Derek’s Fishing Adventures: It’s Great to be Back on the Water

As you all know, I have not had a boat since it got totaled back in December.  I got a new Phoenix at the end of August.

I’ve captained for the MISD fishing team in a few tournaments since I got the new boat, one on Lake Sommerville in October and the other on Sam Rayburn in November.  This was the first one I’ve fished in a long time.  It’s great to be back!

It’s Saturday morning and it’s still dark.  The air is a crisp cool 47 degrees on Lake Conroe.  I’m going to meet Mason at Stow-A-Way Marina.  We are fishing the 11th Annual Big Bass Bounty Tournament benefiting Toys for Tots hosted by the Bass Club and Stow-A-Way Marina. When I saw Mason he said, “It’s been a while since we’ve gotten to fish together and it feels good to be back”.

Mason went to the meeting to go over the rules while I sat in the boat and pulled up the power poles and got everything ready to go.  Mason sprinted to the boat right after the meeting and we took off.  It was a shotgun start and we wanted to be the first ones out on the water.

We ran to the first spot and I caught the first fish.  We caught 20 fish on deep diving crank baits on this spot.  We had our limit in less than 30 minutes and culled 3 times.  It was a true honey hole.  They stopped biting after an hour, so it was time to move on.

We ran to the next spot.  We caught 3 on a Chatterbait.  None of them were bigger that the ones in the live well.

Next, we made a long run where we were deep cranking and caught a 3-3/4 pound and culled a fish.  Then I threw an Alabama rig on top of a brush pile and caught a 4-1/2 pounder and culled another fish.

Ran to the next spot.  We sat there for 30 minutes trying to get a bite and didn’t catch a thing.

Next spot ran and caught 7-8 more fish, culling our smallest fish.

After that we ran to another deep crankin hole.  We stayed 30 minutes.  Didn’t catch anything off that one.

We went back to where we started and caught one more and culled the smallest fish and drove to the weigh-in.  We thought we had done pretty good, but didn’t think we would have enough to win first place, knowing that it would take at least 20 pounds to win. We were right, the first place team had a 20.71 pound bag. Mason and I got second place with 5 fish and the total weight was 18.51 pounds. It was a great way to end the day.  THROW IT OUT, POP IT IN, FISH ON!!!