We made a trip out to Glen Elder for a B.A.S.S. Kansas Youth Team Series Event. It was a great day on the water with my boys. We arrived at the ramp while the High School’s event was going on. There were a couple of teams fishing around the ramp, and they were hooking up almost on every other cast with white bass or non-keeper smallmouth. The fish needed to be over 15 inches to weigh-in with a bass pass which will allow tournaments on Kansas to weigh-in 5 fish over 15 inches between Sept 1 thru June 15 then released back into the water.
It was a very difficult day to pre-fish with the wind and
high school kids fishing on most of the spots. Also, you try to stay out of the way of the High School kids fishing the event. I decided to start in an area we had luck before and was out of the wind. Nick hooked up with a tiny smallmouth right away. Then we moved to the back of the cove which I made a mistake and threw by some stickup. My line started swimming off and I set the hook. It was a nice keeper largemouth.
Then a high school team moved in on the spot, and we decided to move out of the way. We watched them catch two non-keepers off the stickups. I decided to move over to the south bank to some other stickups I have had luck on. It didn’t take long to hookup. But it was the wrong species, wipers. Twins were having too much fun not to let them catch some wipers. After a couple of hours, we decided to go watch the high school weigh-in, and after the weigh-in we would come back out.
We fished a couple of main lake points which we hooked up with drum and wiper
s. We were moving around and not having much luck, so the twins wanted to go catch some more wipers. We decided to hit the south bank again which we should have never fished again. Kyle threw up by a stickup with a small crankbait and hooked up with a keeper smallmouth. He was just so excited about catching the smallmouth that he was shaking. We then caught a couple of more wipers and smallmouth.
Tournament Day was very tough for the boys. I cannot fish on tournament days; I can only coach them, run the trolling motor and the big motor. It is so hard to be patient when they are not catching them. You keep thinking should we be fishing over there on that point. Maybe the dam or back of that cove. Then should they be throwing this or try that. I have not made very good decisions this year. We tried the stickup in the back of the cove which I caught the keeper largemouth. The boys caught three non-keeper largemouth right away, but then went another 30 minutes without a bite. 
I decided to move them to the south bank, and we would not even get a bite. Not good; we should have never fished it so hard the day before. We moved to a wind main lake point which Nick caught a non-keeper smallmouth on a crankbait. Then, I made a mistake instead of continuing to fish down the riprap along the point, I moved us over to the south bank again. The boys would hookup with a couple of wipers, but with 30 minutes to go I decided to go back to the point and fish down the riprap which Kyle would catch a keeper with
20 minutes left in the tournament. Then both the twins caught 3 more non-keeper smallmouth. They would just weigh one fish in. I found out the winning team fished riprap on the north side in the wind. Oops!!! I should have listened to that first smallmouth Nick caught off the point. The number one rule when you catch a fish is she maybe telling you whats going on. If we had fished down that riprap 2 hours earlier maybe we could have caught a limit.