riverhawkluke
06-11-2015, 09:55 PM
Last saturday (June 6th) I fished the student angler federation high school state tournament on Lake Chickamauga. This was our first tournament as a club which I founded this year (Brentwood High School). All through practice we stayed out deep having good luck finding many keepers, but no really big fish. Caught several between 4-5lbs in practice. Tournament day: headed out deep, we had several spots in mind, but we were boat 71 out of 132, so we went to the first available spot. On my partners 2nd cast he hooked into a good 4-5lber and it hopped off by the boat, we hoped it wouldn't come back to haunt us. I pulled 2 smaller keepers out and then we left. Next we moved to a ledge near the nuclear towers and caught 3 decent keepers, and several smaller ones that wouldn't cull. Our next run was to look for big bites, so we ran to an unusual spot that we had found a large school on in practice. That spot was near the dam, the fish were in 34 FOW and it dropped down to 40. There were TONS of fish in that school, but because there was no current the bites were few. However, on my first cast I had a huge bite, when I went to set the hook the fish dropped the jig and i did not connect, however he picked it up again on that fall and I barely stuck him as my rod was already back. To go with a bad hookset he did what any smart bass would do, ran straight up and jumped and spit the jig...a solid 5lber. Grinded it out at that spot and managed a few but only one that culled, so we ran back to the previous spot. There I landed a 4.5lb bass and my partner culled another, he also had a large bite and set the hook and the line snapped. After that we opted to go where we started (with about 30min left to fish) however there were two boats already there and we did not want to crowd so we left to a spot where we had caught fish in recent years but had not seen any when we scanned in practice. Long story short we did not catch any in the closing minutes so we headed back with a respectful bag that easily could have been bigger. weighed in at 11-12, but they gave us a dead fish penalty that pushed us back to 11-04 and we finished in 22nd place. To cap it off our "dead fish" swam off perfectly fine when put back in the release tub...that smart fish got us back lol! Anyway it was fun tournament, disappointed that we couldn't land a few pivotal fish, but hey 22nd out of 132 is not too shabby for our first tournament as a club! at least we are on the radar! Baits for the week were a Hoppy's 3/4 Shellcracker jig in pumpkin candy or pumpkin with a rage craw trailer, and a drop shotted roboworm in morning dawn.