A Flop at the FLW BFL Event in Palatka

My tournament in Palatka as a co-angler was awful. It was blowing 20 miles an hour and it started raining by about 10 o’clock. My boater and I fished Rodman Reservoir and I’m glad I didn’t have my boat out there. I’ve never seen so much standing timber and so many crab traps in my life. Needless to say we ran over a few.

It would have been all worth it if we found some fish but we didn’t. My partner and I both caught 3 fish but they were all around 12 inches and that ain’t gonna win nothin. Only the top 20 fished on Sunday and we didn’t make the top 20 for some reason. The funny thing is that I got paired with a guy who was fishing the event with his son. They practiced out there together and had 2 spots. We fished one of the spots in the morning and then we swapped places later in the afternoon.

His son pulled in 15 pounds from the same spots with the same Watermelon Old Monster worm. He just happened to hit them at different times. I was thinkin that we suck or timing plays a big factor with bass. Needless to say, the son hit both spots on the next day and weighed in only a pound. Maybe he got the timing wrong on Sunday.

I was really hoping that he caught fish on Sunday so I could go to those spots next year on the same dates at the Bassmaster Weekend Series event. I guess I’ll have to check out Salt Springs, Lake George, Seven Sisters Island, and Turkey Island later this year as well as crank and carolina rig some parts of the river at the right tide.

I’d like to say I learned something from this event, but I didn’t. The highlight was running into Terry “Big Show” Scroggins at the weigh in.

I was planning on fishing Sunday anyway, so I went out to the Kissimmee Chain to check out the Bassmaster Weekend Series event there to see where everyone was fishing. I ran Cypress, Hatchineha, and Lake Kissimmee and burned up a lot of gas. Of course, the winner fished open water hydrilla on Toho so I didn’t see where he fished. I’m thinkin fishing open water with a Rat L Trap is the way to go on Toho. I know of 3 tournaments that’s been won that way recently. I’ll have to find some good patches out there. The only problem is that hydrilla is everywhere and the bass seem to be in places where it’s a little less dense.