F3 Club May tourney- some days it all comes together...

Fished our May tourney today on Priest. I had practiced on Friday and caught a bunch of fish but mostly dinks. The good thing is that I had several areas located that were holding fish and shad.

My goal for the day today was to catch a limit in the first two hours, and then go try to upgrade with some larger ones.

We blasted off at safe light (around 5:15), and we headed to a mid-lake flat where I had caught a few on Friday. We started with topwaters and crankbaits. The fish were fairly shallow, and I opted to throw the crankbait. Good call for sure. In the first 45 minutes I caught three keeper fish, and all of them were in the 3-4 lb class. I rounded out my limit on that spot around 6:30, well ahead of schedule.

From there we hit a couple of other flats in the area, but all of the fish were small. I upgraded ounces here.

By 7:30 we were heading downlake to a major creek where smallmouth live. We weeded through around 10 fish on a tube and jig, and then I had a bite that felt very different. The fish slammed the tube, and took off running, leaping, and cavorting. It was a nice 18 1/2 " smallie. That fish replaced a pound and a half largehead, which was a nice upgrade. By now I figured I had around 14 lbs on five fish, with one little one left to cull. We hit a couple of roadbeds downlake, but no takers. I was still confident that I could catch a good one on a roadbed, so we kept moving back downlake.

We pulled up on a roadbed near the bridge, and once my Carolina Rigged Lizard came over the road in the magic depth, WHAM. The fish took off for deep water, and I knew it was a good un. It turned out to be the smallie pictured here, which measure 20" on the button. This fish culled the last small one, so I now had 5 fish for 18.01 lbs.

My goal now became to hit the 20 lb mark, but it didn't happen. My non-boater only had two keepers by now, and I decided to go to our first spot again to see if we could get his limit. We ended up catching around 15 more fish, but no more big ones. Duke added one keeper to his bag, and that was the end of the day.

All in all, it was a great day.

Until next time, tight lines, and sore thumbs!

RBK