Limping Home with Two Black Eyes

Posted by ken on November 6, 2017

In case you missed it last week was the FLW Costa Championship on Kentucky Lake, if you missed it, that's ok, I was there and I missed it as well. Kentucky Lake is known for it's spectacular summer ledge fishing...not its fall fishing. It is the most humiliating week I have ever spent on a lake. First the ugly, I had never zeroed in an FLW event before, and not only did I blank on day 1, I followed it with a blank on day 2 as well. What's worse is this was, after my practice, absolutely no surprise.  There was little reason to pre-practice as the fish would have been out deep not long ago, so when I arrived mid-day last Saturday, about 6 hours behind when official practice started, it was the first time I had ever set eyes upon the lake. And it is gorgeous, good water color, leaves on the trees were brilliant, so I dumped my Ranger in and went north, which oddly there is downriver as the lake actually flows south to north. I checked an area a friend had told me about and got no bites, nothing really interesting, so I came about half way back up the lake to about 7 miles from Paris Landing where we were fishing out of and caught a solid 2 and one about 3 1/2 in the back of a creek on a Biffle Bug. That was my action for the day, so next morning I headed south, way up the river to the New Johnsonville area where the BFL regional was won a few weeks prior. Fishing dark til dark, I never had a bite...well actually I caught a skipjack on a squarebill. So Monday I came back south and over the course of a day, again dark to dark, I had one keeper bite, a 5 lber from about 12" of water I saw chasing bait. So Tuesday, my last day of practice I decided that I had to find the bait, as I was seeing very little shallow so I went out and starting in the river idled up a creek until I saw bait, which were piled in a corner, first cast with a C-Rig produced what I surmised was a barfish, second cast the same, third cast similar bite but it held on, a 6 lb largemouth. I didn't make another cast on the spot and fished 20 more similar spots until dark ran me off the water...that was the last keeper bite I saw while I was there (not only did I not catch any, I never saw a keeper caught). I wasn't alone, over 40 of the 193 pros that qualified and fished blanked both days. The FLW Tour angler of the year Bryan Thrift made us all feel small with 27 lbs day one, but Ky Lake bit him the following two days when he could only muster two fish on day 2, and blanked on the final day. One guy caught a limit all three days, of 193 pros only 7 caught limits both the first two days, get this, the 2nd-10th place guys that fished the last day, had the lake all to themselves, they weighed 8 fish, total, 9 guys that had "figured it out" weighed 8 fish with all that money on the line.  I have never seen fishing that tough in my life, and I'm glad to be back in Texas...only problem is I'm going back up there this weekend for the Wildcard, after having seen 4 keepers in 7 days of fishing.