First 2007 Tournament

....I don't agree....if it were just a matter of "luck" you could've blind
casted to the middle of the river and caught them.....you were following a
good hunch covering secondary points and it paid off.....Bravo Zulu said
Huck
"Ronnie" wrote in message
oups.com...
Flint River Bass Club Tournament - January 7, 2007 - Jackson Lake


Good start to the new year. Wish I was a good fisherman, not just a
luck fisherman,
and could keep it up and be consistent!

My partner done so good with the net I might marry him!

Ronnie

http://fishing.about.com

Thanks to all of you for the kind comments but I don't think I will
ever be what I consider a
really good bass fisherman rather than a lucky one. I am just not
consistent enough.
We fished Jackson one month ago and I fished many of the same places
and caught
two keepers. We had many limits caught that day on the pattern I was
fishing.

A couple of examples. We have a guy named Bobby in our club. He is
consistent,
won 7 of 11 tournaments he fished two years ago and I don't remember
him every
zeroing. He almost always has a limit. He came in third with a limit
weighing about
9 pounds in both the last two tournaments I won one and placed 8th in
the other.

Van Kennedy, Steve's dad, is probably the best bass fisherman in
Georgia. He has
been club fishing longer than me - over 35 years. He has made the
Classic twice
through the Federation, made the state team something like 13 times and
placed in
the money about 30 of the 35 Top Six tournaments he has fished. I have
fished 27
Top Six tournaments, made the team 3 times and placed in the money 9.
I will
never be on Van's level. I have talked with him a lot and he is
willing to share tips
and tactics with me but I just can't replicate what he does. I gave
up on trying that.

I think really good fishermen have some sixth sense or special talent I
don't have.
Anyone can learn to play baseball but only about 1 in a million will be
a Chipper
Jones. Anyone can learn to play a piano but very few will ever be
concert pianists
no matter how much they practice. Why is that? I think bass fishing
is the same.
Sometimes I seem to have a flash of insight - had it Sunday morning -
but it only hits
maybe 3 or 4 times a year. It often fails me the second day of a two
day tournament
- like the last MTC and last fall at the NWC. I think the really good
bass fishermen
have this insight a lot more.

Its not like I don't get to fish a lot and I get to fish with some
of the best bass
fishermen in Georgia working on magazine articles. Seems I should learn
more.
Example - last April I fished with a local tournament angler for a
March article on
Oconee. I had a club tournament the next Sunday there and he gave me
three plugs
to use and told me some places to use them. At the last minute he
decided to fish a
pot tournament that day and I saw him - he told me to keep fishing
those spots
although he was fishing them too. I had three bass weighing 8 pounds
that day. He
had five weighing 14 pounds to win his pot tournament..

Maybe I just don't have the confidence it takes.

Don't get me wrong - I love fishing and enjoy trips even when I
don't catch fish.
Maybe I am taking the whole thing too seriously. But it is
frustrating. I want to win
every tournament I fish!

Ronnie

http://fishing.about.com

"Joe Haubenreich" wrote in
message news:L72dnRv_7Y0-

Having satisfied ourselves that fish once again should fear us, and also
finally breaking off our lures about that time, we, too, decided to head
out.

I've done that on the way home from a tournament where I just stunk.
Stopped by my favorite canal bank and stuck a fish or two just to prove I
could.


--
Bob La Londe
Fishing Arizona & The Colorado River
Fishing Forums & Contests
http://www.YumaBassMan.com



--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Looking into that army of needy eyes, as I dragged my bedraggled body out of
there in search of some sleep, would have probably destroyed me on the spot.
I have become a huge soft-hearted wuss!

Bob
.................................................. .................................................. .....................................

"Joe Haubenreich" wrote in
message ...
"Bob La Londe" wrote in message
...
"Ronnie" wrote in message

Glad to hear it. My first of 07 wasn't so sterling. If you are looking
for
an adventure in fishing with huge bags and lots of exciting catches stop
reading now.

snip
------------------------------------------

Boy, you were right, Bob. If I wanted a story with fish in it, I should
have
kept on clicking.

Your story has a familiar ring to it, though. I've blanked in tournaments
more times than I care to remember. In fact, I probably forget them on
purpose.

I do remember one. It was a night tournament near Marion, Arkansas. Bear
Creek Lake. Little fruit jar tournament. Bubba and I didn't get a single
tap
on our lures from 8 PM to 7 AM. I have trouble sleeping the night before a
tournament, so when we left the ramp at 8 AM, I hadn't really slept for
about 48 hours, and I was starting to feel a little tired.

However, as we drove back to Memphis (it was a two hour drive from Bear
Creek to our homes in east Shelby County), our distaste at not catching
fish
overwhelmed our need to catch some Z's. We decided to go fishing.

We drove through Memphis and down into Mississippi, ending up at Arkabutla
dam. Folks were flocking to the banks, and as we watched, some of them
were
hooking and keeping large, white fish. From our vantage point in the
parking
lot above the spillway, we could see they were buffalo drum, which were
running upstream in their spring spawning migration. The dam had them
stacked up thick in the race, where white water roared out from the
turbines
and tumbled down a boulder-lined channel to the old river bed below.

Now, Charles Summers is something of a local legend in middle Tennessee
when it comes to drum fishing, and he can affirm that drum like Rat'L
Traps.
Bubba and I tied a couple of chrome/blue back ones on our rods, locked up
the truck, and clambered down the rocks to the river. Our first casts
revealed to us that the rushing, foamy water was only a foot or two deep.
Furthermore, the bottom was festooned with the accumulation of years of
meat
fishermen's broken-off lines, which we snagged and had to pull off
frequently.

Some of those Mississippi fishermen use cheap, dime store monofilament and
old spark plugs as weights. They tie a drop-shot rig and the sparkplug
weight at the end of their line catches in a rock crevice. Then, they wait
until a drum snatches their bait that's dangling a few feet up the line in
the current. When that happens, the angler rears back, sets the hook,
snaps
the line (below the hook, they hope) and reels in the fish. Consequently,
there's a lot of junk in the water. Almost no one throws crankbaits, for
obvious reasons.

But, there we were, and every other cast of our Rat'L Trap would be
rewarded
with a drum, so we were in hawg heaven, reaffirming ourselves as expert
fishermen (remember, our egos had taken a beating the previous night), and
getting our lines stretched with strong fish in swift current. The average
size of the drum we were catching was three pounds.

After releasing a half dozen of them, we grew aware that the pitiful gaze
of
this pathetic young mother of two children locked on us every time we
unhooked a fish. Her boy, about six years old, had a little Snoopy rod and
reel, with which he was flinging a little bobber and hook as far as he
could
out into the river -- about ten feet, maximum. The current immediately
swept
it back to the shore, so he wasn't having much luck in the four-inch deep
water that he was able to reach. The mother's empty 5-gallon bucket was
beside her, and when Bubba waved a 5-pound drum in its general direction
and
contorted his face into an expression that was intended to mean, "would
you
like this nice, fat fish?" she quickly nodded and smiled thankfully. We
filled up the bucket in about ten minutes. I think she was happy. I don't
know if the boy was too thrilled, because as soon as the bucket was full,
his fishing time was up. The mom grabbed kids, rod, and bucket and, with a
"gracias," climbed up the bank and out of sight.

Our act of kindness (Was it? We were just catching fish, and releasing
them
to her bucket seemed better than releasing them back into the river, where
the dam denied their breeding imperative) had attracted attention. No
sooner
had the first little mother cleared out when another took her place. She,
like the first woman, spoke no English. Neither Bubba nor I spoke Spanish
for the first, or Thai for the second, but Bubba had the "do you want
fish"
down pat by that time, and that she understood. She nodded. We fished. Ten
minutes later, I could read here expression. "I wish I'd brought five
buckets... I could be rich!" Having but one, when it could hold no more
fish
she picked it up without a word to us, jabbered at her kids, and lugging
the
forty pound bucket of drum, they made their exit, too.

Having satisfied ourselves that fish once again should fear us, and also
finally breaking off our lures about that time, we, too, decided to head
out. Looking up, we saw that our part of the bank had become crowded in
the
half hour since we arrived. Our path took us up past a line of women, kids
in tow, buckets in hand, glaring accusingly at us as we stumbled back up
the
rip-rap to our truck.

Joe

We figured we had already done our good deed for the day by donating two
tubs o' drum to feed the hungry. I guess we could have risked more Rat'L
Traps to the cause, but by that time the ground was beginning to pitch and
spin -- that, or I really needed to get some shut-eye.

Joe
----------------------
"Bob Rickard" wrote in message
. net...
Looking into that army of needy eyes, as I dragged my bedraggled body out of
there in search of some sleep, would have probably destroyed me on the spot.
I have become a huge soft-hearted wuss!

Bob
.................................................. .................................................. .....................................

"Joe Haubenreich" wrote in
message ...
"Bob La Londe" wrote in message
...
"Ronnie" wrote in message

Glad to hear it. My first of 07 wasn't so sterling. If you are looking
for
an adventure in fishing with huge bags and lots of exciting catches stop
reading now.

snip
------------------------------------------

Boy, you were right, Bob. If I wanted a story with fish in it, I should
have
kept on clicking.

Your story has a familiar ring to it, though. I've blanked in tournaments
more times than I care to remember. In fact, I probably forget them on
purpose.

I do remember one. It was a night tournament near Marion, Arkansas. Bear
Creek Lake. Little fruit jar tournament. Bubba and I didn't get a single
tap
on our lures from 8 PM to 7 AM. I have trouble sleeping the night before a
tournament, so when we left the ramp at 8 AM, I hadn't really slept for
about 48 hours, and I was starting to feel a little tired.

However, as we drove back to Memphis (it was a two hour drive from Bear
Creek to our homes in east Shelby County), our distaste at not catching
fish
overwhelmed our need to catch some Z's. We decided to go fishing.

We drove through Memphis and down into Mississippi, ending up at Arkabutla
dam. Folks were flocking to the banks, and as we watched, some of them
were
hooking and keeping large, white fish. From our vantage point in the
parking
lot above the spillway, we could see they were buffalo drum, which were
running upstream in their spring spawning migration. The dam had them
stacked up thick in the race, where white water roared out from the
turbines
and tumbled down a boulder-lined channel to the old river bed below.

Now, Charles Summers is something of a local legend in middle Tennessee
when it comes to drum fishing, and he can affirm that drum like Rat'L
Traps.
Bubba and I tied a couple of chrome/blue back ones on our rods, locked up
the truck, and clambered down the rocks to the river. Our first casts
revealed to us that the rushing, foamy water was only a foot or two deep.
Furthermore, the bottom was festooned with the accumulation of years of
meat
fishermen's broken-off lines, which we snagged and had to pull off
frequently.

Some of those Mississippi fishermen use cheap, dime store monofilament and
old spark plugs as weights. They tie a drop-shot rig and the sparkplug
weight at the end of their line catches in a rock crevice. Then, they wait
until a drum snatches their bait that's dangling a few feet up the line in
the current. When that happens, the angler rears back, sets the hook,
snaps
the line (below the hook, they hope) and reels in the fish. Consequently,
there's a lot of junk in the water. Almost no one throws crankbaits, for
obvious reasons.

But, there we were, and every other cast of our Rat'L Trap would be
rewarded
with a drum, so we were in hawg heaven, reaffirming ourselves as expert
fishermen (remember, our egos had taken a beating the previous night), and
getting our lines stretched with strong fish in swift current. The average
size of the drum we were catching was three pounds.

After releasing a half dozen of them, we grew aware that the pitiful gaze
of
this pathetic young mother of two children locked on us every time we
unhooked a fish. Her boy, about six years old, had a little Snoopy rod and
reel, with which he was flinging a little bobber and hook as far as he
could
out into the river -- about ten feet, maximum. The current immediately
swept
it back to the shore, so he wasn't having much luck in the four-inch deep
water that he was able to reach. The mother's empty 5-gallon bucket was
beside her, and when Bubba waved a 5-pound drum in its general direction
and
contorted his face into an expression that was intended to mean, "would
you
like this nice, fat fish?" she quickly nodded and smiled thankfully. We
filled up the bucket in about ten minutes. I think she was happy. I don't
know if the boy was too thrilled, because as soon as the bucket was full,
his fishing time was up. The mom grabbed kids, rod, and bucket and, with a
"gracias," climbed up the bank and out of sight.

Our act of kindness (Was it? We were just catching fish, and releasing
them
to her bucket seemed better than releasing them back into the river, where
the dam denied their breeding imperative) had attracted attention. No
sooner
had the first little mother cleared out when another took her place. She,
like the first woman, spoke no English. Neither Bubba nor I spoke Spanish
for the first, or Thai for the second, but Bubba had the "do you want
fish"
down pat by that time, and that she understood. She nodded. We fished. Ten
minutes later, I could read here expression. "I wish I'd brought five
buckets... I could be rich!" Having but one, when it could hold no more
fish
she picked it up without a word to us, jabbered at her kids, and lugging
the
forty pound bucket of drum, they made their exit, too.

Having satisfied ourselves that fish once again should fear us, and also
finally breaking off our lures about that time, we, too, decided to head
out. Looking up, we saw that our part of the bank had become crowded in
the
half hour since we arrived. Our path took us up past a line of women, kids
in tow, buckets in hand, glaring accusingly at us as we stumbled back up
the
rip-rap to our truck.

Joe

"Joe Haubenreich" wrote in
message . ..
We figured we had already done our good deed for the day by donating two
tubs o' drum to feed the hungry. I guess we could have risked more Rat'L
Traps to the cause, but by that time the ground was beginning to pitch and
spin -- that, or I really needed to get some shut-eye.

Drinkin' again, huh Joe? ;-p
--
Steve @ OutdoorFrontiers
http://www.outdoorfrontiers.com
G & S Guide Service and Custom Rods
http://www.herefishyfishy.com

You're a fine bass fisherman Ron. Back in 2001 I won like 13 tournaments of
various sizes. Needless to say, I haven't come close to that season since,
probably never will. I've found that the fish usually win.

WW

"Ronnie" wrote in message
ups.com...
Thanks to all of you for the kind comments but I don't think I will
ever be what I consider a
really good bass fisherman rather than a lucky one. I am just not
consistent enough.
We fished Jackson one month ago and I fished many of the same places
and caught
two keepers. We had many limits caught that day on the pattern I was
fishing.

A couple of examples. We have a guy named Bobby in our club. He is
consistent,
won 7 of 11 tournaments he fished two years ago and I don't remember
him every
zeroing. He almost always has a limit. He came in third with a limit
weighing about
9 pounds in both the last two tournaments I won one and placed 8th in
the other.

Van Kennedy, Steve's dad, is probably the best bass fisherman in
Georgia. He has
been club fishing longer than me - over 35 years. He has made the
Classic twice
through the Federation, made the state team something like 13 times and
placed in
the money about 30 of the 35 Top Six tournaments he has fished. I have
fished 27
Top Six tournaments, made the team 3 times and placed in the money 9.
I will
never be on Van's level. I have talked with him a lot and he is
willing to share tips
and tactics with me but I just can't replicate what he does. I gave
up on trying that.

I think really good fishermen have some sixth sense or special talent I
don't have.
Anyone can learn to play baseball but only about 1 in a million will be
a Chipper
Jones. Anyone can learn to play a piano but very few will ever be
concert pianists
no matter how much they practice. Why is that? I think bass fishing
is the same.
Sometimes I seem to have a flash of insight - had it Sunday morning -
but it only hits
maybe 3 or 4 times a year. It often fails me the second day of a two
day tournament
- like the last MTC and last fall at the NWC. I think the really good
bass fishermen
have this insight a lot more.

Its not like I don't get to fish a lot and I get to fish with some
of the best bass
fishermen in Georgia working on magazine articles. Seems I should learn
more.
Example - last April I fished with a local tournament angler for a
March article on
Oconee. I had a club tournament the next Sunday there and he gave me
three plugs
to use and told me some places to use them. At the last minute he
decided to fish a
pot tournament that day and I saw him - he told me to keep fishing
those spots
although he was fishing them too. I had three bass weighing 8 pounds
that day. He
had five weighing 14 pounds to win his pot tournament..

Maybe I just don't have the confidence it takes.

Don't get me wrong - I love fishing and enjoy trips even when I
don't catch fish.
Maybe I am taking the whole thing too seriously. But it is
frustrating. I want to win
every tournament I fish!

Ronnie

http://fishing.about.com