First 2011 Tournament

Fishing the Colorado Bass Federation Nation State Team Qualifying Tournament at Truman Lake, MO.

     I fished my first 2011 tournament last week and had satisfactory results; 3^rd overall and within a few fish of winning.  I only had a limit on one day, and the four fish missing on the other two days were all the difference between 3^rd and 1^st.

     Tournament was the Colorado Bass Federation Nation (CBFN) State Team Qualifying Tournament (STQT) held on Truman Lake, MO.  The CBFN has one tournament per year to decide who will make the State Team to represent Colorado at the next divisional tournament.  The top state angler at the divisional will move up to the National Tournament to compete against the rest of the Western Division State Champions for a Federation Angler spot at the Bassmasters Classic.

     Most years the STQT is held at a location that is not frequented by anglers in the Colorado Bass Clubs.  In the recent past we have travelled to Lake Havasu, AZ, Lake Amistad, TX and Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees, OK.  This year it was held at Truman Lake, MO and the first two days, the 11-12^th, are official practice days.  The tournament is a three day event held on the 13-15^th.  Contemporary tournament rules are followed.  The top 6 anglers at the STQT qualify to fish as boaters at the Western Divisional and those placing 7-12 qualify as non-boaters.

     During the first practice day, Monday, my travel partner and I focused on the traditionally warmer arm of the massive flood control reservoir, the Tebo arm.  We quickly developed a shallow crank bait pattern fishing from the mouth to the secondary points of the larger coves.  There were a few spinner bait fish to be caught in the backs, if there were shad present, but they were generally smaller fish.

     The second practice day, Tuesday, we stayed closer to the tournament launch area at Bucksaw Marina in the Grand River arm.  The crank bait bite still held and we also found bass flipping soft plastics and with spinner baits. Also, the fish seemed to be staying near the mouth of coves and cuts off of the main lake.  We determined that for most of the lake the spawn had not started in earnest and that our patterns were based on pre-spawn fish.  These fish wanted to move up shallow, but the inconsistent weather patterns and the front that hit the second day of the tournament kept fish from moving shallow in large numbers.



Day one was 3 bass for 7.55 lb.



     For the start of day one, Wednesday, I determined that I would try a main lake cut, or very small cove, in the Grand arm.  I was the last boat out that morning and when I got to the spot there was already a boat there.  I fished around the mouth a little while the other boat was back in the cove, but left after about 15 minutes.  I moved to another cut, one I had not fished in practice but had the same features as the first one, and started fishing. 

     Using the crawdad crank bait, I quickly caught three good keepers on one side of the cove that still had some shaded bank.  These fish were very shallow and I was putting the crank bait right on the bank and getting the bite right away.  Once the sun got higher this bite seemed to turn off and only a few short fish were caught after that.  After a few hours I moved and started hitting other areas that looked similar, worked my way towards the Tebo arm, and by afternoon back to the starting cove, but only caught short fish the rest of the day.  For day one I weighed 3 bass for 7.55 lb, two bass short of the limit.

     Day two I went straight to the same cove I had caught the three keepers in on the first day.  The conditions had changed, it was cooler and the wind started up early, keeping at least a ripple on the water most of the time.  I started on one side of the cove with the crank bait and work all the way to the back and most of the way up the other side without a bite. 

     Coming up to a tree that stood about 5 feet off the rocky bank I put down the crank bait and picked up a 5/16 Eakins jig with a Chigger Craw trailer and tossed it next to the tree.  Right away a fish was on.  Keeper No. 1.  While I tried the crank bait off and on at times that day, the jig became my new primary lure.  The cove had a lot of standing timber, much of it close to the bank and below the muddy water’s surface.  So I began pitching the jig to the shore line and working it back slowly, keeping contact with the bottom.  I got three bites that morning before working away from the cove and down a main lake point nearby.   

     My fishing partner that day also began picking up fish on a Yum Dinger stick bait, but while he had more short fish than I did, my fish had better weight, and so I stuck with the jig.  He ended up with 4 keepers that day on the stick bait.  On the main lake point I caught several shorts and another keeper on the jig.  We moved back to the starting cove and there I picked up a fifth keeper, but it was the smallest, just over the 15 inch minimum.  We fished the cove very thoroughly before moving to a nearby cut that was similar.  There we had nothing for a long time, but a short came off of a sloping point, so we moved out and tried fishing deeper for a while. 

     To try something different, I tossed a Falcon Tackle Chatterbug and got a short fish.  Then, to get deeper, I cast out the Chatterbug and let it fall to the bottom.  To be sure it was down I waited a long time, then started reeling.  There was a fish on right away.  The Chatterbug might as well have been a jig as the fish picked it up off the bottom before I had even moved it.  That fished culled my smallest and gave me a limit on day 2 of 14.04 lb.



The smallest 2.0 lb bass was culled for the 2.7 lb.  Total Day 2 weight was 14.04 at the scales.



     Day 3 started out like day 2.  Using the jig, and then the crank bait, I fished the primary cove without results for a long time.  The air temperature had changed from the mid 60’s on days 1 and 2, to low 50’s.  The cove that on days 1 and 2 had gone from 65 in the morning to 73 in the afternoon, on day 3, never warmed over the 60-degree mark.  It had rained all night, and was still raining intermittently.  There were several small rivulets of water running off of the hills and into the cove, and the sun only showed itself for about half an hour that morning.  In fact, after the sun came out briefly and then retreated, the air temperature actually went down for the rest of the day.  During that brief sunshine half-hour, though, I did manage to get three keeper bass on the jig/Chigger Craw lure.  However, for the rest of the day I only caught a few short bass.  The day 3 total was 3 bass for 7.02 lb, short another two bass.

     This tournament was an exercise in changing conditions.  During practice, on Monday and Tuesday, the sun shone, the air and water temps rose, and the bass were beginning to move into the coves.  But the nights were still very cool.  On Wednesday, the crawdad crank bait continued to work for those few bass that were committed to be shallow, and on Thursday the jig/craw combo picked up the less active bass who were not quite so shallow but really wanted to be, and so they held very near the banks and on timber.  Thursday night changed the game.  A massive storm front, the same one that spawned tornados in Oklahoma and Wisconsin, caused plummeting water temps at the same time as it caused this gigantic reservoir’s water level to rise about a foot between Thursday night and the end of the tournament Friday afternoon.  The bite’s were infrequent, with far fewer short bass, and this was reflected in the majority of the final day’s weights.

     So congratulations to the new Colorado Bass Federation Nation State Team.  The ones who did best were able to either find fish that we committed to staying put, no matter what the changing conditions were, or were the ones who adjusted their fishing style to match the changing conditions.

The crawdad Wiggle Wart on a Abu Garcia Revo Premier and Abu Garcia Verdict Rod 7'0 Medium with 10# Trilene 100% Professional Grade Fluorocarbon line.
The Eakin's Jig with 3" Chigger Craw on an Abu Garcia Revo STX and Fenwick HMX 7'0 Heavy Rod and 15# Trilene 100% Professional Grade Fluorocarbon line.