Last week, I entered a big fish tournament as a co-angler. The tournament was put together to raise money for a teen here who is battling cancer. A group called Sportsman Living sponsored the event, and Cletus (who some of you may know from my posts) was the MC. Cletus has since started filming his own fishing show (hence the shirt I'm wearing). We had almost 40 boats fish an electric only reservoir in a lake that is known to have some great fish swimming around in it. The lake is called Bear Creek, and it's known for fishing deep to catch the quality fish. The lake has a slot limit, and any fish caught between 16-22" must be immediately released back into the lake. It's a tough pill to swallow, when you catch a 21 3/4" 5.5lb fish in a tourney and have to let her go. I had fished this lake 2 times previously in the year with Bugpac and only caught a couple fish each trip out. One was a solid 5# though, so going into it, I wasn't very confident, but I wanted to participate in the event simply because it was for a great cause, and I could. The guy I teamed up with, I had never met or fished with before, but he had been to the lake a dozen or so times, and had some success. Today was the first day I got to fish with my JD Baits, and I was excited about using them. On my first cast, I tossed out an MP worm, the line twitched, I set the hook, and came up empty. The next 4 hours went without a bite for me or my partner, and with 1.5 hours left, we came to a shallow point on the lake that had a bunch of rock on it. I threw a jig up into the rocky point, and got hit almost immediately. The wind was blowing hard, and as I am getting bit, my line is now stretched from the bow of the boat (where I am) over my partner's head, and into his rod tips hanging off the back of the boat. I have to wait a solid 10 seconds before I can set the hook to avoid sending his rods airborn and into his head. The boat we are fishing out of is a 10ft flat bottom, which was exciting by itself, as my partner was similar in build to me. Once the wind has blow us around, and I've managed to clear my line from his rods, I set the hook and manage to land a long and lean 23" 4.5# fish that was good enough for 2nd place. First place caught a nice 6# fish with 30 minutes left to go. I managed two more keepers that were under the slot, but keepers, on a JD stick bait texas rigged weightless, which got me pumped about using them again. Here's a pic of the 2nd place fish.
