The New Z520 Works!!!

Posted by ken on January 13, 2015

My friend Skip Chancellor and I got to put my new Z520 through the paces for the first time this past Saturday morning. It was cold and windy to start the day but we stayed dry and literally scrapped and scraped around Rayburn to put together a really nice limit of bass to win the first ever Ice Bowl hosted by West Limited, specifically Clay and Clint West. For those that don't know the story the ABA tournament, which lots of guys were practicing for got cancelled Thursday afternoon. So Clay and Clint decided to give us all something to do. I don't know how they pulled it together but they even had huge trophies, which read "2015 West LTD Ice Bowl Shoot Out", "Fish your Ice Off". Having not been on Rayburn since October my inclination was not to fish, but luckily Skip wanted to so we tossed our money in and braved the cold. Although it took us a long time to put the first fish in the boat, and actually had to run to our third spot to do so, about 10:30 the first tournament keeper came over the gunnel and what a way to start, a 9.36 was the first fish I put in the livewell. Skip followed up shortly thereafter with a..continued  

really solid 3 pounder and we knew we had the makings of a winning stringer if we could just piece the rest of the limit together. I think this may have been an instance where no prefish was really beneficial. I had talked to several buddies during the week and early in the week, with 57 degree water temperature, the fishing had been extremely good shallow and guys were on large groups of fish. If we had been we would have probably been running those spots as well, but we were looking at 46 degree water, that's a whole different game. Since we have Bass Champs this weekend I'm not going to get overly specific but the fish have not moved far from where everyone was catching them earlier in the week. And unlike what many people think this was a typical large stringer, at least for me, in that we hunted and pecked all day, and in fact Skip culled our smallest fish with a heavy 4 on the last cast of the day. I think generally Rayburn fish want to be shallow, and these fish had been extremely shallow, but when a front hits and you get this kind of temperature swing those fish will back out a little bit to the next deepest cover. If they are in the bushes they will back to the inside grass line, if inside grass line to the outside, or outside to breaks and brushpiles. That was our experience anyway, we caught 10-12 keepers between 10:30 and 2:55 for 28.67, that's the best break in tournament I have ever had for a new boat. Again, special thanks to Clint and Clay West for pulling this together, we had a blast and great to catch up with so many old friends and make some new ones this past weekend.