I met Jim Blair at Stillhouse Marina for our
I-Match tournament on
Stillhouse Hollow at 6:00 AM in the morning. We exchanged greetings, Jim commented that we were going to be a bit chilly since the air temp was around 54 degrees and there was a 5 mph breeze blowing across the lake. As we checked each others lives wells, I asked Jim about his prefishing trip the day before. Jim said he had 4 keepers Monday afternoon and 5 keepers on Sunday, so I had my work cut out for me. We launched and went our separate ways on the water. I wouldn't see Jim again for the rest of the tournament until weigh-in at 2:30PM.
I headed out to the island and started off with a Strike King chartreuse/ white spinner bait and started catching fish right from the start. I caught my first keeper around 7:00 AM, 15 1/2 inches long, I quickly placed her in the live well and got back to the deck. On the very next cast I caught my second keeper 14 1/4 inches, placed a culling clip on this one with anticipation of releasing after catching my limit and getting a bigger one. About 7:30 it happened, the wind died and everything was calm for about 5 minutes and then bass started schooling on shad all around the boat. I threw that spinner bait at every splash I saw and caught a fish on nearly every cast following a splash. At 8:40 AM I had caught my 5th keeper and then wind was back, only blowing from a different direction. All in all I had caught 16 bass so far and there were several boats in the area. One boat had even moved within 40 yards of me to cast at the schooling action, but the wind had pushed the bait back down and the schooling was over. The other boat didn't catch any fish while I was still there. I decided to change the game plan.
I left the area in hopes of finding a 5+ lb kicker or upgrading that 14 in fish at least. I ran up the lake past Union Grove fished the grass beds along there with a chrome/ blue Rat-L-Trap and picked up a few dinks. On around the corner I went up into a little protected pocket and had a nice tug on the line, a few shakes and the fish was loose. Thought to myself, man that was a good one. I held the boat in place and made about 10 casts to the area with no luck. I moved up and was able to see a small point under the water with large rocks on it, and then on the very tip in about 5 feet of water I could see a large bass that I would guess was 5 lbs. I backed the boat up and flipped a watermelon senko to the point and before I could take up the slack, the line was headed for deep water, I slammed the rod back and had to duck the empty hook flying by my head. Dang it, that was a nice fish and it took my senko! I spent another hour there waiting to see if it would come back to the point, but it never showed. I did catch another short fish off the point while I was waiting. This wasn't working so I figured I should head back to the island in hopes of upgrading my limit.
As I idled through the saddle of the island around 11:30 AM, I noticed a bass boat with three guys fishing off the point in about 8 feet of water and two of the three guys doubled up. I'd guess they were about 14 inches long, both caught on carolina rigs.
Back out on the grass flats and all the boat traffic that had been there early on was nowhere to be seen now, it was just me and the island. There were two boats out on the hump out from the island, I never saw either of them set the hook by the way. I fished for what seemed like hours with only a few short fish about 14 inches I didn't bother to measure them. About 12:45, I finally set the hook on a 3 lb fish and culled out my little 14 inch fish. I caught this fish on the trap I'd been using off and on when I got board with dragging a senko or lizard on the bottom. Quick survey of the live well, my two smallest fish were 15 1/2 inches weighing 1.5 and 1.7 lbs. Gave them culling clips just incase luck and the good Lord were to bless me before the end of the touramment.
It was 1:00 now and I was really nervous about the weight that Jim could possibly have... I kept thinking, all he had to do was have a good kicker and I was done. I remember someone telling me the year before about this time that they'd caught fish up to 4lbs out on a hump near the dam. I loaded up and took off in hopes of upgrading the 1.5 lb fish and 1.7 lb fish.
Arrived on the hump to find it void of boat traffic, which was nice since I see people fishing it a lot. Got out an Baby bass colored Excalibur Fat Free Shad that dives to 10 feet and went to work fishing the island. No grass on the bottom around it this year which is weird since there has always been grass there before. After spooking a few short fish and some large carp off the top of the hump when I was checking things out, I moved out to the point past the marker buoy to about 15 feet of water. Nothing on the crank, so I switched to dragging a watermelon zoom lizard. At 2:00 I hadn' t had a bite, so I switched to the trap and on the second cast caught a 14 1/2 in fish. A few casts later I caught a 16 1/2 fish and released the 1.5 lb fish I'd marked with a culling clip. I didn't want to be late and felt really good about my fish now knowing the smallest fish I had was 1.7 lbs so I headed to the weigh-in site to fish until Jim showed up.
Jim came motoring into the marina at 2:25 from the back of the creek and had his poker face going until I said I had five fish for about 15 lbs. He had one fish that weighed about 4 lbs. He pulled the fish out of his livewell without weighing it and released the fish. We shook hands and it was done. I weighed my fish just to see what I had after Jim left and someone at the marina offered to take a picture of them for me.
More Pics HereRecap of the day, I caught 26 fish total and about 10 of them were keepers. All my good fish were caught on a spinner bait or rat-l-trap. I won my second round I-Match event and move on to round 3 of the Elimination Bracket. 5 largest fish caught weighed 14.6 lbs.
