Ft. Loudoun–Tellico FLW Tour

> Day 1: 5, 15-11 (7th)
> Day 2: 5, 9-15 (9th)
> Day 3: 3, 6-10
> Total = 13, 32-04 (17th)

I just ran out of fish today. I went to the place where I'd been staring and catching a lot of good ones and I never had a bite there today. I think I caught what lived there. So I went to my secondary area where I'd caught a few good ones, but there were a bunch of people fishing in there today who hadn't been there, so I didn't get to fish there.

I really had to scramble and run all new water and I ran up the river to a backwater where I'd caught them in the past and Glenn Browne was fishing in there, so that didn't work. Then I came back down the lake and scrounged around and caught three.

I just ran out of fish and couldn't put anything together trying to run new water.

I was never really on the right thing to win it. I thought I might have been when I had those big fish the first day. Anyway, I just didn't have enough water for 3 or 4 days and that's why I finished 17th.

I caught my fish in a variety of ways – spinnerbaits, Berkley Hollow Bellys and Power Worms, and today I caught them on a crankbait. It was junk-fishing mostly. I had a little bit of a shad-spawn bite to start each morning. The shad were still thick today – there were just no bass. I think I plucked them all out.

My practice went okay. I caught a couple good smallmouths and some largemouths. This strikes me as being the kind of place where a guy has to have a mixed bag. You can't do it all on largemouths, and smallmouths have been dominating lately in local tournaments.

Today I'm going to target a mixed bag. I'm not able to find many fish on beds. There's a few fish on beds, but not enough to last 4 days by any means. So I'll just be fishing with Berkley Hollow Belly swimbaits, spinnerbaits, flipping and stuff like that.

This is a remarkable fishery in that the pressure here is so intense. It's like a lot of southeastern reservoirs near major metropolitan areas – there's a little jackpot tournament 7 days a week, 10 months a year. It gets unbelievable pressure and it's incredibly difficult fishing.

I think if a guy and get somewhere in the 50-pound range over 4 days, that could be enough to win this week.