fished a bass tournament on saturady ( jan. 3rd ). me and my partner fished on hiwassee lake. won a tournament in the same trail 2 months earlier on the lake so we were feeling good about the day. warm morning for this time of year it was about 42 degrees at take off and we ran 3.8 miles towards the dam. fished the dam but no fish then made a run to a marina that sits in about 60 to 80 feet of water. the water temp was around 46 so the fish were deep. pulled in the marina watched for bait then decided to pull around and fish the shallowest part of it. caught 2 keepers  and 3 non-keepers in about 35 feet on a shakey head worm. decided to run back to another dock that we catch alot of fish on and then without warning the starter solenoid went out. couldn't get it to jump off and ended up leaving the fish and towed in. the rules won't let you tow in another boat until after the tournament we didn't want to get disqualified so we had a older man tow us in and we fisehd the one little cove for 4 hours until weigh-in with no bites at all. only about 25 feet deep there and no cover at all left in the water with the draw down. finished 15th out of 28 boats with 4.62 pounds. bad day for money but it kept us in the top 4 in the standings. hope to just have another starter put on the boat by the end of the month. hope to never experience that again and hope no one else had to go threw it either. good luck to everyone else.

That sucks you broke down but 15th isn't bad considering you couldn't fish where you wanted to.  It seems like you guys found the right technique too.

yeah it sucked but it could have been worse. i try to take the good out of everything and at least now it shouldn't happen again. plus the fact someone towed us in and we ended up getting to weigh in was luck. not many people pleasure fishing in winter. but yeah this time of year you can catch some fish. plus alot of times they stack up and if you find a few you can really lay them out in one place. all those fish came off the same side of a walkway going out to the marina.

Other than the motor breaking down it sounds like a decen day of fishing to me to come up 15 out of 28.