Monday, May 23, 2011

The Last of my Ohio Fishing Experiences

The closer I get to the move the more hectic my life is becoming. This weekend I will be moving, then things should start slowing down.

The last post I had I was preparing to fish a club tournament at Buckeye. We fished that tournament. My predictions were somewhat right. The fish were either hard to catch or had been caught the day prior. I ended up with 2 fish, good enough for 4th or 5th place in the club. The winds were blowing about 30 mph so we were confined to the channels.

The next weekend we had a club open tournament at Alum Creek. The weather was awful. We had high winds again, rain, and at one point the boat was covered in hail. There was only 1 person that caught a bass all day. He did catch a nice 5 pound smallmouth. I tried everything including taking the boat through a narrow culvert to fish an area that never gets fished. The boat got scratched on the bolts. Even that didn't work.

I had a few weeks off and last weekend the club had another tournament at Rupert lake. I had an interview in Kansas so I missed the tournament. Quite a few large bass were brought in to weigh in.

This weekend we fished Knox lake. We hit it perfect for the spawn. Bass were on beds everywhere. My day started off horribly. I had 7 fish come unbuttoned before I could get them in the boat. It was more than likely the way they were biting. I got it figured out though and ended up having 5 nice bass for the weigh in. Several were 2 to 2 1/2 pounders. We had a paper tournament since Knox has an 18 inch length limit. Nobody caught a bass over 18 inches. I finished 4th in the tournament with 9.7 pounds. Third place was 9.76 and Gene who was fishing with me had 9.85 pounds and finished 2nd. The winner had slightly over 10 pounds.

Knox was a great tournament and gave me some much needed practice on sight fishing. I had 2 baits that worked well to get them to strike. One was a small red slugo rigged on a drop shot. The other was a 6 inch morning dawn roboworm rigged wacky style on a flick shake jig head. I would cast out to where there beds are and twitch the baits until they would strike.

With the big move being only a week away, I am pretty fortunate to have things work out the way they have. The house sold really quick. We had to take a loss. I had a face to face interview last weekend for a position at the local hospital in Kiowa. If that doesn't work out I will try to start my own business there. Our house is not quite ready for us to move into but the owners are going to let us keep our things there until they are moved out. I have also trained my replacement at my current position.

I don't have any plans to fish any more tournaments this year once I am moved to Kansas. That will likely change once I am there and look into the tournament scene. For now I am looking to fishing for fun with my parents, friends, and Leo and Gavin once I return.

Next year I would like to get back into the FLW BFL and see what other circuits work with that schedule.