Ok first let me set the scene for you.

It has been raining and storming in North east Texas for the past week, barometer going from 28 to 31 up and down like crazy. The rain has dumped as much as 8 inches on the water shed of Caddo Lake, muddy was not the word for much of the lake where I had located fish 2 weeks ago. It is raining as we launch with thunder and lightning off to the south east. The wind is about 10 mph out of the north east. It is 6:30am still dark. Caddo lake is now a slot limit lake, which means you CAN NOT keep fish from 14 to 18 inches.

NOW, in my little 15 foot kingfisher boat which is an old stick steer model I leave the ramp but quickly realize I can't run like this as I can't even see the channel markers, so I peel off at some boat houses on the river and start throwing a rage tail toad in the light of the boat houses, and on the first cast I have a 13" fish, so I am feeling pretty good even in the rain. I fished around and caught 3 more but they was all around 16-17 inches, so I left and went to the next area as it was now light. When I got to the cypress trees I threw the toad for about 15 min. but didn't get anything so I switched to a space monkey (bama craw) that I had dipped the legs in CC's chartruse dip and even in the stained water you could see those legs kick when I twitched the rod tip. In the next hour I had caught about 20 bass in this area only 2 that I could keep, and this with the club president fishing the trees ahead of me and watching me catch all of those bass, HE ASKES me what I am using and I told him exactly what I was using. NOW the important thing to remember is that the club has been making fun of me for buying these 5.99 baits when you only get 7-8 of them. But, back to the point, about 11:00am the bite just stopped and I still needed 2 more fish for the 5 bass limit, so I go back to the river and start fishing the hydrilla that is growing out about 1/3 of the way on both sides, I use the toad nothing, I throw the thumper and got 1 8" fish (the bait was 10" long, don't know what he thought he was going to do with it) My brother in law comes up and watch me catch another keeper 13.5 fish on space monkey. Well it is now 1:30 and I still need 1 more fish and I happened to think about CAT's article on fishing the grass mats with a rattle trap running it parallel with the grass mat so I tied on a crawdad rattle trap and in the next 45 min I culled fish 15 times ending up winning the tournament with 5 fish that weighed 7.79 pounds.

I didn't get the big bass as we had 1 fish caught over the 18" limit that won it but I won the stringer and climbed to 3rd place in the club and cinched a place in the classic for angular of the year. SOOOOOOOOOO

thank you RAGE TAIL AND CAT ! ! ! ! ! SALUTE

Frank Williams

Congratulations dude sounds like you have the fish figured out