July 26^th 2008                  FishTrapLake            Golden Hook Bassers

          This is the first tournament of our annual two day out of town tournament’s and I only had about three hours of pre-fishing in the day before and it was really blowing out so I didn’t get to work some of the areas as well as I would have liked but I did catch some fish, not very big though, I was not paired with anybody today so I had to figure it out on my own. I was the last boat to take off and I ran to a spot were I caught a couple of okay sized fished yesterday and figured I would stop quite a bit short of it since there was nobody around and fish my way up to it. I started on a fast breaking point with some reeds growing on it, so I started throwing my Zarra spook and working it close to shore and out deeper to the boat, this spot looks awesome and as I am working it over I suddenly realized I have a horrific stomach and I’m sure it is from my Mountain Dew breakfast, here is a good tip for everybody “don’t drink pop and eat like crap early in the morning” so here I am getting back into my boat back at the landing after taking care of an emergency(thank god for fast bass boats, Ha,Ha.  Anyway I went back over to my starting spot and work my way to THE spot, I picked up my St.Croix rod with a Leena Lure spinnerbait on and I catch one that keeps and then I catch another which is a little better than the first, as I move out deeper because the fishing has slowed I get bit and the fish comes off as I work the mid depths 6-9ft I catch nothing.

           Now that it is about 4 hours into the day and I only have 2 fish I started to press alittle bit. I was bouncing from spot to spot and not catching anything so now I’m really frustrated and sit down and study my GPS map and decide on a spot and as I get there I pick up my reliable ALL-TERRAIN grassmaster jig in green pumpkin and told myself to work the area over good and that meant slowing down, well that worked as I approached a quick drop with some rocks  I got a very aggressive bite and hammered the hook home into a nice 2-1/2 lb bass and then I caught another about 2 pounds, I quickly tossed my jig back there and got what seemed to be a really good bite then seen it was a pike so I released him and retied threw back to spot and caught another 2 pounder. I noticed there were three or four boats just on the other side of me and there watching this and getting mad I think because they have not caught a thing, I do not know if the were mad because I put them in my livewell or just be cause I caught some fish. This spot has really cooled down and my happy audience has left so for kicks I moved around the Island to where they were and started fishing, I caught a fish almost immediately up in the reeds on a Leena Lures spinnerbait and that was it until about twenty minutes to go in the tournament I was throwing my jig around some deeper weeds and I stuck another 2 pound fish and culled out a 1-1/4 pound bass so now its time to head in for weigh in and I thought I did alright with about 10 pounds for 5 fish. Well that was not the case I had 9.77 pounds but most the other guys had 10 – 11-1/2 pounds and I ended up in 12^th out of 17 not so good, My son A.J. took 4^th place with 11.39 pounds good for him.