Background: I decided to fish the MLF Phoenix Series (BFL) this year for two reasons. The first, I'm an older guy and this is a bucket list item. Second, it's good PR for my hotel. My hotel has provided me limited sponsorship for the events. Also, some of you know I have the Fishing with the GM events at my property, and this year I asked for donations from bait companies and in return one of the things I do to promote them is have their logos on my tournament jersey. I'm an average recreational angler with very little club tournament experience and with that I have no expectations entering these tournaments. I'm in them to have fun and for the hotel PR.

 

Event 3: Lake Oconee

 

This week's tournament was on Lake Oconee, which happens to be my home lake. Oconee is not a great bass fishery and is mainly known for stripers, catfish and crappie. Typical winning tournament numbers are 11 - 16 pound bags. While 20 pound bags are not unheard of, they are few and far between. For the past few years, oxygenation has been a major problem in the lake, but Georgia Power has been trying to rectify that by installing aerators in strategic locations around the lake. I talked to them a few weeks ago and they say that they are seeing some positive results. Even though the fishing is usually not great, one nice aspect of the tournament being here is that I don't have to travel, get a hotel room, or board my dog for the weekend - and I get to sleep in my own bed. 

 

Getting Ready

 

I had some good news at the beginning of the week as I picked up another bait sponsor for my Fishing with the GM program at the hotel. I'm still working on a few more, and if that materializes I'll have to get another tournament jersey. In the meantime I picked up one of their hats to represent them at the tournament. So far I've picked up a few sponsors and they donate things like stickers, a few baits, and some promo discounts on their gear. I'm thankful that they are contributing to our kids program and in turn I'm happy to represent them at tournaments.

 

Another good thing about fishing on my home lake is that I would finally be able to pre-fish to prepare for the tournament. My initial plan was to fish the lake on Wednesday with my buddy @flatcreek since that day's weather would be similar to tournament day weather. But as luck would have it, work got in the way and it pushed our fishing until Thursday. But when Thursday's forecast called for rain and thunderstorms we pushed our fishing back another day until Friday.

 

Saturday's tournament forecast called for bluebird skies and 82 degrees but Friday was nothing like that. It was overcast with on and off rain, temperatures in the 60's, and afternoon thunderstorms in the forecast. The goal, obviously, was to find some fish and see if by fishing different baits and techniques we could come up with a pattern or two. In addition, while I typically don't fish a lot of crankbaits, part of why I joined the MLF Phoenix Series was to become more versatile with my fishing and work on different techniques. The week before I had purchased half a dozen or so new 1.5 squarebills and was ready to put them to the test.

 

The squarebills paid off almost immediately, and I picked up a pattern of finding the bass right up against the wood and metal sea walls (but not rip rap), specifically with a black and red crankbait. I did try other lighter, darker, and natural colors and nothing bit. Because this was a practice day, once finding that pattern I moved on to throwing other baits to see if I could pick up a second pattern. Meanwhile, @flatcreek was running through other baits and picked up on a shaky head pattern. With thunderstorms rolling in we fished for about only four hours, but I felt confident going into the tournament despite the upcoming weather changes. Even with sunny skies in the forecast, my thought was I'd still find the bass along the shady sea walls.

 

Tournament Day

 

I drew another good guy for my boater and he happened to be familiar with Oconee. Even with him having fished Oconee before, I sent him some GPS coordinates of where we were finding fish on Friday as a fallback to his choices. The luck of the draw had us as boat 95 out of 120+ in the tournament and that meant the staggered start would have us out there about 50 minutes after the first group left the marina. Normally I don't mind late starts, but in my experience on Oconee the morning fishing is good and the mid afternoon fishing is just terrible, and in my mind that put us at a disadvantage. 

 

We set out and hit a nearby rip rap seawall (hey - that's Ben Roethlisberger's house!). Nothing. After one or two more stops with similar features we headed out to a part of Oconee that I had never fished before. It was an area of flooded stumps and timber near where two creeks entered. But it was was not shallow and depths were 16-20 feet deep. At about that time the wind died completely and the water was dead calm. My boater was throwing a spinnerbait and a small buzzbait while I started out with an underspin with a Keitech. Still no takers. With the calm water, I decided that it was time to make some noise and walked the dog with a 4" black Zara Spook and nailed a 2+ pound keeper with my first cast. On the board!

 

After a some more casts with the Spook and no more takers - and seeing my boater wasn't getting any hots on his buzzbait - I switched over to a t-rigged Senko. But quickly realized that didn't make much sense with all of these limbs and pockets and switched it over to a wacky rig setup figuring the flutter of the Senko was more likely to trigger bites in that area. It worked and I caught a few more, they didn't meet the minimum length of 14". Next I switched over to a Jackhammer chatterbait with a Rage Tail trailer, hoping to draw a strike from bigger bass by bouncing it off the wood or triggering a strike when I swam it away. Well, it was a good plan, but it didn't work.

 

Aside from the abundance of cover, one great thing about this area was that it was open water and we could fish opposite sides of the boat. It was definitely an interesting area to fish and I need to head back out there on my kayak where I can take more time and pick the area apart. Maybe bounce some jigs off the limbs or drop shot around the timber. There's also an old road bed out there where I saw a bunch of fish activity.

 

We moved on from there and began fishing docks and riprap seawalls on the main like. Typically, I'm not a fan of fishing the main lake simply because I fish out of a kayak and Oconee is an extremely narrow lake. With a ton of pontoon boat and jet ski traffic I'm left contending constant boat wakes and their rebounds of of the sea walls. But I did have one dicey moment on the back of the boat when I didn't notice a big wake hit the boat just as I was shifting my weight and I almost ended up over the side.

 

With my boater attacking the docks and doing a good job of picking them apart I was targeting the mostly rip rap sea walls, but the pattern I had found the day before wasn't producing any strikes. I varied my crankbait colors, then tried spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, underspins, rattletraps, and bigger crankbaits but didn't even sniff a bite. I think that the main reason for that is that the day before @flatcreek and I were fishing creek channels and today I was fishing main lake with a lot of wakes and boat traffic.  While it was sunny on tournament day as opposed to the day before, we were fishing shade lines for that part of the day, but still no takers of the sea walls.

 

As I said, my boater did a good job of picking apart the docks. In fact, I think that every one of the fish that he caught was running a spinner bait right up along the near side or far side of the dock and triggering the bass to come out and attack. Skipping under docks had an added degree of difficult y today as the water level was high, meaning on many docks there was simply no gap to skip a bait under. Complicating matters was the periods of increased wind and wake activity. There's nothing like going to skip a bait, then getting hit by a wake and having your bait clank off the dock instead of skipping under the gap.

 

When we did skip under the docks there were no takers. That is, until at one point I skipped an underspin under one dock and then got a small backlash. I quickly pulled it out, but as I was reeling in my rod tip got heavy and I set the hook. This one was definitely going to need the net! I knew immediately that it was a 6 or 7 pounder. My thoughts raced. Big fish of the day cash prize? Finishing in the money? And when I saw it come up from the depths from under the docks I knew I was right about the weight. The only problem? Wrong species. It was a catfish. That took the wind out of my sails pretty fast. That was the only catch either of us had skipping under the docks. It seemed that if the docks were holding any bass, it was a lone bass that my boater pulled out of the cover with his spinnerbait.

 

The last 3 hours were pretty uneventful. My boater wanted to make a run to the back of Lick Creek which happens to be right near my hotel.  But as usual there was nothing there.

 

As I said earlier, Oconee can be tough. My boater finished with 14 pounds and cashed in with a 10th place finish. I ended up with that one keeper and finished in somewhere in the middle of the pack out of 121 co-anglers. How tough was it out there? Out of 121 boats on the water, THIRTY FOUR co-anglers and TWENTY TWO boaters scored goose eggs on the day. An 18 pound bag won the boater division and an 11 pound bag won the co-angler division. I've got to say that I was pretty disappointed that I didn't catch 10 or 11 pounds on the day.

 

The good news is that by weighing in I moved up in the points and I'm within striking distance of automatically qualifying for the regionals with two more tournaments to go in my region. The bad news? I have a bit of a dilemma here as I pick the day apart and decide what I should have done differently. Maybe you guys can provide some insight and advice.

 

With my boater power fishing and with what @flatcreek picked up on the day before, my immediate thought is that I probably should have relied more on finesse fishing rather than my comfort zone of power fishing. This even though I was throwing different baits than my boater. But here's where I think my lack of experience hurts me and I'm not sure of the approach I should have taken.

 

My boater was running quickly from dock to dock with either the trolling motor or the big motor. So if I'm trying to fish the sea walls when that's happening my bait is pulling hard and I'm trolling off the back of the boat more than working the bait. When he gets to the dock I do have some time to fish the sea wall with some longer casts, and that's where the rattletraps came in handy. We were running the docks fishing off the port side, and as we clear the far end of the dock or docks he angles the nose towards the shoreline so he gets a better angle to cast in the back pocket between the walkway and the dock (FWIW, that's exactly how I would fish it if I was the boater). 

 

So I get one or two chances to skip under the dock, and usually the second one is at an odd angle because of the position of the bow as he works around the dock. I can also cast parallel to the front of the dock, which is not a terrible option.  But again, if I take one shot at skipping under the dock, that second shot is at an off angle or if I cast parallel to the front of the dock, as he accelerates to the next dock it leaves me essentially trolling and not able to slowly work the bait.  And let me be clear here, this is NOT a complaint on my part. If I was the boater that's how I would fish the docks. I'm just looking for a way as a co-angler to land more fish.

 

Ideally, I think my follow up to his power fishing in and around the docks would be a weightless worm or a light jig that slowly falls. But in my opinion there just isn't enough time to let the bait slowly sink and do its magic. I really think that if my boater is power fishing docks that I should follow up with finesse fishing. While I may not land a big one, I think I'd catch more fish that way. 

 

So, without the luxury of time for a weightless worm or light jig to flutter down, what should I throw? Heavy jig? Drop shot? Weighted t-rig or wacky rigged worm? Weighted creature bait? Or should I just drag a Carolina rig or drop shot off the back of the boat, parallel and close to the dock?

 

I'll be fishing the tournament at Hartwell in a few weeks, then nearby Sinclair in May. After that, I'm thinking of picking up a tournament or two in Florida or Alabama since our series here in Georgia doesn't pick up again until August.

 

With the grass and typical May weather Sinclair should be a buzzbait and other topwater day. But at Hartwell, if my boater is power fishing I think I'm going to spend a lot of my day finesse fishing.

 

Although I had fun this week and was thankful to be matched up with a good guy boater, I'm really disappointed at my results this week. Between fishing with @flatcreek and the fishing I did on my own off the docks at my hotel and on my kayak I really thought I was dialed in for this tournament.
 

Thanks again for the report! Good read. I don’t have much in the way of suggestion, I’ve only fished one tournament like that and was also lost, I’m not accustomed to zooming along a bank. Maybe a Carolina rig would at least stay on or near the bottom when the boat is moving that fast 

2 days of off and on thunderstorms had the largemouth spooked on Oconee for sure prior to Tournament day.Typical Spring fishing in Ga.

When the boater is moving that fast across the docks   

a Texas rigged Speedworm or Speedcraw might be a good bait to throw behind him

Good report.  Trials and tribulations from the back deck is why Yamamoto asked me to write a series of articles on fishing from the back.  Evidently your boater didn’t take your prefishing results seriously.  That’s a shame.  

1 hour ago, TOXIC said:

Good report.  Trials and tribulations from the back deck is why Yamamoto asked me to write a series of articles on fishing from the back.  Evidently your boater didn’t take your prefishing results seriously.  That’s a shame.  

Thought he said the boater got a top 10 and cashed a check? 

11 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

Thought he said the boater got a top 10 and cashed a check? 

He did. I have zero problem with any boater running their own patterns. It’s their boat and they are paying bigger fees. And in this case. he was catching fish, so no complaints from me. It’s on me to adapt. I just need to come up with a different approach when the boater is racing from dock to dock. I need to figure out what that will be next time.

 

That being said, as a courtesy I will provide my own info on the lake if it’s applicable. If the boater is not catching anything I hope they take my info into consideration.

I retract my statement.?. A 10th place with that many boats is a respectable finish.  Do you think your spots would have produced that? Better? Worse? That’s why as a co, prefishing is almost a waste of time because chances are, you’re not going to be fishing any of your spots anyway.  I’m not dissing the boater.  Back deck tournament fishing is truly an art form.  

4 hours ago, TOXIC said:

I retract my statement.?. A 10th place with that many boats is a respectable finish.  Do you think your spots would have produced that? Better? Worse? That’s why as a co, prefishing is almost a waste of time because chances are, you’re not going to be fishing any of your spots anyway.  I’m not dissing the boater.  Back deck tournament fishing is truly an art form.  

I have no idea if my spots would have produced better on that day. But what I do know is that fishing creek channels would provide me more opportunities to catch fish between the longer stretches of sea wall and shoreline and being able to fish one side of narrower creek channels while the boater fished the other.

 

The weather was different on tournament day (sunny and warmer vs. cooler and cloudy), but the wind had picked up. With that, instead of the bass being dispersed throughout both sides of the creek channel I would have targeted the wind blown seawalls and banks first, especially those in shade pockets from late morning onward. I would have also attacked the docks in those areas as well.

 

As I said, I caught most of my fish when we were in the open, flooded timber area where I could  fish one side of the boat while he fished the other.

 

But I will reiterate, it is the boater's prerogative as to where to fish and it is up to the co-angler to adapts. I don't want this to sound like sour grapes on my part. I'm genuinely reaching out for advice on alternative ways to target fish when the boater is racing between docks.

 

It was a brutal day out there as about 20% of the boaters and 30% of the co-anglers didn't record even one scoreable fish.

 

These are so much fun to read. I'm really rooting for you to make the regionals. Keep working hard!