It is not often I blog beforehand but I'm sitting here in my office 11 stories above Central Expressway watching it snow while all my competitors are down practicing. Practice, huh, guess I am going with the blind hog-acorn thing for the first Cowboy BFL for 2015. It has been 7 weeks since I was on Rayburn last when Skip Chancellor and I fished and won the West Ice Bowl January 10th. Funny, although I haven't been down I actually think that may be an advantage. Don't get me wrong, practice is important, but I'm guessing the water temp at Rayburn has probably dropped 6-10 degrees since last Sunday and still dropping. That's going to make any shallow fish either retreat or get really hard to catch. I'm going to start the day deep, probably 18-25 feet and just keep getting deeper until I either get bit or the clock expires. Since I can't get out of Dallas until late this afternoon which will put me at the lake around 10:00 tonight I went ahead last night and went to boat storage and rigged everything. I did tie on 5 shallow baits, a spinnerbait, a chatterbait, a new, unnamed 6th Sense protype shallow crankbait (the one Albert Collins won at Lake of the Pines with a couple weeks ago), a 1/2 ounce Yamamoto Midasu rattling bait, a Tenkuu jerkbait in the 110 size. However those 5 rods are in the bottom of the rod locker, on top and 2 black blue 1 oz football jigs, 1 brown and orange 1 oz football jig, 2 rods rigged for Hog Farmer A-rigs, a 6th Sense 500DD and a Carolina rig. My first 15-20 minutes will be the black blue jig...from there, if the weather is as nasty as the forecast the Hog Farmer A-rig is likely to be a key player in my day, only one way to know, put on 37 layers of clothes, a good pair of gloves, a warm hat and let's go fishing. I will report back Monday.       

My newest article "Mike Tyson On Fishing" went live late last week while I was at Amistad. it's an interesting conversation with Ranger Pro's Jim Tutt of Texas and Bernie Schultz of Florida. 

I have literally fished hundreds of tournaments in my life and in all those tournaments I have never worried that I was going to zero (although I have a few). I had planned to drive down to Amistad on Friday the 6th and spend Saturday through Wednesday practicing. Actually I had hoped to practice 4 days and take Wednesday off to prepare tackle and get some rest. However the flu bug threw a wrench into those plans. I woke up Friday with a 102 temp and so sick I couldn't get out of bed. I got some meds from the doctor and by early Saturday morning I was upright and able to get the boat loaded and head south. I arrived in time late Saturday to spend about an hour riding around the weigh in area of the lake and just getting a general feel. The water was low 50's, gin clear, visibility probably 20 feet, and the lake was 27 feet low. I had been to Amistad once before back in the late 80's so in fact it was a completely new lake for me. I had made a few calls to some locals I met on line but they were struggling, 2-3 keeper bites a day, so I knew it was going to be tough. Sunday I decided to spend time up in the Devils river and as all I had heard about was a deep bite I spent the day 20-35 feet deep for a grand total of one 2 lb bite and a 10-11 pound striper on an A-rig. Monday I went into Evans and California creeks which I knew had produced the prior year and had the same results, only without the   

F%J#Kasfs##! Bass Champs gets us again. I had a feeling as we got that slight warming trend on the 2 days leading up to last Saturday's Champs tournament on Rayburn that the big fish I had found the prior week might be in motion. As it turned out I was correct and fortunes also seemed against us as we drew boat #300 in a 308 boat field. Since the winners stated that they had all 35+ lbs of their winning stringer in the boat by 8:30, and we made our first cast at 8:43, it was obvious we missed what early bite there was. Our issues were further compounded by the sheer number of boats on the water with our 308 and many others pre-fishing this upcoming weekend's collegiate event and therefore pretty much everywhere we wanted to go was "pick a number". 

Interesting to me was that several of the teams that typically whack the fish this time of year offshore went home empty handed. If the winners were forthcoming in their interview, and my sense is that they were, the only giant stringer caught were suspended fish. Clark and Rambo who followed a distant second had a very respectable 24 lbs for second once again proved how solid they are as a team. To a large degree the rest of us scraped and clawed for what we could catch. Our day hinged on a 4 lb Santone football jig (trailed by a Yamamoto craw) fish I caught...continued