Deer Creek Tournament # 1

It was an early morning Sunday when I got out of bed at 4:10 in the morning to hook up the boat and get ready to head down the road to Deer Creek. I had text Gene the night before and told him that the tournament was starting a couple weeks early and if he wanted to go I would be leaving the house at 4:30. He text back and said he would sleep on the couch when the bars closed.

I had the boat and blazer ready at 4:30 so I woke Gene up. He was a little slow getting up but I kept hurrying him since the tournament was supposed to start at 6 and we had a 45 minute drive to the lake.

We stopped at the convenience store and picked up some refreshments and gas for the blazer and were on the road. We reached the ramp around 5:40 am. There were not many boats there yet. The rest of the boats showed up in the next 15 minutes. There were probably only 15 boats in the tournament.

They had changed the time to 6:30 start. That will work better for me. I was really anxious to get started. We had found some fish last Thursday and I knew we had a good chance of making it in this tournament.

We took off the opposit direction as the rest of the boats. They all headed to the main lake while we headed toward the river. We started out at the far end of where we had caught them Thursday and worked the bank back towards the beginning.

Gene picked up his first bass on a green bomber right away. He had reeled the bomber in from a down tree to the boat and was letting his lure float up to the surface as the bass hit. It was just shy of 12 inches or right at 12 inches. I was measuring it and it flopped out of the boat. We rounded the point and I got hit on a brown worm on a shakey head. I didn't get a good hookset and as the fish came out of the water the worm came flying by my head. It was at least a 2 pound bass that I missed.

I switched to a berkley gulp crayfish and caught a 13 incher. He went in the livewell. I caught a couple more on the crayfish before reaching our starting point from Thursday. One was the highlight of my day. We had just crossed over a small cove and as I looked back I saw a group of about 5 rocks about a foot under the water. I cast in the middle with the weightless craw and lifted it to the surface. Just as it came up I saw a flash of green and WHAM! a bass nailed the craw. I set the hook and realed in a 11 7/8 incher. I had to let him go but the fight in that one was amazing.

We headed to the main lake to a place we saw a guy catching a lot of fish earlier in the spring. The white bass were slamming the surface all around us but we did not have any luck in that spot so we moved again to a cove near the dam. No luck there so back to our original bank.

We fished the bank towards the river and got a couple more small ones. There was one spot I was saving for later in the day that we were working towards. I stopped to cast at some isolated trees in the middle of the lake and as I did a boat passed us and headed to the exact spot I was going to hit.

They fished it for a bit and left so I went to try it even though they had just hit it. I jigged the craw around the rocks and caught another 11 7/8 incher.

We worked our way back towards the ramps stopping and fishing a few spots along the way with little success. It was close to 1 in the afternoon and the fish were not biting good. I did have 2 fish hit and I broke my line on both as I was setting the hook. I had old 12 lb. line on my rod and was dissapointed with myself for not changing it the last 2 years. I had not had any problems with it before that point but I will be replacing it before the next trip out.

At the weigh in we only had 1 fish to weigh in at .90 lbs. First place had 9.3 lbs and second had 6.6 lbs.

I am ready for next Sunday. I feel really good about this lake. I can catch fish here pretty easy and I have had some sizable fish on. I am going out Thursday evening again to fish some new spots. I fished last week pretty shallow and we did pick up a 2 pounder on Thursday but I think the bigger fish are hanging out near deeper water.