Kurt's Tourney Blog
Archive After a few weeks in Texas it was great to get back out on the tournament road again. Most think us Pro-Anglers get to sit around the house while we aren’t fishing events but that is so far from the truth! During the 4 weeks I had ‘off’; I directed a 5 day youth fishing camp, flew to NY and pre-practiced 4 days for the St. Lawrence Elite Event coming in Aug, worked 4 days in Las Vegas for ‘Toray’ fishing line at ICAST and then got home just in time to do a few guide trips and get some office work done before departing for this last 4 tourney swing trip of the yea. Shewww… I seem to be busy all the time… and I love it! These northern events are my favorite of the year and I am pumped! Aug. 1 – Aug. 3 Lake Oneida - B.A.S.S. Northern Open Event #2 
This is one of my favorite lakes in NY… but geez NY has a lot of awesome places to fish. At Lake Oneida you can target smallmouth or largemouth. I typically try to find the good smallies and then poke around for a largemouth bite or 2. The first practice day I stayed shallow to target smallmouth and didn’t find much cooperation. I typically can find a good population of fish roaming around the grass lines in 8-12 feet of water but after another day of working mid-depth it was obvious to me I would need to look deeper. On the third day of practice I began looking out deeper and stated catching fish in 18-20 feet of water. I was using a drop shot presentation primarily and dragging tubes periodically. After another day I found I could catch fish all the way out at 26 feet which is some of the deepest water I had ever targeted on Lake Oneida. In between looking for more deep areas we had one afternoon where schoolers began showing themselves roaming in several flats. I could target these schooling fish with topwaters, swimbaits and dropshots as well. I felt confident I could catch some decent weight in the event and was looking forward to the start of the event. Event Day 1: 5 Bass / 13bs 12oz – 41st place of 162 
I started off fishing the morning on the deep rocky areas I found in practice and managed to catch 8-10 fish in the first few hours to get off to a quick start. My best 5 went 12+ lbs. I then hit a few other deep drop shot areas with some success but not much culling activity so I decided to move to some of the schooling areas. I managed to cull a few times in the afternoon and had a decent limit with no kickers. I felt I was in good position going into Day 2 although the field caught a little better average weight than I had expected. To get a good check I knew I had to adjust a bit quicker on Day 2.Event Day 2: 5 Bass / 15lbs 9oz – 20th place of 162 I quickly got off to a great start on Day 2. I went to the deep fish with a drop shot and put about 13.5lbs in the live well in the first 2 hours. Getting a few better fish that morning really helped put me at ease. I decided to go straight to the best schooling area I had from practice and culled a few 2-lbers with 3-lbers and I was on my way! I thought I would need about 16 lbs to make the 12 cut and pushed on those schooling areas hard the rest of the day trying to upgrade but I had what I weighed in with by 1pm. Event Total - 10 Bass / 29lbs 5oz / 20th place of 162 If I could have changed anything I would have liked to spend an hour or two fishing for largemouth that afternoon of day 2, but then again, I really never got on any good largemouth during the entire week. Who knows… that’s just part of the game. 
Whelp, I got my Northern swing started on a good note… let’s keep the momentum going! Next blog… Bassmaster Elite Series Event #7, St. Lawrence River, Waddington, NY Aug. 8-11 | 
