Fool-a-Fish





Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Texas Classic Bass Club May Tournament on Buchanan


I fished the Texas Classic Bass Club May Tournament over the weekend Saturday on Buchanan. There was near perfect fishing weather a little cloud cover and 80 degree temps. I could have used a little more of a breeze but it was welcome calm after the last tournament. Water temps in the lower 70s and water clarity was about 3 inches or less on the uppper end and a foot or less on the lower end. The lake is all messed up from flooding, there are trees and limbs floating all over the lake, it's very dangerous. I fished with Bill Gibson from the club.

The Tournament:

Bill and I met at 5:00 AM at Whataburger and grabbed some breakfast. We downed breakfast and hit the road talking about fishing and car wrecks on HW29. We launched at the Buchanan out of Burnett Country park #2 about 6:45 which was 45 minutes after official start time, but no big deal since it was just light enough to see the floaters on the lake, so no hurry. We ran across the lake to Bill's spot on a point near a little marina. We started fishing on the point and Bill tagged our first fish, non-keep on the second cast on a smallie beaver. A few minutes later I caught a near keeper on a spinner bait. Bill followed up quickly with another fish on the beaver and then things slowed down a little. On the second or third trip around the point I picked up our first keeper on a beaver in watermelon/ red. Long skinny fish unfortunately, I bet it didn't weigh half a pound. We pouned the point for a while longer before deciding to cross the channel and try a new area. It was full of gar spawning, they were flipping up on the shore and going crazy in the shallows. We killed an hour in there, but no luck so back to the point to give it another shot, I picked up several more fish on the spinnerbait and had a keeper pull off in the brush unfortunately. We decided to move and check out Silver creek. We got there to find out the water looked like hot chocolate, white foam and all. I've never seen the water that muddy up there. We fished there anyway and killed a lot of time fishing water that is normally very productive. Running out of time I gave into Bill's request to head down the lake to find clear water. We arrived to find green/ clear water and started catching fish on points that had bait on the graph. I caught a catfish, a drum, and spotted bass while drop shotting on the points and Bill caught our second keeper on a Tiki stick in watermelon / white. I moved out on a rock pile on the main lake in the last few minutes of fishing and hooked into a big fish that made a hard run and snapped my line before I could react. Unfortunately a client from a recent guide trip hand turned the drag all the way down, so that it was never going to slip and I hadn't checked it before the tournament. Lesson learned, check your drag before making the first cast. :-(

Tournament in Review:

We caught about 15 bass over the day. Most of the fish were caught on a white spinnerbait and beaver style lure. Bill and I caught two keepers going 2.04 lbs putting us in 3nd place. Congrats to Bryan Cotter and Rick Webster who won with 14 lbs.