Kurt's Tourney Blog
Archive Back to Back Events, Sabine River and Falcon Lake… I was hoping to keep some momentum going from the Sabine. Most folks think I spend a lot of time at Falcon because it’s in SW Texas and I live in Del Rio so it must be close… not! Almost 5 hours away, I get to spend very little time there… but I need to go more! It is hard to leave a great fishery like Lake Amistad though… Mar. 20 – Mar. 24 Falcon Lake – B.A.S.S. Elite Series #2 Zapata, Texas is flat out in the middle of nowhere and is light years behind the times… fun place to fish but not much to see. Everyone looking for big bass must visit SW Texas though. Try your luck either at my home lake of Amistad or this great fishery the Elite Series visited, Lake Falcon. Practice: Driving from the Sabine to Falcon I kind of figured all the fish behaviors were a little behind than normal for this time of year. SW Texas has had a chilly spring like much of the lower 48 states. I still thought some of the bigger fish would be found out deep while a portion of the bites to fill your limit would need to come shallow. I had some great deep areas on the lake from pro-scouting prior to the off-limits period (the Elite Series has a 30 day off-limits period prior to each event) and I was looking forward to catching some big’uns out there. After spending about 3/4 of my practice out there in the deep water looking for a winning wad of giants… I realized I was in trouble. Not enough bites and way to sporadic. I spend about ¾ of one practice day up shallow and I just didn’t find enough areas holding fish in that time frame. I did locate an area I felt confident to catch some fish that were relating to a shad spawn in the mornings then my plan would be to go flip up some the remaining of the day out of shallow trees. Event Day 1: 4 Bass / 8lbs 7oz – 90th place of 100 I rocket over to my shad spawn area in my Skeeter/Yamaha and find no bait moving… huh? How does it turn off in such a short time? Well After thinking about it… we had a cool night in the high 50’s prior to the first tourney day and I think that shut down the shad spawn bite that first morning… at least that is all I can come up with. So I plug around looking for a bite on the rocks around the ramp for about an hour and give in about 8:45 and run over to a flipping area. I see about 15 boats in a few little cuts where I had a couple bites… uh oh! I think many of them got caught early and I got 1 keeper fish out of there. I I cruise around and finally find a few more flipping fish up around the boat ramp and the end of the day. End up with a terrible start and have a lot of ground to make up on Day 2! Event Day 2: 5 Bass / 16lbs 14oz - 85th place of 100 I was so far behind it was a toss up to try some deep stuff where I caught a couple in practice or go with the flipping bite… one thing I wasn’t going to do was spend time trying that shad spawn bite. I decided to go flipping in some new areas and look for a congregation of giants… I caught a couple really quick and then as I worked my way back into the creek I see a fellow completitor whooping it up… LOL! He is a friend of mine and he caught a big one and was on the border line of casing a check, so I decide to seave and give him the area. He went on to catch a 25lb bag that day. I ended up locating some fish in some deeper trees on the main lake and those bass made up the bulk of my nearly 17lb bag that day. Not enough to make a big comeback but I did ’double up’ on my weight from the day before. Biggest lesson I learned in this event is to don’t ignore the fish! We all get stubborn at times thinking the bass should be in a certain pattern when they are in fact doing something else everywhere else. Don’t be hardheaded! Event Total - 9 Bass / 25lbs 5oz / 85th place of 100. Next blog… Bassmaster Southern Open Event #2, Lake Douglas April 4-6 | 
