Thread: TENKILLER TOURNAMENT 5-7-16

Congrats to Doug and Brian and others....always fun to fish a tournament but we had a rough day, just couldn't find bigger fish....you guys are right there are always people on this board and on the water willing to help others out, thats what makes this group special.....appreciate you all and have a great week

Andy

Doug and I had a blast catching fish now it didn't really start getting good for us until around 11:00. Even pre-fishing on Thursday was lots of small fish only 2 tournament fish. On Thursday Doug taught me something, for the last few years he had always told how many crappie they caught fishing from the bank on roadrunners. Well about half way through the day Doug picked up a roadrunner and started throwing it he caught 5 in a row, 5 cast, 5 fish. So I tie one on and I didn't catch one for an hour and Doug is jerking his arms off so I stopped and watched him just to see and learn from him. I finally figured it out I had been fishing it wrong. When you cast and drag you hold your rod tip at a 45 degree angle so you can drag the jig over the limbs real slow, but when you throw a roadrunner you count down to 8,10,12,etc then real it only fast enough to turn the blade keeping your rod down so the bait will touch the limbs. In that clear water those fish will come out of the pile and nail it. Doug and I also figured out that in the predicted forecast for 25 mph winds we could fish the roadrunner when we couldn't cast and drag. Now we only found 2 banks with tournament fish on them but both were 4-5ft visibility with brush or trees in 15-20ft where the wood came up to 10-12ft under the water.

Now I would like to thank all of our sponsors for this tournament and all the guys who fish it, we have a great group of guys willing to help in any way possible. We all share the same passion of crappie fishing. I am truly blessed to have met some of my now closest friends because of crappie.com and this tournament trail. My last thank you goes to a man that had helped me when I started guiding 16 years ago. He also was one of our first and biggest sponsors of our trail. Larry Russel at Crappie Pro. God rest his soul. Love you Larry.

Now I have bunch of pictures from the weigh in I will get them posted ASAP! EB

Great work Brian and Doug! It was a very tough day for us. We had only three keepers by the end of fishing time. We decided to just let them go, and go grab a bite to eat at Skeeter's Pizza in Keys (great Pizza!). Looking forward to Gibson next!

This is how we were able to catch our fish. As Brian mentioned we were casting and dragging piles. I had about 50 different piles we were targeting. More like a run and gun. Make about 5 cast apiece and then move on unless we caught fish there. We had been catching bigger fish until about a week before the tournament then it was like the short fish took over. Made a decision the day before fishing that we were going to my go to bait and fish it casting and dragging. Then we would move in once we thought we had all active fish caught and finesse with a smaller bait deep into the piles. We only stayed on a pile no more than 10 minutes. Well casting was the ticket. Caught very few from deep within the piles.

As Brian mentioned Doug had told him how they caught fish back in the day with roadrunners. Well I am surprised Brian didn't pick up on my technique that I had shown him about 4 years ago. We too used roadrunners for cast and drag over and in the piles. We were fishing piles in 10-25 FOW with the tops coming as high as 5' from the surface. Make a cast let it fall for about a 4-6 count then start reeling back slowly. You would feel your line start to get tight and that meant you were getting ready to come over a limb. Once we would come over the limb we would stop reeling and let it fall for about a 2 count and they were hitting it then most of the time. We were also catching them just over the top of the deeper and shorter piles. We fished pretty much mid-lake area not going any further up the lake than Chicken Creek. Our biggest fish (1.88 lbs) came on a pile in 15 FOW about 8' deep.

Just a little something to think about when fishing a clear lake, don't be afraid of fishing a big bait. I showed Brian 4 years ago the bait I use on TK and he kind of laughed at me. I think it was more like that baits to big for clear water you don't use those except for muddy water. Well here are the pictures of our baits we used. Notice roadrunners are 3.5" baits which is what most all the fish came from. Smaller baits were the finesse choice. I guess we are all still learning some on how everyone fishes and what works best. The pumpkin/chartreuse triple ripple is my go to bait during the spring I use it on TK, Broken Bow, Eufalua.

Don't know what I'm going to do once I run out of my wasshoppers that Mr. Russell made. I use them for the winter bite on TK.