The tournament season is underway

This past Sunday marked the kickoff of the tournament season for myself and Torry Rhoades.  It's been nearly six months since the last tournament of 2012 and it couldn't have come soon enough.  Tournament waters were pools 7, 8, and 9 of the Mississippi River and we launched out of Clinton Street on pool 8.

Fishing had been tough as of late and Saturday would be our only day of practice.  We took the divide and conquer approach with Torry checking pool 7 and myself spending the day on pool 8.  Bites were hard to come by.  Typically this time of year the water temps are in the high 50's everywhere with the shallows pushing into the 60's.  This year with the late spring, morning temps didn't hit 50 in a lot of areas.  Bigger fish usually are stacking up on ledges and the males are flooding the shallows.  Our practice didn't show that.  Torry picked up only a few small bites all day on pool 7 and I didn't fair much better on pool 8.  I did manage to pick up a handful of decent bites on the flats and that became our game plan for tournament day.

Tournament day brought mild overnight temps and I was hoping that those fish on the flats would still be fired up early in the day.  I don't typically like fishing flats this time of year, especially in the mornings.  Water temps usually drop more drastically there overnight and it usually slows the fishing down.  And, of course, that was the case for us.  We made a couple passes through the most productive area first thing in the morning and only managed a pike and a few shorts.  After an hour, we decided to pull out to a nearby ledge and let those flats warm back up a bit with hopes that the bite would turn on later in the day.  During practice I picked up a single keeper fish on this particular ledge but when there's one, there's always more.  Not long after making the move, we began picking up fish.  It wasn't fast and furious, by any means, but the bite was consistent and the quality of fish were better than I had caught the day prior on the flats.  We made the decision to spend the day camped on that ledge with the hopes that more fish would filter in throughout the day.

When it was all said and done, we pulled in about 15- 20 keepers and our best eight fish weighed 23.58 lbs.  Not bad considering how tough practice had been.  It was good enough to capture second place overall.  The winners had a massive bag totaling 28.68 lbs anchored by a 5.04 lb kicker.  The funny part about this story is that when we left that flat early in the morning there was just one other boat fishing there, and yes, it was the eventual winners.   They stayed all day and the bite obviously did turn on.  I have to be honest though.  I had no idea the quality of fish that were there.  My best five fish the day prior wouldn't have broke 12 lbs, so knowing that, I still would have made all the same decisions that I did.

The rust is off.  The season is underway and the prespawn action is just heating up.  If you're getting the itch to fish, now's the time to make a trip to the river.