Well, I've arrived home safe and sound from a three day fishing trip (2 tournament days and 1 pre-fish) and have regained sufficient alertness to write a follow-up post. Tournament fishing is tons of fun, buts its also a ton of hard work. I would suspect you cast 1000 times more than on a leisure trip.
This is our second year at the Stony event. Year one was a dismal failure for us. We placed dead last. In fact, we scored an ego shattering -1 as a result of some misread rules on length of fish by specie. We were also new to tournament fishing and as a result, indecision and frustration permeated the day. The long drive home after-wards was... lets put it this way, depressingly subdued contrasted with the occasional flurry of words not suitable for public viewing. Suffice it to say, our goal this year was to redeem ourselves. Anything above 60th place would make us happy. Fortunately we did better than that.
My Stony tourney (correct spelling BTW) partner Aaron only fishes one tournament a year and Stony is it. We managed to put together a two day total of 20.13 pounds which was good for 24th spot out of 126 boats. Not in a pay spot, but worth more to us than the money. We walked away with a repaired ego and vastly improved sense of confidence! Priceless.
The weather for the tournament was unstable. Saturday was a considerable improvement over the cold and bitter Northeast winds we faced on the Friday pre-fish. Sunday was dark and rainy for the majority of the day.
We threw a variety of baits and the top producers for us was spinner baits, jigs and drop shots. I took to throwing a spook and other various top waters but the fish just weren't into heading to the surface for any slow moving presentation. We fished the spinner baits fast and close to the surface and they seemed to like that instead.
Fortunately during pre-fish we found an early morning spot that provided us with a couple of quality keeper fish on both days. I've discovered this year that a spot with a perfect combination of structure, cover and food will usually replenish with new fish the following day. They're rare to find, at least for me, and are a huge advantage to setting the tone and confidence level early in the game.
Saturday the fishing was consistent until around 2 o'clock. Most of our fish were smallmouth caught in 4-6 feet of water over rock points. We needed one more fish to make our 5 but we couldn't find him. So our weight was one fish short day 1 for a total of 8.12lbs.
Sunday fishing was good first thing as I mentioned above, but it slowed down within a few hours. The ironic thing about a confidence bait is that because of your trust in it, you end up over using it when you should change up your tactics. We had 2 fish in the box (early morning spot fish)by 7:30. We fished hard and realized things weren't happening for us, it was now almost 12:30 and our cut off was 2pm. We decided to drastically change things up and head to deeper mid-lake humps and drop shot. Good decision. We hook and land a fish just shy of 4 pounds and manage to nail 4 other quality fish where we culled two. Incidentally, we heard during the after tournament gathering on day 1, that the lake had turned over. I'm not familiar with all the characteristics of what a turn over lake looks like, but I do know the fish scatter at various depths. We caught many just shy of tournament sized fish in 30+ foot depth supporting the turn over notion.
So all in all, a great result that we're happy with. I can't say enough about the Stony lake Combo tournament and organizers. Ken Hamilton, one of the main organizers is a great guy. Its a unique tournament where everyone gets a prize. There are lunker pools for each day and a two $625.00 draws, at no additional charge. A great value in my books ($160.00 entry fee per team plus optional $20.00 daily lunker pool).
Looking forward to next year.
