July Texas Classic Bass Club tournament on Lake Austin

I fished the Texas Classic Bass Club tournament held on Lake Austin on July 23rd over the weekend and earned 3rd place with the help of Mike Amescua. It was a close finnish based on the weights between 1st and 3rd places, Results here. I can't take all the credit for my success in this tournament, because I used some of the tips provided by last years winners to lay out my plan for fishing this tournament. They said they caught the fish on docks near deep water with 10 inch black worms, so that's where I started in my prefishing, but by the time the tournament came around I had come up with a better idea of where to catch fish as I tried new areas and zoomed in on the pattern I put together before the tournament began.

So this is how the tournament went, I showed up at Walsch Landing at 11:10 PM ready to get this show on the road. I was very excited about the tournament knowing I had hooked a bass over 5lbs on every trip I had made to Lake Austin leading up to the tournament. Before I could really get the boat prepped for launching, Mike showed up with rods and tackle in hand ready to go. We launched the boat and just sat in the boat for about 15 minutes just talking out the plan for the night (12:00AM to 8:00AM). We headed up the lake past 360 bridge and stopped on a row of docks just down form Ski Shores and started fishing the docks. I'd caught several fish in the 3 lb range here prefishing and was confident in this spot. We started fishing at 12:00 AM and about 12:15 Mike put us on the board with a 1.8 lb bass he caught on a watermelon jig. We fished the row of docks down the bank, up in a little creek and back out with nothing, but perch bites. Mike was probably thinking I was crazy at this point, because it was about 3:00AM and we only had one fish. I assured him the fish just weren't biting yet and as it got closer to 4:30 AM the action would pick up.

We made a long run up past City Park to a long strech of what appears to be a "nothing" bank. There are a few small docks without lights and a lot of trees, but the real key here is that there was grass in about 3 to 5 feet of water that quickly dropped off into 15 feet. We started fishing and Mike quickly picked up a 1.5 lb bass on his jig. On down the bank I flipped a watermelon brush hog rigged Texas style with a 1/4 oz slip sinker into the heart of a grass patch and felt my rod shake as if the bass was giving me a warm hello hand shake. It's the kind of hand shake that you'd get from an old friend. Glad to feel that shake, I set the hook and wrestled a nice 3+ lb bass from the grass. While I was putting it into the live well, Mike swung an missed a nice fish in the grass only a foot or two from where I'd just pulled out a fish. Five minutes later and I put another 3+ lb fish in the boat on the brush hog. We made our way down to the end of that area and decided it was worth another run, turned around and headed back through there. This time I used a white buzz bait and Mike stuck to his jig. I tagged a near keeper on the buzz bait next to some low hanging limbs. About midway through this spot Mike finished out our limit with another keeper weighing 1.7 lbs. I'm pretty pumped up, because it's only about 4:15 in the morning and we haven't even gotten to the prime time fishing yet. We finish the run and I tell Mike it's time to hit another set of docks with grass on them that produced good fish while I was prefishing.

We head back down the lake past City Park again on the way and pull up. I get a little foggy here in my details because I was pretty tired from being up all night. We fished our way down the docks and pick up a few fish a long the way and Mike upgrades our smallest fish, so the 1.5 lb fish was set free. We pull into a creek that Chris had caught the 4 lb fish out of two weeks before at dawn. Mike catches a bass out of the exact same spot and upgrades our limit again, so the 1.7 lb fish goes free. I turn the boat around and we fish out of the creek while chatting with some guys in another boat fishing a different tournament. They're telling us tall fish tales about a live well full of 5+ lb fish, Funny stuff. They blast off and we're sitting on the point trying to decide our next move and Mike sets the hook on a "toad" that never turns before breaking the line. I make a cast two feet to the left of where Mike lost his bass and set the hook on our big bass, 5.02 lbs see pic below. We continue fishing the area and Mike later hooks into a large bass that looked big based on the size of the head. The fish came to the surface during the fight, mouth open wide and shaking it's head hard enough to sling the jig free. A few minutes later I set the hook and put another keeper in the boat making our smallest fish 2.0 lbs even. We finish out the rest of the morning hitting a few other spots, I set the hook on another big fish and loose it when it wraps up on brush. We were so close to winning the tournament, any one of those three fish would have put us several pounds in the lead, but we can't complain, because it was great fishing no matter how you look at it. Congratulations to Kevin & Larry for the win.

Day in Review:

Total bass caught was somewhere around 20 with all, but one being greater than 14 inches long. Final weight was 17.21 lbs which is fairly consistent with what I've been catching on all the trips I've made lately. We caught the fish on watermelon bush hogs and watermelon jigs in 3 to 5 feet of water.

Right now is a great time to book a trip for night fishing on Lake Austin and I'm running a special that'll put you on the fish during the peak fishing hours.

Click for details - Summer Special