08-12-2017, 09:00 AM
<br /> Well, we put in a lot of time pre-fishing for this tournament and as usual, nothing went as expected. After performing the blast-off we ran to our first spot and someone was on it. We backed off and started fishing another area and I quickly caught two shorts. I figured I had the fish dialed in. Boy was I wrong. With storms on both sides of the river we carefully watched the lightning and after getting a small topwater bite aborted it to head back towards the ramp just in case it got bad. We started fishing the docks around Rivermont and caught nothing. Not even a bite. Around 10:30 Dusty said it looked like the radar had cleared so we headed back to our initial target and it was clear. Within 30 minutes, Dusty had the trio of a nice keeper smallmouth, a nice largemouth, and a keeper spot. We worked hard after that but could not get anything else keeper size in the boat. <br /> We had a few chances. I hooked a spinnerbait fish that we thought came off at the boat and as Dusty lifted the net the fish fell off the side of the net. Later, we both lost what appeared to be keeper sized fish at our last spot on a jig and a shaky head. <br /> We got back and started the weigh in, and up to the last person we were shocked to be in first place. Leonard and Tonya brought a great bag to the scales and put the beat down on everyone with a 6.95 kicker. Congrats to them, and to Todd/David on a beautiful smallie that I think weighed 4.54 and helped give them third place. Our keepers all caught in 12-15 feet of water on a texas rig worm.