Saturday we had a small fruit jar tournament at a local lake here in Arkansas. it was a cool start at 37 degrees but you could not ask for a better day. calm wind and sunny was not long and we were shedding clothes. I know this lake pretty well so the night before I had a plan to fish rocks. The lake is pretty good size, one side has a hard sand bottom with cypress tress and lilly pads, the other side is deeper with piers and rocky bank.

I knew of 4 canals that had rocky points that had 7 foot of water that had a slow rise to 3 foot of water and good bunch of rocks. At blast off all the boats headed for the trees across the lake. We took the long cold ride to first canal, once there I started with a husky jerk. I never had much luck with them so not long and I was throwing a KVD 1.5. We spent some time fishing this rock picking it to pieces, while my partner got hung up I tied on a white chatter bait. At the time I was thinking of swimming a jig in the rocks, but I ended up tying this chatter bait on so i could bounce it off the bottom of the rocks real slow. Well I didn't know I would be fishing it the rest of the day. At the same canal I threw the chatter bait horizontal to the bank about 2 foot from the bank and first fish was in the boat. We ended up picking up 2 more fish from this canal.

The water temp at the start was 53 degrees but with full sun I knew it would warm up. Fishing another canal I landed a nice 5lb 4oz and was pumped, time to start culling some fish and with a 5lber.... I did notice a big trend when fishing these rocks, horizontal was the key, they would not bite it unless you were running it down the bank. It was a fun day on the lake and we ended up with 14lb of fish for 4th place. The winner says he was fishing the trees at 3 feet of water. they ended up with 16lb for the day... Big fish for the day was caught by the 2nd place team 7lb 2 oz bass... O yea the water temp at weight in was 60 degrees.

Very nice bass!

What's a "Fruit Jar" tournament? How does that differ from other tournaments?

nothing really... just a group of guys from different bass clubs get together and have a tournament... Not really planed just a in between other tournaments...