Toledo Bend BASSMASTER

I never got a bite today. I don't know what in the world happened. I had a pretty good practice, and I'm really just mentally exhausted trying to figure out why I couldn't catch any fish. I guess I just fished backwards all day. I fished shallow early with a spinnerbait, and didn't get any bites. I thought, These stupid fish, the water came up and they went down. So I fished deep the rest of the afternoon. Then I heard everyone caught them shallow the last 3 hours of the day -- with a spinnerbait in a foot of water. That's what I did until noon.

And I got killed in the standings. I fell from 18th to 59th. I got 3 points in this tournament.

What happened yesterday? I was bored stiff. I didn't do anything. I hung around with Mike Wurm and Ray Sedgwick in their cabin. We watched TV and shot the breeze. I wish we would have fished, but I probably wouldn't have wished it when all that lightning was cracking around on the lake. I think Trip made the right call.

The first day I fished a lipless crankbait and a spinnerbait mainly, but I caught my keepers on a Carolina rig and a crankbait. I was using a Mann's Mosquito Hawk (green-pumpkin) on the Carolina rig. It looks like a dragon fly and I catch a lot of big fish on it. I've had two Top 10 finishes at Rayburn on it. Big fish like it, in the spring especially. I fished it with a 1-ounce Water Gremlin weight on 30-pound Fireline with a 3-foot leader of 20-pound Trilene XT. I used a Quantum PT 600 reel and Quantum 704 (7' 4") PT rod (heavy).

I was fishing a hump. It didn't have any weeds, just stumps with a lot of roots. The fish were in the roots.

The crankbait was a Mann's 15+ in red. I was fishing that on a Quantum PT 4.4:1 ratio reel, and a 7-foot medium-action PT rod with 12-pound Berkley Iron Silk.

Today started out pretty chilly, in the upper 40s, and it was windy and raining until about 10:00. And when I say windy, it was blowing "for real" (laughs). It was every bit of 20 to 30, and steady. And then about 10:00, the rain quit. About 12:00 the clouds parted and it was sunny and in the low 60s, but the wind was still blowing pretty good.

I went to the grass area where I caught them on Thursday. There was a boat on it, and I thought it was a tournament boat so I started in another area. I never got anything, then I went back and found out it wasn't a tournament boat. It was a local guy who said he caught 19 pounds there last week but couldn't get a bite today. I said okay, picked up a spinnerbait and hit the bank: with all the rain the water came up about 2 feet.

I started covering water with a spinnerbait, caught a 2 1/2-pounder off the bat and then didn't get another bite until about 10:30. I was alternating between a Leverage spinnerbait and Luhr Jensen crankbait. I caught 3 keepers in another pocket at about 12:00 and I was done. I had 4 fish for 8-05. I think I ended up somewhere around 80th.

I'm happy with how I did compared to how my practice was going, but if I could have caught one more little fish it would have made me at least $1,500. That's always something you really need, especially me.

Toledo Bend has a lot of fish in it, that's for sure. If I get a little bit more experience on that place, it would be a good place to fish.

On the first day I caught all my fish on a Luhr Jensen prototype crankbait (chartreuse/brown back), 15-pound Triple Fish Camo line, a 6 1/2-foot medium-action Shimano V Rod and a Shimano Calcutta 150 reel.

Today I caught all my fish on a white 3/8-ounce Leverage spinnerbait (willow- Colorado, both silver), 20-pound Triple Fish Camo line, a 7-foot medium-heavy V rod and Calais reel.

Some of the fishermen I talked to aren't happy they canceled the day today. It was foggy until about 8:00. You could hear a little thunder and it started to rain, Then it was raining pretty good. It would thunder every couple of minutes and there were 1 or 2 flashes of lightning, but nothing really bad. Then the rain started to let up, and about that time they said the tournament was canceled. I think it was around 8:45. Supposedly we're in some bad thunderstorm warning areas.

I understand why they canceled it, but I think they canceled it way too early. You can't tell what the weather is going to do at 8:00. I was talking with some friends of mine here, and we were saying we've sat in fog delays until 10:30 or 11:00 and still gone fishing.

It took forever to get my boat on the trailer because it was a total logjam down there. And my partner backed into another trailer and busted out one of my trailer lights. The Ranger guy wasn't down there, so I went back later to get it fixed. Then I ate a nice long lunch and I've been hanging out ever since. It was a total waste of a day.

The rain will definitely change some people's fishing, but I'm out on the main lake fishing grass and I don't think it will make much of a difference. It would have been nice to fish it with the overcast today, though.

I don't want to talk today (laughs). I had the worst day in the world. I went to my Carolina-rig spot, caught a 3-pounder and my partner caught a 3-pounder, then I caught a throwback. I stayed there another hour and didn't catch any more. The fog came in, and I had to go 25 miles to my next area. I got lost and lost about 90 minutes, and then I got sideways. Once I got to where I was going I fished too fast. I couldn't get that Carolina rig spot off my mind fish, so I fished through those fish too quickly, and then went back there and caught two more and my partner caught another one. I probably should have stayed there all day. I just messed the day up. I had a bad day, one of my good-old Paul Elias days. (Elias had 3 for 6-11 and is in 152nd.)

I ended up scratching out a limit today that weighed 10-15, and I felt pretty good about it. But they really caught them today. I was surprised at how many fish were being caught. I went out there and in the first 10 minutes I caught a 3 1/2-pounder, and on the next cast I caught a keeper. Then I caught a fish about every hour. hour and a half after that. Nothing too exciting. I caught 6 keepers. But I feel good about catching what I caught, especially as badly as my practice went.

I feel like I found an area where I may be able to catch some small fish. Actually it's two big areas. The thing I can't get over is, I'm only seeing a couple of tournament boats, but a bunch of local fishermen are fishing right where I'm fishing. I don't get it. When the big guns come to lakes where I fish for fun, I don't fish right in front of them. I know they're trying to fish for a living. I don't understand that. I'm not saying they should totally lay down, but it's like me going to someone's job site and running away their business just for fun.

I couldn't repeat anything I did yesterday, but I had an area I wanted to work on the way back. It turned out I found a spot today with some Carolina-rig fish. It's a little ace in the hole anyway. Hopefully I'll be able to catch some there tomorrow.

I think this won't be a junk-fishing tournament. It will be a pattern thing. But I talked to someone today who said he saw some bedding fish so there's no telling what's going to happen. I still think they'll hit a spinnerbait, but I still can't get anything on it. The water's not warming up much because it's overcast. There will probably be a lot of cruising fish. Some guys will catch them on a wacky worm.

I caught two, and the only thing I can say is that's twice as many as I caught yesterday. Those were my only two bites. I caught one on a Rat-L-Trap that was a borderline keeper, and the other one I caught on a tube. It was probably 2 1/2 pounds.

I'm fishing everything I can fish. The one I caught on a tube I felt pretty decent about because I liked the looks of the area. I have a few areas that I think may have some fish in them, and tomorrow I'll just put the trolling motor down and go fishing there.

I was just talking to Jason Quinn and he's only had 3-4 bites a day too. I told Jason I know I'm in the right areas -- I've seen Kevin VanDam and Denny Brauer every day. So I know I'm not in the wrong part of the lake. Tomorrow I'm going to go where I got some bites and try to fish smarter or something, try to figure something out.

It's warmer. Today it was in the upper 60s. But it's really cloudy. You'd think the shallow fish would bite, but I guess with no sun it's not warming the water up very quickly.

It was a little better today. It warmed up and the wind blew, and I caught several more keepers. I feel all right about it. I didn't have any big fish or anything. I might have had 13 pounds. If I could do that every day I'd be tickled, though things might improve.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to expand a little on that. I'm still fishing that outside grass trying to find some big fish, and I'll try again tomorrow if the wind doesn't blow too hard. I'm totally amazed that they aren't knocking the crap out of a spinnerbait or crankbait fished over that main lake grass. I just haven't been able to get any bites on it. The only thing I can figure is that those main lake fish are still deep and haven't pulled up on that stuff yet.

I didn't do squat today. I said I was going to fish two creeks all day, and I fished them until about 3:30 and had one fish, and said that's enough. So I went to another area and didn't see anything I liked, fished around a while and that was it. One fish.

It's warming up a little. It got into the lower 60s today and the wind blew out of the south at about 10-15 mph.

Tomorrow? Right now I'm going to go and see if any of my roommates found any fish. I'll see if I can work off that. I didn't think I'd fish up in the stained water, but I may end up doing that. I'm fishing around a bunch of other boats. But I just haven't figured out -- something.

I only caught 4 today. The water was pretty cold. The surface temperature was 48-52 on the main lake -- it gets a little warmer in the pockets. What fish I caught were shallow, so they must have been shallow already. They didn't really want to chase anything.

The last time I fished here was the last B.A.S.S. tournament 2 years ago. I haven't fished this lake a whole bunch. This is only the third or fourth tournament I've fished here.

I think it's going to be a shallow-water tournament. On these Texas lakes there are always a bunch of patterns going on at the same time. Some guys are catching them on inside grasslines, some are on the outside, some are catching them in pockets. It's supposed to warm up every day and we're supposed to get rain for the tournament. It shouldn't be a cold rain, so I think the majority of the fish will be caught shallow. I think it will turn into a spinnerbait tournament.

This is the first time I've been here. I'm trying to figure out what lakes it fishes like. It's going to be a combination of places I've been before. There's grass, but it's not everywhere, and the water's fairly clear in the mid-lake area.

They were biting really well until last Saturday. A huge cold front came through, and from Saturday to Sunday the water temperature dropped 8-10 degrees. It was about 30 (air temperature) here this morning.

I think I'm just going to concentrate on one section of the lake. I tried doing that today, and fouled a plug about lunchtime so I ran back to the boat launch and got that fixed. I finished the day fishing right around there.

Tomorrow I'm going to go fish around a lot of grass and see if I can figure out how to catch some fish there. The lake is so big and there's grass in only a portion of it, so I think that's where the highest concentration of fish will be. That's my plan now. And it's supposed to progressively warm up throughout the week so the fishing should get better.

Today I caught 3, Coby (Carden) had 3, Woo (Daves) caught 4 and Chris (Daves) caught 3 so we're on the 3-fish pattern. Dave Simmons (of Yamaha) fished with Zell Rowland and Zell caught 4 today.