Well since I'm sitting here writing this report on Sunday morning you know I did not make the cut to fish the final day.

Spent a pretty good amount of time on the water preparing for this tournament.  Fished the evening of the 12th .... all day the 13th, 14th and 17th and the evening of the 19th.  Fished all the way to the back of Beaver ... back by Bangor ... and main lake.  Surface temps (prior to the front) were in the mid to upper 50's in the morning to as high as 68 in the very backs of pockets.  I would estimate the 'base' water temp though to still be in the mid to upper 50's so although it feels like spring ... the fish still think it's late winter.  That prompted me to abandon the river arms and focus more on late winter patterns.

As shown in the enclosed pictures I found one arm off the main lake loaded with both bait fish as well as bigger fish.  Only found one other spot that had even close to this type of activity up the Licking River but didn't really see the big ones with them so I knew this would be a spot.  Caught a three pounder during practice on a main lake bank that the river channel swung close by ... again late winter type of pattern.

So tournament morning I knew the bite woud be tough but I predicted two keepers (no slot fish allowed so had to be 16"+) would get you to the final day.  I got to the ramp around 5:15 ... launched the boat ... strolled up to register and proceeded to draw boat number 1!!!  Now I was really getting excited!  Took off and headed straight for the arm that had all the fish. Marked bait as well as big ones ... even saw surface activity when I first got there.  But after two hours we had only two unders to show and I started second guessing myself.  Left and ran to the bank that produced the three pounder in practice and caught two unders ....went back to the primary spot and caught two more unders.   At 12:30 time started closing in so we ran all the way to the rip rap outside Twin Knobs ... one under.  Ran to the steep drop off Scott Creek ramp ... no fish ... ran back to a deep flat not far from Clay Lick and caught three shorts ... made a quick run to the flats with 20 minutes and no fish. 

Leaders on day 1 ... 13 pounds ... 11 pounds .... 8 pounds.  Not a single five fish limite was brought in on day one!  Two six pounders were brought to the scales.  The top four finishers on day one were all fishing the flats with rattle traps.  Presumably ripping what little grass the could find or bouncing off stumps.

The lake humbled a lot of anglers today.  I was certainly disappointed as I had 'decent' practice and felt I had the lake narrowed down pretty tight.  In hindsight of course I should have stayed put all day.  Five minutes after leaving the primary spot my buddy caught a 4.58 that put him fishing today!  He said another angler pulled one out a little over three from that area so the good news is I did find a 'decent' area ... bad news is that I didn't stay long enough to figure them out. 

I spent a lot of this tournament pre fishing with my electronics instead of my rod so my lesson for this tourney is to ensure both get ample time.


I will be back up there around 2:30 for the weigh in so I'l post a final report later.

Scott Doan
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