 bridge, but as I was passing Spring Creek something told me to stop and fish the ledges, drops and humps.  I am glad I followed my instincts.
We stopped at a ledge just off the main channel and fished it from shallow to deep with jigs, cranks, and about everything else.  Not a single nibble for about an hour.  I had changed my jig to a small 3/16 watermelon jig that I got from Mike Pewit from wow.midtnmarine.com and had drifted into 4ft of water on top of the ledge. I cast out to 25ft and brought the jig back up the slope and bamm a 17.5" Largemouth ate my jig. That fish would be big fish of the tournament.

Within the next hour I would have my limit of 17.5, 16, 15,15,15 inch bass.  Lawrence caught a nice 2lb bass of a un-named colored lizard.  We left the hump and ran up spring creek and fished the 840 bridge with no takers. We came back out around 10 a.m. and  continued to fish the hump and I was able to upgrade 2 of my bass on the same jig.  I ended up in 1st place with 5 bass at 12.17 lbs.  We go on length and convert to weight. However these bass were very fat and weighed heavier then the length conversion chart showed. 
The floppy hat strikes again!

The 2nd half of the tale of 2 days was quite a bit different.  I made several mistakes that lead to my first ZERO in a tournament in the past 3 years.  I fished with Mike Pewit of wow.midtnmarine.com in the Flippers Sunday Morning tourn.  My 1st instinct was to fish a small area but a friend of mine already said he was fishing that area and I did not want to intrude.  So we shot on down to Bledsoe Creek to fish a few drops.  We caught sever 13" fish on a jig and lost 2 good fish. Mike lost a nice one on a c-rig and I broke off on a nice fish.  We then moved around a lot just looking for a bite.   The last hour we fished the area I wanted to go to first. Mike caught a nice fish on a crankbait and lost another keeper.  I also lost about a 4 or 5lb bass on a DT-10. I totally made the mistake of turning my rod over and threw slack in the line and away she went.  Looking back I made at least 5 mistakes I normally don't make.  Live and learn I guess.

I will probably be fishing KY Lake in the up coming weekends getting ready for the TN State Tournament in September.

Billy