I guess if you aren't winning you need to be learning. Sometimes that's about how the fish act, sometimes its more self revealing. My most recent article, Rayovac Rayburn Lessons learned, Fishing for Fun vs Fishing To Win, is a bit of an introspective look at the mistakes I made prior to and at the Rayovac Tounament a few weeks ago. If you enjoy it please like it on Facebook and share with friends. 

I wrote not long ago something to the effect that I'm tired of learning lessons fishing and ready to put old lessons to use in winning. Unfortunately I demonstrated to myself at the Rayovac tournament that I still have lessons to learn. I wish I could say my poor performance was due to losing almost 3 hours day two to equipment issues, or that catching some solid post spawners in practice on a jerk bait threw me for a loop, which it did, but mostly I feel like I was mentally and physically lazy. To give you the lay of the land the lake was over 5 feet high so there was an abundance of cover in the water. If you broke through the willows and buck brush, then the thorn and sticker bushes, you could get to the hard cover, big pine trees and sweet gum trees and not only was the fishing easier, it was incredibly fun. I'm talking 40, 50, 60 bite a day fun. And I got caught up in that, even though every fish, not most fish, every fish was 2 3/4 and under. I knew the better fish were a little deeper, the first day of practice I pulled a fish between 8-12 lbs to the top off the first piece of hard cover, in this case a sweet gum tree, behind the buck brush and thorn bushes...actually I'm not sure what to call them, it was like a bail of organic barb wire laying there, really hard to get through, would literally stop a 112 MinnKota trolling motor. That was the only solid bite that day, the rest, and I looked at a lot of them, were those pound and a half and two pound fish. The third day I accidentally caught a fish that was between 5 and 6, guess where, on the first hard cover, again a sweet gum tree behind the nasty stuff. So what did I do for all the days of practice and the tournament, I fished the easy stuff where there were lots of bites...guess what I caught..lots of ound and a half and two pound fish. Now guess where all the top ten stringers were caught... 

My most recent article is up on Inside Line Magazine. It is a piece with Jay Yelas "Analyzing Top Level Tournament Strategies". Click on the title above as a link or go to "Articles" on my landing page. 

I know a lot of you guys are coming to Rayburn this week for the BC owners tournament. I spent 3 days down there over the weekend and my observations are as follows. If you haven't been paying attention the Rayburn area has gotten a wee bit of rain over the last few weeks. The lake continues to rise, albeit now at a slower rate, and is at 169.78, or just over 5 feet high. When I went across the dam yesterday afternoon they were steady sending water downstream but with more rain in the forecast I don's see it dropping too quickly anytime soon. The spillway is at just over 172 and I would be surprised if we saw water over it, but the lake is really, really high, as high as I remember in over 10 years. With all the fresh water it's pretty milky all over, I went up the Ayish Friday and spent Saturday and Sunday more main lake-ish. There are fish in all phases of the spawn, it's obvious from some of the fish I caught that some spawned on the new moon in March but my sense is the bulk of the fish have not. The water temp ranged 59-62 degrees, however from what I saw don't think you are coming down to sight fish. Three problems, one rising water makes a nest from a week ago almost 2 feet deeper, add mostly stained water and the fact that anywhere that is it 2-5 feet deep is currently shaded by pine trees and picnic tables...well let's just say pretty hard to see down much. Interestingly although I caught some post spawn fish, including one over 8, I did not see a single pod of fry anywhere. I was able to catch some serious numbers of fish, one day probably more than 50, but I'm just not seeing anything large. That said the lake should be shaping up for a really fun week of fishing, the water rise slowing, full moon Sunday, I'll be surprised if the weights are super high and really think 40-42 pounds could win, maybe even less. It only took 16 to win the high school tournament this past weekend and granted most of them haven't fully developed as fisherman, but there were a few really solid young sticks and over 400 boats of them so the conditions aren't lending themselves to big stringers.  I think the numbers caught are going to be crazy good and fun will be had by all that come down. If you have questions about the lake or a specific area let me know at kensmithfishing@outlook.com. Good luck and be safe.