First big congrats to my friend Ricky Guy on a spectacular tournament, and also to friends Chris McCall and Cory Rambo on giving him a good chase. About a year ago I left Rayburn in a well documented pretty bad mood (see Rayovac Lessons learned article). This year, although I finished poorly, I think overall I made good decisions and I fished an almost flawless tournament as far as landing what bit. Actually might be kind of interesting to see what my fellow fisherman think, so here goes my week, what I thought, what I saw, and the decisions I made. You guys and girls tell me if you would have done differently. First we spend Friday and Saturday on Toledo fishing the Texas Team Trail, I can honestly say I have never thrown back a 15 lb limit knowing we would not get a check, but we did there. I left there realizing that the fish had moved up and in a big way, even though I went shallow for a few minutes Friday afternoon and saw some fish cruising and setting up on bed, guys catching mid 20's off the nest blew my mind, BUT it made me watch the water levels and weather forecasts for the following week really closely. If you a don't recall we had a full moon on Monday with unbelievably warm weather forecast until the day before the tournament when we were to see first wind, then rain, then mid 30's nighttime temps.

So my first day on Rayburn was Sunday and my buddy Steve "Moonpie" Evan joined me for a day of fishing. We spent the day fishing for fish that the cold weather would push back out into the drains, we knew (continued)    

I don't make posts like this very often, actually this doesn't happen very often. I fished Saturday at Rayburn, idled away from the Monterrey ramp with my lights on and came back with my lights on, fished the entire day, for just a couple of bites. Sunday morning I idled out with my lights on again and fished until 3:00, and I never caught a single fish. I don't know that I have every done that before, anywhere. I fished deep, I fished shallow, I through moving baits, I threw plastics, I have never been more lost fishing......the positive and negative, my partner goes out with a guy from the media and catches 26+ to win the Rattle Trap tournament. Now granted I stayed out of the area that I knew there were some fish in so I didn't get in his way, but still, all day and not one fish, I missed one out deep about 10 minutes into the day on a Carolina rig, but that was my sole bite for the day. My sense is the warming trend this week will make it better, but the score this weekend, Rayburn Black bass 2, Ken 0...

Back from Rayburn this past weekend, and down again this weekend. Fishing is, well it's really fun right now. From what I saw there are lots of fish shallow and lots of fish what I would call mid-deep, say 18-25 feet. This coming weekend a year ago is the weekend Skip Chancellor and I won the Ice Bowl last year with 28.68 and those fish were all 35-37 feet deep. But according to my log the main lake surface temp that day was 46-47 degrees, it's 9-10 degrees warmer than that now, or at least last weekend. I know winter is still lurking, but it the water keeps at the current level or rises at all in the next few weeks I would not be a bit surprised for some pretty decent sacks to get caught out of the bushes in Champs or TTT. Will be an interesting spring with very, very little hydrilla and no pad stems. There is a good amount of coon tail shallow, but my experience is that generally the fish don't set up in it prespawn, I've caught some post spawners there but not pre. Had to snap this shot, you know how you have a fish that aaalllmost touches 14", check out this guys tail, he really wants a ride to a weigh in this year.