Tournament Day With The Great Wayne Fitzpatrick

Backs of coves and cove pockets at the 9-10mm, fishing bedding bass in spawning pockets.

After a weeks of searching and hunting for bedding bass, the search payed off with a tournament win today in the Anglers Choice tournament. Wayne and I had about 21 bass from 3-8 pounders marked on our graph with very detailed hand written notes so that we could go directly to the fish that we hoped to catch. While we won the tournament with 20.09 pounds, the fish did not come easy today. With the water having risen this week, many of the really good first spawner bass were deeper in about 6 feet or so of water and thus very hard to see. If there was any shade at all and if the fish would swim off into the shade, it was very difficult to see them to effectively site fish. Our first keeper came about 7:30, we had a limit just before noon, with a low 3 pounder that we needed to cull. After fishing many of our marked bass, we started to search for new fish, knowing that to compete for the win, we needed at least another 4 or 5 pounder, we found that fish about 2:00PM, and with the spectacular site fishing of Wayne Fitzpatrick that fish was in the live well by 2:10. There are many keeper bass on some of the shallower beds, the bigger ones seem to be a bit deeper. Many fisherman in the tournament today reported catching quality pre-spawn fish, around spawning areas in about 10-12 feet of water.