Priest April 7, 2-12

What a beautiful April day for our second tournament of the Cumberland Bassmasters. Seven boats departed Long Hunter after a prayer by Noah.  My partner, Carl, and I began with topwater baits in a pocket in the cove to the left under the bridge. The bass had not awakened yet so we switched to jigs, crankbaits and plastics as we worked down a shallow rocky bank. We began to pick a few fish including a couple of keepers each.  Carl called his shot at one time. He said, "There's a nice transition bank, chunk rock to gravel. There will be one there, yep there he is"). We moved on to Smith Springs and continued to pick up fish, not always keepers but quite fun nevertheless. Carl has developed a new strategy: use nothing but KVD baits. His arsenal was a KVD tube, 1.5 crankbaits, KVD swimming jig. All of his tackle is for sale except the KVD stuff. However, he had one more trick up his sleeve, a Jika rig with a lizard. Don't know Jika rig? Here it is.

Our next stop was the big bay near Hamilton Creek. We encountered 5 double deck pontoon boats load with young people. They anchored in the cove played very loud rap music(?). Pretty raunchy, nasty music(?). Again we picked up a fish or two, in fact, we both had a limit of 5 by now. Made a couple of more stops with no success. Planned to finish on the island near 4-corners. We each were able to cull one here. It was now time to weigh in. We caught about 20 fish, but nothing bigger than 2.6 lbs. Carl finished second in the non-boater division with just under 8 lbs. I had just under 7 lbs finished sixth in boaters. The winner had 11 lbs. Two tied for big fish with 18" smallmouths. Everyone caught fish and enjoyed an incredible day on the lake.