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Originally Posted by Texas_Rig
I fished my first BFL yesterday at Dale Hollow Lake. I had a bad tournament but I did have a good experience. This tournament has caused me a lot of anxiety since I signed up. I deal with anxiety on a daily basis and usually steer clear of situations that I know will trigger it. But this s what I want to do and I have ambitions of winning these tournaments. Once I got to the ramp and my boat in the water everything was good and I was very comfortable. I figured this would be the case because my anxiety usually stems from the unknown. I tend to get myself worked up over things that are coming up in my life but the actual event is usually good. This was no different. Now I'm gonna break down my tournament.
Practice: My practice was very tough. I had plenty of time on the water to figure the largemouth out but I just never did. In case you don't know, on Dale Hollow there is a slot limit. You can only keep 2 smallmouth. One has to be under 16" and one has to be over 21". So for tournaments, you are fishing for largemouth. I only found 2 patterns that I could consistently get bit on. One of my patterns was flipping flat drains that had wood in them. After the warm rain, the water running into the lake was warmer and those shallow drains had the warmest water. The other pattern that I had was more reliable. Like clockwork I could pull up to a gravel point in a couple creeks and get bit. I didn't set the hook on a lot of these fish but I did stick 5 of them. They were all keeper largemouth and I had a 5lber in the mix.
Tournament day: My plan was to run the point pattern first thing. We had a very cold night before the tournament and I knew the water temp would drop and I figured the point pattern would still be ok. The good thing is that the gravel points were loaded with fish. The bad thing is that all my largemouth turned into slot limit smallmouth. I never caught a smallmouth in practice when I checked this pattern. After running this pattern for a few hours it became obvious that the largemouth just were not there. I didn't spend much time running the drain pattern in the area of the lake I was fishing because the water had cooled significantly and cleared up and the lake had fallen slightly. I didn't get a bite the short time I ran it. The fish were up that shallow because the water was stained and warm and there was cover to sit there.
So now I decided to scrap my whole practice and run up in the Obey river where I knew the water was dirty and hopefully warmer. Here's a tip for you guys that don't know. Dirty water will typically be warmer than clear water under the same circumstances. The water was 50-53* when I got up to the stained river. It was very sunny and with the full moon I decided to fish shallow wood the rest of the day. I was confident in what I was doing but I never caught a fish.
Overall, it was a good experience. I had fun preparing for the tournament and had fun catching them tournament morning, even if they were smallmouth. I had a good co-angler. This poor performance has only made me want to do it again. The fact that the tournament was at Dale Hollow does sting a bit. I fish there so much that there isn't a good reason for me to struggle so bad. The next tournament is next month at Center Hill and I can't wait.
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If your passion is tournaments with your fishing prowess you will eventually be a force, I have caught a lot of nice fish over the last couple years and have had some great days but I tend to over think things and get brain roadblocks , not sure if its adhd or what but it scares me away from tournaments , you on the other hand have the ability to break down a lake and eventually find a pattern