April 18, FLW Day Two – Beaver Lake, AR
Dan writes:
I had no choice but to go sight-fishing today, and looking for new fish. I told my partner that I had one fish that I wanted to try first – the one that I had hooked and lost yesterday – and after that we’d just keep moving. Following take-off we raced down to my spot, and were the first boat into the cove. I eased by the fallen cedar tree on the trolling motor for a look. Yup, she’s there. I made a quick trip all around the pocket looking for new fish that might have come up since yesterday. Nothing new, but the fish that that other boat spent hours on yesterday is still there across the cove from my fish. I returned to the fallen tree and started fishing.
It took me four hours, alternating back and forth between these two beds, to catch both fish. I caught the “other” one first, the one the guy couldn’t catch yesterday, and it was a two and a half pound largemouth. Much bigger than it had looked down on the bed, perhaps because the bed was six feet deep. The other fish, the one I had lost yesterday, I made bite probably ten times throughout the morning, but each time it was too smart to grab the bait near the hook. I kept telling my partner that sooner or later he’d make a mistake, and finally he did. At 11:30 we put that fish in the livewell and went off to look for more.
Not far away, in another cove I had marked, some new fish had come up overnight. Big fish too, but very spooky, and they wouldn’t let you get near them. I finally settled on one bed back in trees, where we watched a four-pound’er chase a carp away, actually biting the carp on the tail as it did. I thought this looked promising. As I circled around and got into position in the trees, I saw that there were actually two fish, a three pound’er and the four pound’er. Both were very spooky, and over the course of the next two hours I saw the four pound’er only two more times. The longer I stayed though, the more accepting that three pound’er became of my presence.
I worked that fish relentlessly, but it was in a very difficult position. I couldn’t cast, pitch or flip. It was kind of a cross between all three to get the bait in there. I even tried throwing it in there by hand. I told my partner that even having zeroed yesterday, with five and a half pounds in the livewell right now this fish was worth $2,500 to me. This one would get me a check today.
I never did get it to bite. When I finally gave up on it, we had about fifteen minutes of fishing time left and a half hour run back to the weigh-in. I made one stop, looked for fish in the back of a cove, but didn’t find any. I made another stop, and this time there was a fish, on a bright new bed right up there on the bank. With about five minutes remaining I started pitching to it. On the fourth or fifth pitch, BANG, he nailed it, and I stuck him. In fact I hung him right out of the water – my line was over a limb and the fish was dangling in mid-air. We crashed the boat through the trees to get the net under him, and soon had him safely in the boat. My partner measured it while I cut my line out of the trees and then extricated the boat. He said it was close, but he thought the fish touched the line at fifteen inches. I said just throw him in the livewell, and we’ll measure him again when we get back. We had a twenty minute run and twenty one minutes to do it in!
Back at the weigh-in, which we DID make in time, I brought three fish up to the holding tanks. There, where they give you a last chance to measure your fish before presenting them to the weigh-master, that third fish did not measure up. I weighed-in just the two, for right around five and a half pounds. That was my total weight for the tournament.