In May, the boys won the Kansas Youth Bass Nation Championship on Melvern. They earned the opportunity to represent Kansas at the BASS National Youth Championship in Tennessee on beautiful Carroll County 1000 Acres Recreational Lake. The first practice day was Saturday, June 28, but it was not an official practice day. The lake had been off limits for a month prior.
We decided to get to the lake early so we could fish anywhere on the lake before everyone else showed up. Our plan was to fish deep and to hit any spot the deep water is near the bank. It was a great first day. We didn’t catch anything big, but we had a limit around 10lbs. We caught 7 fish over 15 inches. I figured this would work good in the tournament if you had 4 bass over 15 inches and one big fish. All the fish were on soft plastics rigged weightless or texas rigged. There was not one pattern working better then the other. The official practice day was on Sunday, June 29, and we hoped maybe would could find something more solid. We decided to try some different areas and expanded on something in the area we found fish. Being a small lake and being around 54 boats, it was going to be really hard to move around on 1000 acre lake. We fished a lot of 16 to 20 feet of water with a Carolina rig. It was the first time the boys had fished a Carolina rig. They both caught about 6 fish in a hour off a couple of points. That is the best thing about going to this event; it makes you fish out of your comfort zone and try different techniques and baits. Sometimes when you fish the same lake and baits always, you don’t learn anything new. So, get out there and try a different lake or techniques. It will take a little time to catch fish, but you will become a better angler and catch more fish. If fishing was easy, everyone would be fishing. Next video and blog will be about how we did in the tournament.