Kentucky Lake... joshimoto style: Tournament Day 2

[joshimoto son]

Tournament Day 2

I never got a chance to meet my day two pro the night before, but I did get a chance to talk to him on the phone. He said he and his co-angler both had limits the first day and that he was in contention to make the third day cut. We made our early morning plans to meet up and then hung up.

Since we were boat number 177 and in the last flight to go out that morning. I had a chance to find out a little information about my pro. Kevin Snider is from Kentucky and has fished these waters since he was a kid. My chances of making the comeback I needed are getting better.

We finally got to blast off and made a 20 minute run down Kentucky Lake to Kevin?s first spot and sure enough there was a guy sitting there. Kevin had told me that there had been another guy fishing the same fish he had found but wasn?t quite fishing it right. Kevin?s first thoughts were to go to his second spot, but decided against moving.

The spot was a hump that came out of 35 FOW up to 20 feet, right at the mouth of one of the major creek channels in Kentucky Lake. Both Kevin and the other guy had found the sweet spot, the only difference is the other pro would sit right on top of it and drag a finesse worm and Kevin would cast over it and drag his 12? worm over it.

?That guy is fishing it wrong? Kevin said, ?You watch? as soon as he moves off of it I?ll show you how to catch those fish.?

Well things were a little tense for the first half hour of so, it was obvious that both pro?s wanted to fish the same little area, and at times, we were a cast away from each other. Kevin was trying to make conversation with the other pro and only got short answers from him. I could tell the other guy was not happy.

Kevin stood his ground until the other pro moved off the sweet spot and fished along the rest of the hump.

?That?s it? move on along there. Let me at those fish.?
Kevin was right. He made three casts and put three fish in the boat while I caught one short fish. It didn?t take long and the other pro was right back on top of the sweet spot.

We tried fishing around each other the best we could and finally Kevin headed down the hump and let the other guy have the spot for a while. I caught two more short fish and told Kevin not to worry; I?ll take care of the little one?s for him. It was at this time he told me that this lake was his favorite lake and I replied with a simple, ?I?m sorry?. Kevin gave me a puzzled look in return. I had not seen the greatest of fishing here, and thought of a couple Michigan lakes that would knock the snot out of this one.

After a little dry spell we headed back over to the sweet spot since the other pro had moved off of it again, marking a few fish on top of the hump giving an indication that maybe some more fish had moved up. Sure enough they did! Kevin?s first cast yielded a beautiful looking four pound Largemouth. The fish put up a pretty good fight and finally surrendered as I scooped it up in the net.

While Kevin was putting his fish in the live well and getting rigged back up. I finally had a chance to get my first crack at the sweet spot. As I was pulling my ? ounce Texas rigged worm over the top of the hump, I felt a little tap and promptly reeled down and set the hook. Kevin asked me if I thought it was a good fish and I reported back to him that I didn?t think so because the fish was coming up just like the rest of the dinks that I had caught.

When the fish finally broke the surface, I immediately did the Larry Nixon ?OH MY GOD!? technique. I had seen that clip so many times in my life, it was the only thing I could do. I had on the biggest fish of my life and although it came to the boat fairly easy, it did not want to yield the net, as it made three or four good bull dog runs trying to get back down to the bottom. I must have looked like an idiot franticly pulling drag out to feed line as it made its powerful surges. Then finally she gave up and Kevin netted my fish saying, ?You won?t be bad mouthing Kentucky Lake now! Will ya.?

?That?s a six pounder.? Kevin replied with a little bit of envy. ?I?m sorry,? I said, ?I know you wished you had that one in your livewell, but that?s the biggest bass I?ve ever caught.?

Once things finally calmed down and I had retied. Kevin told me that once he gets his fifth fish, he?ll leave and let the other guy have the spot to himself. In fact, when I looked up, Kevin told that guy the same thing because he was again on top of that spot again.

He even went as far as telling him what he was catching the fish on. I think the guy, taking Kevin for his word, eased off the spot and let Kevin finish his limit out.

Before we left, we had caught six keepers in an hour and a half, the other pro and co-angler had none. Kevin again made sure to tell the guy what to throw.

Kevin had been pre-fishing for the last two weeks and was on eight different schools of fish. The rest of the day was committed to stopping on spots that he said had a potential for big fish.

The second spot we hit, and Kevin?s first cast produced a keeper he used to cull with, then another that did not help him.

The third spot produced quite a few fish. My pro culled out three more fish and caught a limit of fish that did not help him. I picked up two fish that weighed two pounds each and a three pounder that I picked up while Kevin was culling fish.

My pro was a good guy, but after seeing me catch that big fish, he was not about to let me get after the ?spot on the spot?, and every time he made a mistake, or had to go to the back of the boat, I took advantage of that, which yielded my two biggest fish.

With six hours left to go in the tournament, I needed one more fish, which I was hoping that I could have gotten pretty early so I could relax a little bit and fish for another kicker. I figured that I had to have around 16 pounds to make the cut for day three and the potential was there. All I had to do is catch my limit.

After about three hours hitting a few other spots and watching Kevin throw back another limit of keepers that didn?t help him, I was starting to get a little frustrated. Kevin could tell and looked me and said, ?What are you so disappointed about? You?re going to cut a check.?

I wasn?t there to catch just enough fish to cut a check and then quit. I was there to make the cut everyday and win the tournament and I had a good chance to do just that. I just needed three more pounds.

Well? the dry spell lasted up until the last hour of competition when I finally put my fifth fish in the boat. It was an anemic looking little 15? squeaker of a fish that maybe weighed 1.5 pounds. So finally I get to relax and look for a bigger fish to cull with? right? Nope! When I open up the livewell, I had one dead fish and two more that were getting pretty close to kicking the bucket. I appears that the recirc. pump that Kevin had changed out the night before had failed and we each lost a fish and were getting dangerously close to losing them all.

We put what little ice we had left from the cooler in the live wells and hoped for the best. So that last relaxing hour of ?Cool, I got my limit, now lets look for another fish??went bub-bye!

Needless to say we never caught another fish and it was time to check in.

Once reported in and given our weigh bags, we found a spot to park the boat and try to keep our fish alive. FLW would not let us weigh our fish in until they called our bag number. We were bag eight and they currently were on bag five. It took 30-45 minutes to weigh each group of bags numbers. Needless to say, we had a long wait. We were lucky enough to find a couple of guys that had some extra ice to put in the live well, and Kevin had somehow fixed the pump to start working again. The rest of the fish we had come back to life, but we had each lost one a piece, which is an eight ounce penalty.

Finally we got to weigh in, and I had hoped that I had a god chance to take big bass honors with the kicker I had. Once I got in line, I found out that big bass on the co-angler side was 7-2 and I never even weighed the biggest fish of my life to get the official score.
With all the anglers waiting, I was not about to hold them up anymore just for my benefit.

Kevin weighed his bag first and had over 17 pounds putting him in the top 10 overall, sending him to the next round.

Then it was my turn to walk up on the live web-cast stage.

One of the coolest things that happened on stage was when the emcee noticed that I had made quite a big comeback and he stopped and interviewed me for a bit before he read off my weight. Of course I did not want to sound like an idiot, but I plugged the great advantage a co-angler has to learn from the pros and eventually work their way up to being a pro themselves.

My unofficial weight was 14-14 and with the penalty my official weight was 14-6 for a grand total of 16-7. That put me in 33rd place overall and two and a quarter pounds out of the cut. The penalty cost me six spots and $125.

One of these days, I?m going to put these great comebacks all together and actually win one of these things.

All I can say is that I?m getting closer.

[blakstr1]

Awesome Job Josh...one of these days you'll be huge...not Carrot Top huge...but big just the same!   

Way to go!

[spinninbug]

Faith and confidence,  Josh, you taught me this.  Whenever I start doubting myself Terry holds up his hand and says what does this say?  Your getting closer and closer and it will happen!!    

[McCarter]

Josh,

Wow.  I dont know what to say man.  that was some write up.

I love you, man!  Not in an unnatural way, but in a way that a wart hog might love a shade tree on a hot day.  Keep it up, you will make it to the big time.

PB himself