Story by Hunter Baughman | Photos by Tanner & Travis Lyons
I hope everyone had a great Easter. We were able to make it back home on Saturday and spend the holiday with our family. It was a nice relaxing time after a hectic tournament week.
I’m sure you’ve seen the standings by now. But in case you haven’t, you’ll find me in 65th place, roughly 3 1/2 pounds from the check cut. Yes, it’s frustrating. But I’m not mad about it and here’s why.
I feel like I made good decisions, and I feel like I got out of my comfort zone. And I learned quite a bit. Now I will say, with a $5,200 entry fee plus travel expenses, if all that is earned is an education, it’s an expensive week. Regardless, that’s where we ended up, so might as well make the most of it.
Practice was mediocre. There was a little bit of a swimbait bite, several bed fish and a shaky head bite. The majority of all three of those patterns revolved around the backside of docks and their walkways.
I marked 15 or so bed fish but only one over three pounds. Everything else was around two pounds.
On Day 1, I started on a stretch of docks and had a couple keepers quick. One of those being a two pounder. I caught several shorts but didn’t have many keeper bites. After the sun got up, I went and looked at a couple of bed fish. The bigger one seemed to be gone, and another wasn’t in the mood to eat and wasn’t big enough for me to spend much time trying to change its mind. I switched up areas and made a run about lunchtime. That was a good move producing more keeper bites. Got up to around eight pounds but couldn’t seem to catch anything to upgrade. I made a little move to some deeper docks, and I caught three solid fish in a five-dock stretch, bumping me up to 12 pounds. I spent the next three hours trying to duplicate those docks and it never materialized. After the weigh-in, I was in the 40s, just ounces from check range.
On Day 2, I started by concentrating on deeper docks and there just weren’t any bites. It was time to figure out what they wanted that day. I started running some flatter pockets and had a limit quick. Bites were plentiful and so were the small keepers. We had little to no wind all day and I ended up picking off four bed fish. I weighed in 10 pounds and only fell a few spots. I felt like I made good adjustments all day. Just never caught any size.
Day 3 was eventful to say the least. We had a warm night, and the fish were biting early. I had four small keepers by 10 o’clock when—all of a sudden—my trolling motor died. I started the diagnosis process to learn all three of my trolling batteries were dead. Not sure if the breaker where we were staying was flipped and I didn’t get a charge or what the issue was. Regardless I was dead in the water. I made a few calls and ended up talking to Tyler at The Great Outdoors in Cherryville, North Carolina. After explaining my problem, he dropped what he was doing to take batteries out of his own boat and bring them to me and switched them out! Incredible! In the hour I was down I did manage to fill my limit and cull by idling in and out of docks with the big motor and using my power poles to stop so I could fish.
After Tyler left, I was back up and running with four hours to go. The wind was blowing hard, and I spent two of those hours throwing a swimbait in the wind trying to generate a couple of big bites to get the 13 pounds I thought I needed for a check. I never had a bite doing that, so I went back to the shaky head and culled once. Then, with 30 minutes left, I found a dock with three beds on it. There was a fish on each bed, and they were about 2, 2 1/2 and 3 pounds. Those were enough to get me paid! Unfortunately, I spent my last thirty minutes there, despite the 3-pounder nosing down on my bait twice, I never got any of them to eat. I ended up weighing 8 pounds and falling to 65th place.
Understandably it was frustrating to fall short, but I do feel like I made key adjustments each day. Throwing the swimbait on Day 3 before I had a decent limit in the boat is way outside my safe zone so to speak. In previous articles I’ve talked about having to take those risks to be successful and how much I’ve struggled with those decisions. So, sticking with it for a couple hours was a confidence boost for me. It just didn’t work out this time.
After reading the article on Hackney’s winning techniques, I realized I was doing the same thing with the same baits in the same general area of the lake. I wish I had ventured further into the backs of creeks looking for bedding largemouths. Other than that, I give my decision making a “B” for keeping an open mind and adjusting. After all, if the bed fish I found at the end would have bit, this story would have a different ending.
Catch y’all next week!
Hunter Baughman – Angler Profile
