Full Barren River two day BFL recap. I’m not going to just write about my good tournaments, you can learn just as much about bad ones as you can good ones. Last year I finished 2nd in this tournament missing the win by four ounces but I had much more fish offshore for me to run and gun and I didnt even take any days off to practice. This year was a little different though, not near as many fish out deep. Knowing the deep bite wasnt near as good from my past few trips, I took two days off to prefish and planned on making one of those days a shallow only practice. Too bad my stubborn butt never committed that full day to shallow as I was drawn back out deep. Now days Im like the opposite of the bank beater. Most bank beaters will try to fish out deep only to be drawn back by the shoreline, my silly butt is drawn back to the depths. Unless you clue in on a good shallow pattern pretty quick through some luck it can take a full day or more to cover water to fine tune that shallow pattern and what the better quality fish are doing up there and the specific areas to key on. I’m a bit of a scientific pattern angler. If Im to find some fish up shallow I want to know exactly every place in the lake that has identical or very similar features to be able to run all of them and not waste any time in between so I can pluck of the biggest five shallow water bass. For an example, I might not be clued in to the exact best pattern but if I catch a good quality fish off two channel swing main lake laydown trees then I will run an entire lake to GPS every big laydown tree on a channel swing bank to fish during the tournament. If I can find one isolated shallow laydown way back in a creek that will hold one or two good bass. I will run all over a lake to find the exact same thing even if two trees are 10 miles apart, If I find four or five thing or even more that fit the bill I milk run all of those and put together a nice limit of fish. Alright back on track with this tourney...I was actually excited for deep fish because the dissolved oxygen levels that were good only to 15 had dropped down to 20 which would position deep fish closer to the bottom and make them a little easier to catch. Practice day one: This is the day I should have fished shallow all day but instead I kept bouncing back and forth between fishing shallow and looking out deep. I would catch some small fish every now and then shallow but nothing to be excited about as I focused only on main lake shallow flats when I should have maybe checked the far reaches of the creeks and river also. Many areas I was looking for deep fish were vacant, I did not see anything. I scanned one area and found the same school in the exact same position for a few weeks now. After making a cast for about 20 minutes throwing from deep up to shallow I couldnt get one to bite. I then went up shallow and threw out deep and on my first cast with the new Big Bite Baits swimbait I caught one pushing six pounds. I then fired out a 10 worm and had another pick it up. I shook it off and left. I now had two to three places with bass on them and didnt fish on the other spots. Practice day two: I kept on doing the same thing mixing up some shallow with deep with not much luck. I kept rechecking places fish hold knowing they could position and show up anytime during the day. Late in the day I finally found some more fish but it was a small group. I made one cast and caught one around four pounds on a swimbait and left them alone. I didnt have much out deep to rely on but if I could just get on one of those schools I could catch a decent limit I thought but it was a big gamble because Barren fishes very small when there are several schools, even worse with only a few places holding them and a great group of anglers that will also find them. After the registration and meeting Friday night I was boat 111 out of 130, for the first time fishing I knew that boat draw wasnt going to help me at all. I knew some fish would be up shallow, ITS SEPTEMBER and we had a major cool down that dropped main lake water temps from 81 down to 77 in two days. Plus the weather favored some shallow pattern with overcast skies, light rain and drizzle for the first day of competition. Not to be burned by this simple pattern I planned to start my day off shallow to try and pick up a few keepers before heading out deep. When I finally launched I was going to be driving by three of the four places I knew had fish and I was sick to see not one but at least two boats on each one of those places. Their simply wasnt enough fish on those spots to take care of more than one Angler. This is probably when I should have just scratched deep all together but I just knew if I could find one school to myself I could get right in a hurry. I wasnt fishing for points, I was fishing for a win. We started shallow and I caught one keeper on a buzzbait and my co-angler caught four on a popper type lure. They would hit it while sitting motionless. I tried my spook also but they were on that popper pretty good, guess I should have tied one on. After he got four keepers in about an hour I was feeling good to go ahead and go for broke. We searched, and looked and looked to no avail. Even that one school with the four pounder had either vanished or someone else got to them first, it was only about six or seven fish. I finally got bit on one deep drop off with the swimbait and lost it at the boat, it was probably a 3.5lb fish. That hurt with only one in the livewell but I grinded it out there for several hours and scratched together a limit weighing about 11lbs. I was really disappointed but I made the day two cut after all in 16th place. I was paired with my day two partner, he liked deep fishing and the sun was gonna shine with no wind Sunday. I had hoped that wold hurt shallow and maybe position deep fish better for me. With only 23 boats fishing Sunday it would be much less crowded. I still had the all in mentality for deep fish. I could probably catch 20-24lbs shallow over two days but that would not win. Day two would seem like the longest eight hours of fishing in my life. We looked and looked and fished deep and looked some more but never did find what I needed. Kudos to my co-angler for hanging with me and allowing me to keep on looking, he understood the concept that it only took one school to get a good sack of fish. Unfortunately we never found it. After many painful hours of not finding anything I went shallow for a little bit and we both caught a couple little fellas to bring to the scales. All of the places I knew had some deep bass always had boats on them both days, I never could get on any of them. It turned out that a couple of anglers in the top 23 were fishing out deep and I suspect they camped out for the most part on those few fish that were out deep. The majority of the top 23 were way up the creeks and river fishing dirt shallow and the winner caught all of his fish off one damn stretch of bank on a 1/2oz green jig in 6-8 of water. I have no regrets for what I did or how I fished the lake, like I said all I wanted in this one was a win. I wasnt fishing for points to qualify for any other event. I love fishing deep but dont think for one second I cant get up shallow with the best of them, I grew up plucking bass from water less than 3 deep. I chose not to. I didnt think you could win shallow and I really havent spent that much time on this lake shallow and didnt have enough time I thought to put together enough places to fish shallow. I think if I would have spent both of my practice days up shallow I could have put together enough for a top five finish maybe but I wanted a win dang it.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:16:07 +0000
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