The Bass Champs Curse

Posted by admin on January 22, 2015

F%J#Kasfs##! Bass Champs gets us again. I had a feeling as we got that slight warming trend on the 2 days leading up to last Saturday's Champs tournament on Rayburn that the big fish I had found the prior week might be in motion. As it turned out I was correct and fortunes also seemed against us as we drew boat #300 in a 308 boat field. Since the winners stated that they had all 35+ lbs of their winning stringer in the boat by 8:30, and we made our first cast at 8:43, it was obvious we missed what early bite there was. Our issues were further compounded by the sheer number of boats on the water with our 308 and many others pre-fishing this upcoming weekend's collegiate event and therefore pretty much everywhere we wanted to go was "pick a number". 

Interesting to me was that several of the teams that typically whack the fish this time of year offshore went home empty handed. If the winners were forthcoming in their interview, and my sense is that they were, the only giant stringer caught were suspended fish. Clark and Rambo who followed a distant second had a very respectable 24 lbs for second once again proved how solid they are as a team. To a large degree the rest of us scraped and clawed for what we could catch. Our day hinged on a 4 lb Santone football jig (trailed by a Yamamoto craw) fish I caught...continued

about 9:15, which I was lucky with. Lucky actually in two ways, first I caught the fish off the back of someone's boat that was circling us like we were a wagon train full of gold, and secondly that out of frustration I just roped the fish aboard and the jig doinked out of her mouth when she hit the carpet. Dicky boated a 5 late in the day that was probably a 3 1/2 lb cull for us that got us to 15 and change and a nice "consolation" check for 19th place of just over $1,000. As we rode in that afternoon I told him that we were going to discover at the weigh in that the bite was really tough, and when you roll up to the weigh in and there is no line to get a weigh in bag when there are 308 boats in a tournament it has been one more tough day.

Having said that I do think that Rayburn is about to explode, I know there was a nice stringer caught Sunday over the grass. Truthfully I can't remember when we had this pretty of deep-ish grass in January at Rayburn. Lots of the drain and points have grass about 4-5 feet down in 8-15 feet of water. With last night and today's rain the fish should continue to make efforts to come shallow and continue to be somewhat scattered. My prediction is that as soon as the weather stabilizes for a few days, even if it's cold, the fishing is going to get spectacularly good. I also think that if rainfall patterns hold true and the water stays 163+ Rayburn is going to be really tough to figure out day in and day out through the spawn as the fish are going to have options to be in the buck brush, hay grass, willows, needle grass, inside grass line, over the grass and outside grass line. Good time to be a fish, tougher time to be a fisherman. My advice to the collegiate anglers this weekend, get over the grass and cover as much water as possible, I think the tournament will one in or around the grass, Good Luck University of Arkansas fishing team..Go Hogs!!!