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

My friend Skip Chancellor and I got to put my new Z520 through the paces for the first time this past Saturday morning. It was cold and windy to start the day but we stayed dry and literally scrapped and scraped around Rayburn to put together a really nice limit of bass to win the first ever Ice Bowl hosted by West Limited, specifically Clay and Clint West. For those that don't know the story the ABA tournament, which lots of guys were practicing for got cancelled Thursday afternoon. So Clay and Clint decided to give us all something to do. I don't know how they pulled it together but they even had huge trophies, which read "2015 West LTD Ice Bowl Shoot Out", "Fish your Ice Off". Having not been on Rayburn since October my inclination was not to fish, but luckily Skip wanted to so we tossed our money in and braved the cold. Although it took us a long time to put the first fish in the boat, and actually had to run to our third spot to do so, about 10:30 the first tournament keeper came over the gunnel and what a way to start, a 9.36 was the first fish I put in the livewell. Skip followed up shortly thereafter with a..continued  

My new Z520 has arrived, very excited to get it to Rayburn this weekend and check out all the new features....wait, high of 37 and raining, tournament season is obviously upon us.