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Monday, March 21, 2005

March Texas Classic Bass Club 2005 Classic Results on Lake Falcon

TCBC

I fished the Lake Falcon Texas Classic Bass Club 2005 Classic Tournament over the weekend, March 19th & 20th, with Bryan Cotter. We only got third place, but had one of the greatest bass fishing trips of our lives most likely.

Day One:

This is how the weekend went, Saturday morning we got on the lake at 5:30 AM and motored around to a rocky point in the darkness at Falcon State Park where we launched. Bryan was very excited about the possibilities of catching a double digit bass because his BassChamps partner had caught a 10+ lb bass the day before on a junebug brushhog. Pics are posted here. He got all excited at 6:00 when we started fishing because we started hearing loud splashing near the shore. I ruled out bass quickly telling him carp do that on Sam Rayburn this time of year. I haven't seen that on any of the Central Texas lakes that I can remember. We fished in the dark with no success until daylight and confirmed all the loud splashing in the darkness was large carp fighting for spawning grounds in shallow water. They looked like giant gold fish, each being over 5 lbs chasing each other in three inches of water. So about 7:30 Bryan hooked up with a nice 1.5 lb fish on a spinner bait in about 10 feet of water on a flooded tree. Guess I should mention here that the lake is something like 40 feet higher than it's been in years, so a lot of freshly flooded trees and brush to say the least. Not just any trees, these are Retama trees. They are dark green trees with nasty thorns all over that eat up tackle like a depressed fat lady with a box of chocolate. Even with braided line your still going to go through a lot of lures, pack extra if you're making a trip down there. About 10 minutes later Bryan hooked a near 14 inch bass in the gill plate on the outside of the face in about six feet of water. We got on the big motor later and headed up lake to an island just outside an area known as Big Tigers. We threw spinner baits around it and swam some senkos and just before leaving Bryan decided to flip a pumpkin seed brushhog into a bush in 8 feet of water and put our second keeper in the live well. About 12:00 PM, we then headed to the back of Big Tigers where we would spend the rest of the tournament having one of the best fishing trips either of us have ever known, thanks to a tip&directions on the location from a buddy of mine Dave Chambers. We pulled up on the spot that I'll describe as half the size of a soccer field and ranged from nine and a half to twelve feet with all the surrounding area being shallower by one to two feet. The bass were just stacked in there we'd come to find out as the day progressed. Short end of a long story is that Bryan ended up catching our next keeper on a spinner bait and several dinks. I finished out the limit swimming a watermelon/red senko rigged Texas style with no weight. At 4:00PM the end of day one, we had 5 bass for 11.67 lbs. Net..Net, we caught only 5 keepers, I broke off a keeper on a spinner bait, and we had another 10 fish that were short, but near 14 inches. That put us in 7th place I think.


Ok so I have to tell the story of the broken off spinner bait fish because it's a good one. So there is a very distinct location where I lost the fish and about three minutes after I lost it, the bass began jumping out of the water trying to throw the spinner bait. It jumped in the exact same spot about seven different times over the last three hours of the first day. We joked about trying to net it the next time it jumped everytime it jumped again. The next day the first chance I got I threw a spinner bait on the bush and caught a fourteen and quarter inch bass in that exact spot, our second keeper of the day that's why I remember the length. Later on Bryan using a brushhog rig flipped on the spot where the fish had jumped, hooked the fish 3 different times over several hours before finally landing the bass that broke my line the day before. The fish weighed a little over two and a half pounds, ended up being one of the fish we weighed at the end of the day. I was using 12 lb line on that rod and tried to horse it instead of wearing the fish down slowly before boating it. We're pretty sure it was the same fish because it has a large hole on the side of it's mouth where it had worked the spinner bait loose the day before. To bad I didn't get that $5 spinner bait back. :-( Who says you can't catch the same bass the next day? Or hook one and fight it multiple times in one day? It may not happen all the time, but it can be done.

Day Two:

Day two details, this time we launched at Oso Blanco lodge where the weigh-in was helded and most of the other teams were launching there as well. We ran in the darkness playing leap frog with the day one leaders all the way back to Big Tigers and realized they were fishing the same area just opposite side of the cove. We could see each other catch bass all day, but were far enough apart that we couldn't tell how big or what lures were being used. After the tournament we found out they were fishing the banks of a small creek channel on their side. 6:20AM and we started catching bass right off the start on spinner baits and had our limit by 8:00 AM. The wind picked up and the spinner bait bite died, so I decided to match the hatch and use a chrome little george and started catching bass again. Downside to that story is that I actually hooked and lost 3 fish on consecutive casts that were fish well over two lbs and one that we think may have been near three pounds. They jumped and used the leverage of a long cast to shake it free, but I did get a few fish on it to the boat and culled out that fourteen inch fish I caught on the spinner bait early. We stayed on our fish and once the wind calmed back down and the sun came out I switched to the watermelon/red senko and continued catching fish. I hooked into a bass I believe would have been pushing 4 lbs from the looks of it when it came to the surface, that was just before it dove down into one of those thorny trees and came off after wrapping up the line. Bryan was catching fish on a carolina rigged watermelon lizard and his brushhog rig. We'd caught about 15 keepers off our honey hole and a number of short fish when it happened. 10:30AM and we started noticing large top water hits in a group of trees about a 100 yards away and decided to investigate. The trees were sitting in thirteen feet of water and little did we know at the time, holding 60+ bass ranging from 1.5 to 3 lbs… we saw but never boated larger bass in the school in the trees. They were schooled up busting shad that were about 4 inches long, cause they coughed up a few in the live well. The fish were worked into a feeding frenzy when we arrived throwing spinner baits. We caught 60+ bass out of the trees before the bite died. We caught them on everything we threw, and got to the point that we tried lures just to see what they wouldn't hit, we didn't find one by the way. We caught fish on as many as six consecutive casts, doubled up, it was simply amazing. I think I netted the first two then we just started swinging the over one side of the boat and releasing them on the other side. Also when we first started catching them, when we would reel in a fish, 4 or 5 other bass would follow it to the boat trying to take the bait from it. Missing a strike wasn't a problem, just stop the bait and set the hook. We culled fish I don't know how many times in all the excitement. What a way to end a trip, our arms and thumbs were simply worn out by the time it was all over and we ended up with 12.54 lbs for the day moving us into 3rd place over all. None of the other teams reported seeing any of the schooling action we found out there in Tigers. We had more than 12.54 lbs, but accidently released a larger fish in a rushed culling exercise with only seconds left in tournament time. Lesson learned the hard way there.

We didn't get pictures of any of the fish unfortunately, Bryan's live wells were having technical difficulties and getting the fish back to the lake quickly was necessary for their survival. We wanted to keep them as stress free and lively as possible. This was something that was even praised by a local reporter/proshop owner. His report is located here.

TCBC Official results posted here.

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