Kentucky Lake Trip

The trip was exhausting. The fishing was tough. The bucks were up making beds and feeding.  The water temps were up to the low seventies. By Thursday some of the females were moving into the mustard flowers and buck brush. Heavy rain and cold on the morning of the first day of the tournament put temps down to sixty five degrees.  Everybody knows what that did to the fish.  Out of the four teams that went down to Kentucky together caught five fish the first day.  One team had four of them.  They caught 3 the next day and ended up in 47^th out of 219 boats. Not bad for a first time Classic tournament. 

 The size of the lakes was daunting at best. The pressure on those lakes is very high. There were 3 tournaments going on that week. I would guess a minimum of 500 boats were fishing on any given day. The bass could grab a bait and spit it before you could even think about setting the hook.  The color selection had to be exact, or very close.  The presentation was not much different. I am amazed at how many different considerations can make a difference in how well you can prefish. The size of the lakes was the starting point. Some of the considerations that go into just sizing up where to fish are endless. I had talked to a friend of mine from Alabama. He told me that flipping into the buck brush and mustard flowers would probably be what would be, what was happening.  Well; that was happening by Thursday. Saturday’s rain and cold brought the temp down by 7 degrees. I can’t express enough how important it is to convince your partner before you start fishing that the fish had to change because of the water temp change. When you want to try something different and all you here is grumbling it is very tough. Give the man some credit; he had made up his mind what we should do. The fact that you can commit to a pattern on a new lake takes some doing. The weather not his ability caused the problem.

Jigs and plastics were working, when you could get one to bite. The water is very dirty and you were fishing just cover. A very happen stance approach. There was lots of shad around and that added to the lack of bites. One team from Maine spent two weeks prefishing and didn’t do well either.  The difference in fishing is the interesting that you can throw anything you want and catch an occasional fish, but to do well you really had to be specific, on color and presentation.  I had a point that I had found some fish on early in the week. I actually caught an eight pound catfish. I took the time on the first day of the tournament to run to that point. I couldn’t get a bite. The fish were moving quite a bit.

Hindsight; The plan, if I ever qualify again. I would try to find fish in several different depths. Find the places that they will stack up at different temperature changes. How they are moving up, at what temperatures.   

The winners made the trip to Tennessee. They had to gas up going in both directions. The distance they traveled kept the water temps up enough to keep the fish on the beds.  The fish were not bigger down there; it was just easier to catch them.  The moon phase was bad on top of the cold.  The USA Bassin Classic winners got a Z8 and $10,000. They also got $5,000 for tournament rewards from Nitro. 

The four teams that traveled together to Kentucky had its ups and downs. The up side was the info that everybody shared, nobody kept secrets. One team broke a leaf spring on the way down. I had run into this situation before. It was very easy to explain on the walkie talkie how he could get the boat going enough to get to a garage. I called AAA and they were very helpful about finding a parts store that carried the parts they needed. They ended up being only 3 hours behind us.  When a leaf spring breaks, you have to jack up the boat enough to put something; Larry used his anchor, to keep the fender off the tire. Strap or duck tape it in place. Go slow! The down side is that the more people, the more time it takes just to get to the landing. You are always helping each other.  I personally need quite time to reflect on what has happened for that day. I need to put what I have learned into perspective. The fact that the fish caught were few and far between kept us from determining at what stage of the spawn the fish were in. I caught one five pounder on Tuesday that had a bloody tail. That should tell you that they were going to be on the beds, by Saturday. She was one of the usual exceptions to the rule.  I certainly didn’t put it all together. From the fish on the point to fish near shore should have led me to fish in the 10’ to 5’ region. The medium depth area that I experimented with was between 3’ and 5’.  I couldn’t prove it to myself or my partner that we should stay away from the shore. Suspending fish on a big flat are hard to locate. I tried a spinnerbait for hours. I didn’t get a single bite on a spinnerbait. 

I would really like the opportunity to try it again. I enjoyed trying to figure it out. I will spend more time trying to figure out depth before I try getting the right presentation. The colors are specific to the point that shad is one color and sunfish is the other. I stood on a shore while my friends went into a marina tackle store. I was watching the sunfish dart in and out of the buck brush. The first appearance was just black. You still had to add some color to it.

I hope this will help anybody going to another big lake.

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Peter Kjenstad