Jay Yelas – Days 1 & 2
Friday, April 25, 2008
> Day 1: 5, 8-07
> Day 2: 5, 10-02
> Total = 10, 18-09 (129th)
I just never could get a decent bite. It didn't come together for me. I had a great practice, and this happens a lot in the spring – the bite totally changes between the 4 or 5 days of practice and the tournament. My swimbait bite went away – I'd been catching them really well on that. It totally dried up. And I had some bed-fish found, but they all got covered up by other contestants. It was one of those weeks when nothing went right.
That stuff happens sometimes. Last year, I could do no wrong here. This year, I couldn't do anything right.
And over the last couple or three tournaments, it's happened – the bite has totally changed from my early practice days. I was able to adjust at Smith and barely miss a Top 10 there. Here, I wasn't able to adjust from how I'd been catching them. I just struggled this week.
But I don't have any regrets. I know I gave this tournament 100%, and when you do that, you don't have any regrets looking back.
Today I had to go to a dropshot and some stupid little 3-inch-long bait. I haven't had to do that in years to catch fish. All the bed-fish were caught after yesterday – I saw only one or two on beds – and a lot of the guys who did well yesterday struggled today too. I was totally out of my element not being able to catch them the way I like to catch them. Sometimes you have tournaments like that, where you can't get them the way you like to fish, and you just have to resort to anything to get a bite. It keeps you humble and working hard.
I'm driving over to Beaver Lake tomorrow. I'm going to leave my boat and fly home to Oregon Sunday morning.
Jay Yelas – Practice
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Photo: FLW Outdoors/Brett Carlson
This place has got tons of fish, and it's a place where everybody catches a limit. If you look at the results from last year, I think 10 pounds a day was 100th, and 12 pounds a day made the Top 10. So it's one of those fisheries. Champlain's like that too – 15 pounds there is nothing, but 17 1/2 a day makes the Top 10. Here, there aren't any lunkers to speak of, but you need just a little bit better bites than the rest of the guys.
I knew that going in, so I just tried to focus on one part of the lake and figure those fish out and try to catch some better ones.
There's bedding fish everywhere – every pocket has a fish on a bed. But most are 2-pounders, and they don't do a guy any good. But I found a few bigger ones I'm going to try for first thing in the morning. Then I'll do a lot of swimbait fishing – throw the Berkley Hollow Belly around – and maybe a little finesse fishing as the week goes by.
Tomorrow you'll see all the good bedding fish weighed in, so it could be a real interesting second day. If more fish don't move up on the beds, it could get more difficult.
Larry won with a worm last year, and probably when it's all said and done, you're going to have to catch some on that worm. Sight-fishing won't hold up for 4 days, so you'll have to go another way. That's kind of how Michael Bennett won the last one at Lewis Smith. He sight-fished for a day or two, then had to go catch them.
And the swimbait's not as good as it was, because the fish are a little behind. Last year they were mostly post-spawn and the shad were spawning. They were much further along in the season. This year we're right in the middle of the spawn, which is good – it'll make it interesting. You'll have to go to soft plastics of some sort to get good bites if you're not sight-fishing.
What it all boils down to is who can get a 4- or 5-pounder in the preliminary round to make the cut. That makes it exciting, because it's real nip-and-tuck. It's just the opposite of Falcon, where you get all those big blowout bags. There's just not a lot of food in this place for all the fish.
