Boom Goes the Dynamite
By Tim Grein
Any good fisherman will tell you to listen to what the bass are telling you. Every bite whether it is big or small is a clue. Last weekend was no exception. I had a team tournament on back to back days on the same lake. I caught them pretty good in practice, but Saturday arrived and there were at least a hundred thousand bass boats on the water. Ok, maybe not a hundred thousand, but I kid you not, when I arrived at my first spot, I was boat #5 to arrive into the back of a small creek. There were over 200 boats, in our tournament and we were boat 20, so that tells you how many other tournaments were on the lake. I promptly turned around and left my first spot.
We kept hunting around and caught 1 here and 1 there, but every pocket I went into, there were 2-3 boats, and not many keepers. The fish told me, there was just too much pressure in this area. I locked my rods down, and ran 20 miles in the opposite direction. I put the trolling motor down, flipped into a willow tree and boom started catching them. Just 1 problem, there was only an hour left in the tournament. We proceeded to cull a couple of times, but only had 10.5lbs which was good enough to finish in the middle of the pack.
I’m not proud of Saturday, but I will say this, it gave me a good idea of what to do Sunday. What a different day Sunday was. Sunday morning, I ran some new water looking for a shad spawn, but never could find anything. I think I was a tad too early. Once I quit looking for a shad spawn, I really only needed 1 rod the rest of the day. My flipping stick, a 13 Fishing, 7’6” Heavy action Envy paired with a 8.1:1, 13 Fishing Concept E spooled with 20lb P-Line Flourcarbon, and a Missile Baits D Stroyer tied to the end of it. That’s it. That’s all I needed, because from that point forward, I put the hammer down and didn’t let up until I walked to the front and collect our check for winning. The first couple of spots really didn’t produce much, which had me wondering about our willow bite, but then I caught one close to 4lbs. The next stop produced a 5lber, then one over 6lbs. We were rolling. We ended up with 5 that weighed right at 21lbs and won by a wopping .03 of a pound. It was close.
No doubt the thing that won this tournament for us, is I listened to the fish. Every time, we went into a pocket, we wouldn’t get bit, but every time, we fished out towards the main lake, we would catch one. We also couldn’t get bit in the wind, it had to be call. Had we not noticed the things a really paid attention to the areas that we were fishing and were going to next, there is no doubt we wouldn’t have won. So, next time you’re on the water, pick up your 13 Fishing Flipping stick, rig up a Missile Baits D Stroyer, and go flipping, because as soon as a good one eats it, and it won’t take long…. Boom Goes the Dynamite!!
