It has started........

[bullseye]

Last night at my bass club's April meeting we drew partners for our first tournament of the season. It will be a good turnout, as the first one usually is, with 15 boats participating and almost 30 club anglers fishing.

It is on a body of water we fish every year so it usually gets good participation. I did well at it last year but we will see what this year brings.

I had hoped to prefish this upcoming weekend but a business trip is taking me south. I get home late next Friday night so we will pre-fish it early on Saturday the 8th for the May 15th tournament.

This year things are seeming to be earlier than normal by a week and somethings two weeks. It will be interesting to see if the bass are in pre-spawn like they were last year or already in post spawn.

[bullseye]

Well things didn't go as well as I had hoped.

Late Friday night the skies cleared and we had a light east wind Saturday morning. That first blue sky day after a low is usually tough.

We launched at 6 and I got to my 1st spot. After about 10 casts I boated my first fish. Too bad it was about a 1/4" short of legal. I thought that maybe it would be a good day afterall.

That was not to happen as the next bite and fish I caught was about 4 hours later. My partner had bites but no fish until about noon. I went back to the first spot after covering about 5 other ones in about a 6 mile range. The water temp had come up from 51 when we were there the first time to 63 by noon. Then I proceeded to catch short fish while he caught keepers.

I ended the day with nothing in my live well but he had 3 and placed 3rd overall. So I had the right spots just not the luck. Oh well there is the next one in a month.

On Sunday the father-in-law and I went out for about 5 hours. We fished some different spots on a different part of the system. We caught 13 fish between us but there were only 4 keepers in the bunch. We did have a good time so that is really what matters isn't it?

[jimiowa]

Having a good time is what it is all about!
Anything else is just gravy!!
Fishing has really sucked this spring down here.
Nice when I'm working during the week and a Cold Front rolls in for the weekend so I'm fishing the worst conditions of the week on Sunday Afternoons when I can get out.