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This turned out to be an interesting event.  We practiced for two days on the Arkansas River, but due to heavy rains and a lot of floating debris the tournament was moved for safety reasons to Ft. Gibson Lake.  We packed up the camper and moved over to Ft. Gibson for a short day of practice on Wednesday.  Practice seemed to go well catching fish around boat docks and cranking shallow rocks.

The first day of the tournament didn’t go as expected.  The bass seemed to be stingy around the docks.  I would flip my ½ oz. brown jig with a Zoom root beer Fat Albert Twintail around the docks and swim it one to two feet under the surface.  This produced only two keepers by noon.  I scrambled around with a crankbait, but I only managed one more keeper.  I dug myself into a hole ending the first day in 87th place.  I knew I would have to catch a good stringer of fish to make the money cut and keep my position in the top twelve for the AOY race.  The second day I began fishing all new water throwing the shallow running RC 2.5 in chartreuse and black toward shallow, rocky points.  This produced a limit by 9 o’clock.  I then switched back to the jig and boat docks to try and upgrade my catch.  I proceeded to cull three times with the jig, but unfortunately the fish were not quite big enough.  I finished the event with 20 pounds, and this only moved me up to 80th place.  I ended the year in 13th place, just one position out of the post-season.  We are still Classic bond!

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