Youth Tournament on Big Hill

The boys had their Kansas Youth 3rd Qualifier Tournament on Big Hill this last Sunday. We headed down Saturday earlier to prefish while the high school tournament was going on. The high school had a great turnout with 35 boats, and it took about 11.79lbs to win.  There was one 7lb caught and multiple fish above 4 pounds. The weather was awesome. Boys and I had a hard time getting on any of the good spots, but were able to catch a couple of small bass and lost one fishing pole. Nick was snagged.  When I got it loose, I handed it too him. I thought he had it so I let go.  It fell, hit the boat, and went overboard. We tried to get it back for about 15 minutes; no luck.  As I was trying to get the rod, a drum hit my crankbait. So, we called it a day.  Also, we needed to get off the lake before the high school kids in order to be able watch the high school kids weigh-in.

Next day was the youth tournament.  The wind was blowing out of the northeast about 11 miles per hour when we started, and was supposed to get up to 18 mph. The temperature was about 38 degrees to start, and was going to get up to 47. The tournament director decided to move the takeoff to another ramp so we could unload and loaded easier. I wasn’t sure where to start with the upper lake 48-51 degrees and the lower end 45-49 degrees. We decided to start down by the other boat ramp near where the high school had released fish the day before. We couldn’t stay there for very long with the wind. We then moved to some main lake points throwing jerkbaits. After about an hour, we decided to go up past the bridge where the water was warmer, and had a little more color to it.  We threw soft plastic, jerkbaits and spinnerbaits. We fished up past the bridge until the scheduled break at 10 am. Not much was going on, and we heard from another team they had not caught anything either. So, we decided to go fish the lower end of the lake in the trees. The day before at practice, we had caught two non-keepers in the trees on plastics. We were fishing down the bank  where we lost the pole. One of the boys had gotten hung up. I looked down, and there it was! I lowered a lipless crankbait, and snagged the pole. Nick was happy to have has pole back, and he started fishing with it. He said “Dad the pole is so cold.” Kyle was like “It has been in the cold lake all night.” It was getting about noon, and we had only 1 hour left to fish.  We headed back towards the ramp area to fish. There were already a couple of boats loading up calling it a day and a few still fishing in the area. We decided to move up to the next little pocket, which was out of the cold wind. We started fishing down the bank when Nick got hooked up next to standing timber on finesse plastic. We finally caught one at 12:15pm!  We were very excited.  It was just a small keeper, but on this cold day, we were going to the stage. Kyle then was so excited he messed up his spinning reel. I told him to grab Nick’s other rod that we had retrieved from the lake earlier that was now in the rod locker in the boat. Kyle grabbed the rod and was trying to get it out of the rod locker when the door fell on the rod.  It broke in half! I guess we were not supposed to have the pole anymore. We had only 30 minute left, so fished down the bank.  We came to a small secondary point that had standing timber out in front of it. I pulled the boat out in deeper water, and the boys were throwing at the timber with no luck. I decided to pull up shallow and fish back down were we had caught the keeper.  There was another team coming down the same bank. Just then Nick got hooked up.  I was trying to get the net out, but he just swung the fish in the boat.  It was just another small keeper. We were really pumped up; if we could just get another. Then Kyle threw up by a little stick and his line started to move to the right. He set the hook and was hooked up for a second. Then his line went slack.  We had just lost the fish with 15 minutes to go. With the two poles down that were medium action, he was throwing the finesse bait on a medium heavy rod. The pressure from the hook set ripped the hook right out of the fish’s mouth. I am sure it was another small fish, but on this cold day, every fish could count. The day was over, and we headed back to the ramp to see how we would finish. We knew someone else probably caught them. There were 10 boats that headed out that cold and windy day, and only 4 boats caught any keepers. First place had two good three pounders for 6.5 lbs that they had caught before 9:30am. We would end up 3rd place with two small keepers gaining some good points in the standing. Great job to all the kids that toughed it out in the conditions this weekend. I was very proud of the boys fishing until the end.