Texas Classic Bass Club April Tournament on Lake LBJ

I fished the Texas Classic Bass Club April Tournament over the weekend Saturday on LBJ. The weather was typical for April, cloud cover and scattered rain showers. Water temps at 70 degrees and water clarity was about 12 inches or less on the upper end and clear to 4 ft on the lower end. The lake is fishing very well lately. I fished with Eric Chandler a new Texas Classic Bass Club member.
The Tournament:
I woke up to the sound of the alarm on Saturday morning, but I was ready to fish as soon as my eyes popped open. I had a feeling it was going to be a great day of fishing since the weather was going to be nice after the storms passed and the weekend before I had caught good fish while fishing with Zachary.
Eric and I met at 5:30 AM and we drove out to the lake and idled the boat the first spot I wanted to fish and set to work. It was dark and rain was pouring down off and on. I started fishing on a point and worked my way into a creek. Lightning flashed in the distance, followed by thunder rolling across the lake. As we made our way in, I missed a few fish flipping to the shore with a baby rattle snake worm. Eric was fishing with a spinner bait. I stopped the boat at a spot where I'd caught a 5 lb fish the weekend before and made about 10 casts when I felt pressure on the lure, I set the hook and boated a nice 2 lb bass which I believe was a male that was guarding a bed. We fished on into the creek and I caught a short bass about 13 inches just a few feet into the creek. Lightning struck and Eric got down in the bottom of the boat, said something a long the lines of, "Man I don't like that!" Eric is over six foot, so he would be the highest point on the boat. :-P Any rate I was catching bass and wanted to cover the creek before considering a break. A short time later I caught another keeper bass flipping the worm to the bank. We made out way to the end of the creek and it stopped raining, so Eric started fishing again. I had a solid fish pull off at the back of the creek, but couldn't get another bite in the area. A few casts later I caught another short bass about 10 inches on the way back out of the creek. Eric put his first fish in in the boat a few casts later flipping a stand up jig to the shore. We fish all the way out and no more bites and it starts raining on us again. We fish into another creek and I set the hook on a big fish, I'm ready to go crazy Mike Ike style when I realize it's not a bass. It turns out to be a 4+ lb drum or gaspergoo. It was fun to catch it but frustrating at the same time. Eric got a good laugh out of it watching me fight the fish. A few more casts into the creek and I catch a white perch on the same lure, actually I caught all of the fish on the exact same worm. :-) Unfortunately the smallest fish usually do the most damage to a plastic worm and it was time to retire this one, but I still had 9 more in the pack where that one came from. Watermelon Grandebass Baby Rattle Snakes, they're great lures. We get into the back of the creek and I catch our 3rd keeper on the worm, just barely 14 inches long. Eric goes on a roll after that flipping a stand up jig and catches 4 or 5 short bass two of them out of the same boat slip on back to back casts while talking on the phone with this uncle. That's multi-tasking bass fishing style. :-)
We fished around there for another hour and no other takers, so we headed up the lake to a few different places, trying to locate fish. We hit some more creeks that should have fish on beds. A short ways into the third creek I flipped into a clump of grass in a foot of water and hooked into a fish about 13 inches long. Fishing our way back into the creek I catch another short fish out of a boat dock and Eric follows up with another fish out of slip. We get to the back of the creek and Eric flips the jig to the back of the creek and catches a nice 2 lb bass. I flip into the same area and catch a large perch. We fish out of the creek and decide to fish another spot. We stop off at the bridge pilings and I catch three bass one of which was a solid keeper giving us our 5th keeper to fill our limit. We move on and fish more creeks, burning a lot of time, while catching many short bass between Eric and I. With 45 min left in the tournament we head down the lake to a creek near the weigh-in. I take the boat into a creek where I'd catch a 3 lb bass on a bed the weekend before and it's not home, on the way back out I see a new bass bed and a 5 lb bass is sitting on it. Unfortunately Eric and I can't get it to bite before time runs out and we arrive at weigh-in with 15 seconds left on my GPS before the end of the tournament. We were almost DQ'd for being late to weigh-in.
Tournament in Review:
We think we caught about 30 bass or more over the day. Most of the fish were caught on watermelon baby rattle snake and a watermelon stand up jig. Eric and I caught five keepers going 8.12 lbs putting us in 6th place.
We didn't take any pictures from the tournament, below is a picture of a bass Zachary caught.
Special Thanks:
Thanks go out to my family for letting me take a Saturday to do some fishing.







rom 6:45 AM to 3:15 PM. We had some pretty strong winds early on that were blowing a good 15+ mph sustained, and air temps in the mid 60's. Fayette is a power plant lake that has a hot water discharge from the power plant that keeps the lake warm in the winter so the water was 66 degrees around most of the lake, but it was 75 degrees in the discharge area. We fished down the dam rip rap throwing cranks and dragging worms with no success. We then hit a point near the dam and Regan caught our first fish of the day out of about 15 feet of water that weighed about two pounds. We drifted over the point a few more times and decided to run over to the hot water discharge area. We got there and joined the crowd and I caught a 3+ lb fish on a spinner bait fishing the rocks on the left side. Then a few minutes later I broke off a 2 lb fish that hit a small crank bait. The fish rubbed the 10 lb florocarbon line on the rocks after the hook set and broke it almost instantly, but it jumped several times trying to shake the lure free so we got a good luck at him. I got tired of fighting the current and the crow
d and decided to try some new water so we ran around to the cold water intake area. I switched lures to a Mann's Little George and started catching fish almost instantly. My first hook set and short fight would have been the big fish of the day, but it pulled free after a good fight. Two casts later I set the hook on a big bass and landed a bass over 4 lbs, didn't weight it, but it measured 19 inches in length. The picture above is my big bass of the day. I proceeded to catch another 3 lb fish and short keeper several casts later. At that point I offered one to Regan and he started catching bass also. We caught another 15 bass that were probably 2 to 3 lbs each. With a little time left in the day we decided to fish over by the boat ramps and Regan suggested we flip some trees he'd fished before. We hit a couple of trees and Regan set the hook on a nice 4.8 lb, 19 inch bass pictured right. We ended the day with three keepers and took 2nd place in the tournament. We had a great day on the lake and I can see why people like to get there and fish on this little slot lake.




