Fool-a-Fish





Tuesday, April 28, 2009

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.

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