For the past few seasons I've helped run and fished in some local Thursday night tournaments. They've been a blast and I'm going to miss them, but they've kind of run their course, but we had to do last years fish off to wrap everything up and pay out the pot for the year. We were fishing a lake I use to fish pretty often and loved fishing, but hadn't fished since 2015 until this year and hadn't fished well back then or the last few years. I'd done decent the few times I've fished it this year, but the small largemouth are so thick that it's hard to put a good tournament bag together. My buddy and I prefished it last week and found some pretty good spots and then at the end of the day we hit a spot he'd been suggesting but I kept writing off because I didn't catch fish there 7 or 8 years ago when I fished it last. Long story short, it was where we were starting at Saturday.

 

Of our small group, we had 5 teams show up to fish including us but the boat traffic was crazy as there was supposed to be a big tournament on the lake the following weekend and a ton of people were prefishing it. Started out in a thick fog in 30 degree temps, not very spring-like. Still, we went to work quickly and had a small limit by 8am, something that took us until 1PM the following week. One recurring issue we had was losing big fish. I lost a heavy one on a swing head and Menace that just pulled off, and then lost a 3-3.5lb largemouth that I hooked on a jig in a laid down tree when it hung up in someone's old line. Jon also had a big one just let go of his Ned rig later in the day. With all the boat traffic and knowing how many fish were on that 100 yard stretch of bank, we started just going back and forth, picking up fish every trip and just trying to cull up. It was a shallow, rocky ledge with some flooded bushes in the water and 20' off the bank dropped sharply into 20+ feet of water, the smallies were cruising the top of the ledge in the morning and drop later in the day. Probably around 10AM I fired a long cast with the Menace along the edge of the drop and was dragging it back. When I went to lift a fish pulled back down and I knew it was big when I hammered the hook home but wasn't really ready for the fish the rocketed out of the water. I've caught 2 over 4 from this lake this year so far, but this smallmouth was noticeably bigger. Thankfully, she stayed down and just pulled hard until it was time to go to the net, then she just slid right in. 4.91lbs makes it my 5th largest Kansas smallmouth ever and it was a huge upgrade to our bag. Our next trip down that bank we were talking about making a move since we weren't even catching many little largemouth anymore, when Jon stuck a good one on a 110 right off the flooded boat ramp. Smallmouth fight hard, but I swear they fight even harder at this lake and this one was doing everything it could to tear those hooks out, but we got it in the net and added a 3.5 pounder to our bag. We gave it another pass and decided to bounce around some of our other spots and see what we could do. Nothing, not a fish bigger than 1.5 pounds anywhere. Our spot was covered up with boats every time we tried to get back on it until there was 1.5 left in the day. We pulled back in and started catching little largemouth right away again. About halfway down, Jon lifted on a fish with his Ned rig that wasn't doing anything impressive at first, then it jumped and I was scrambling for the net. It came to the boat pretty fast and I was ready to prevent an extended fight. Another fish just over 3 culled us up to 16.32lbs, and that would be our total for the day.

At weigh in, there were some nice fish showing up, and I got even more nervous than I was, especially when I heard that one other boat had 3 keepers over 18". I knew it would be close, but in the end we took it by about a pound. Unfortunately, my big smallmouth was just a shad shy of big bass, that went to a 4.98lb largemouth. It was a lot of fun and it always makes me miss tournament fishing, but maybe again some day.

 

WTG! Video was fun to see too.

Nice work man that's great..but I do take issue with your pictures. How you gonna cheat and fish a local derby with Greg Hackney? Sure you changed his name to Jon but you aint fooling me! Btw I just bought one of those exact scales and grippers based on things I saw here...like it a lot so far.