Kentucky Lake... joshimoto style: Practice Part 1

[joshimoto son]

Stren Series Event, Kentucky Lake, June 7th ? 10th

The events and happening of my last tournament were not as exciting and auspicious as the ones that occurred with my partner in crime (Brian ?Poorboy? McCarter) down at the Santee Cooper event. It?s hard to beet a good McCarter story.

I am the very beginnings of the touring bass professional? at least that?s my mental perception. Whether I have what it takes to make it to the top of the heap is yet to be determined, but I have to believe that a lot of the pro?s started out something similar to the way I?m doing it, and there is still an extremely large hill to climb before I can even think about attributing myself amongst the ranks of the anglers we see on TV every weekend.

These are my notes? I keep them to remember what I learned from each tournament. I also hope that someday I?ll be able to go back to them to remind myself why I do this fishing thing.

You?re more than welcome to read what I have learned.

Practice started five days before the tournament on Friday June 1st at 8:00 am, that?s after driving all night with only two hours of sleep to get down to Kentucky.

I?m traveling with Scott, he?s one of the pros fishing the event and he and I will be splitting expenses for the entire Midwest series. Scott started fishing Kentucky Lake around 25 years ago and since then has a fairly good idea where to start on this expansive body of water.

Every time, it?s quite dumbfounding just how big these waters are, and getting an idea of where to start if you?ve never been there before can really make you feel like it?s your first time fishing.

Here?s what I would have done to begin with, start at the mouths of the creeks and start working my way in. That?s a common tactic that I?ve read time and time again when approaching reservoirs for the first time.

Here?s what we did, Scott knew of a spot that holds smallmouth, if they?re there, we?re in, if not? it?s time to go looking for green fish. Why smallmouth? Well that impoundment can produce some brown fish that will reach up to seven pounds, and Scott having a love for the bronze backs, would love to key in on them.

We gave the half mile long stretch about three hours to produce a quality small mouth and after catching a few short fish on a tube and a joshimoto chatter bait. We decided to give on them.

Next, we hit some cuts, just like I would have started if I were fishing it alone. Starting at the mouth and then working our way toward the back. With very little success, we probed the points and break lines with everything but the kitchen sink. Seeing that the bite was a tough one, I started to down size and use some of the baits that have worked for me in Michigan during the post spawn phase. We finally had some success when we went to the very back of the cuts in the shallow water, one to three feet, throwing a horny toad around the vegetation and wood. Although we caught fish, none of them were keepers.

Which makes perfect sense because these were the spawning areas, we could see remnants of the old beds and with the water temp being 80 degrees, these fish have gone Elvis on us and ?left the building?.

Working our way out the cut on the North side my partner picked up a Texas rigged ten inch June bug worm and started beating the bank with it pulling it out to a weed line in five FOW. Scott threw up by a piece of wood and got bit, expecting it to be another dink, he gave it a half hearted hook set and to use his surprise the fish on the other end didn?t like it, as a four pounder come flying out of the water and gave him his worm back.

We continued down the bank and every piece of wood had a keeper on it. Scott caught three more keepers and shook off three more fish that ?felt good? in a matter of 200 yards. I was still down sized and never picked up a fish. I couldn?t decide if he was catching them all, or, if I was using the wrong bait.

The water we were fishing was the North side of the cuts, sitting a cast away from the bank in six to eight FOW with the depth at the bank raging from two to four feet. The bottom had to have some gravel and there definitely had to be wood and vegetation around. If we varied off from that at all, we didn?t get bit. The rest of the day we continued to fish cuts and the pattern held true.

The thing that impressed me the most is how quickly Scott was able to put all the details together after catching the first fish. After that, it was like somebody turned on a switch and he was catching fish the rest of the day. Me? I wasn?t catching fish like him, I was still in the mode of throwing something different to find other patterns that would work.

For the next two days Scott fished that pattern and had great success, while I still struggled in the back of the boat. I didn?t figure that it made sense in practice to be throwing the same thing as the guy in the front of the boat. Therefore, for the first two days, I never put a keeper in the boat. In the mean time, Scott was sending me a ration of poo from the front of the boat for not doing so. Again, one of the requirements coming from the ?How to be a Man Handbook?.

A pattern is a pattern, I never figured from my experience on the water here in Michigan that the fish would be so ?bait specific?. So on the third day, I put on that Texas rigged June bug worm and fished it all day long. Scott had a limit and I put three keepers in the boat. In fact, I never fished hardly anything at all but that worm for the rest of the time I was in Kentucky. Why? Because it worked!

More to come?.