Dardanelle E50

I really don't have a whole lot to say, other than the fact that I was completely out of sync all week. Practice really predicates what takes place in the tournament, and I was totally out of whack in practice. I thought the bite would be tough and I planned my strategy accordingly, but the fishing was a whole lot better than I thought.

The area I was fishing – that part of the lake – was not that good overall, but still, a couple of guys did well in that area. So the fish were there to be caught – I just never did figure them out. So I struck out swinging.

But it's always a good learning experience when something like that happens. You go back to the drawing board and see where you made your mistakes. I don't really have a whole lot more to say, other than I got it all wrong. It happens now and then.

If I could do it over again, I would probably be more thorough in my practice time. I think I covered too much water and never slowed down like I needed to. You had to really slow down in key areas to get the fish to bite.

Actually, there's a lot to be learned from bad tournaments. I know BassFans have had experiences like I had in the past week. The key is to make something positive our of a bad tournament – learn from it and make yourself a better fisherman in the future. So I'll take inventory of where I went wrong, and try to figure out how to correct that next time.

"It's tough. Last year, I made the cut and finished 11th here. I found the fishing to be a lot harder this year. The fish are just – they're apparently in that stage where they're in a funk for two or three weeks before the fishing gets good again.

In Texas, we have a period of time like that. It's the last half of the month of April. It's notoriously tough. This lake is like 5 or 6 hours north of there, and I think the fish are in that stage right here.

They're not biting. You can catch them, but they're not biting the big power-baits. Randy Howell won last year swimming a jig. But this year, you have to go to worms and finesse stuff and slow way down.

I don't think they're suspended, because there's not much for them to suspend in here. It's a flooded river, and traditionally river bass are shallow-water fish – 10 feet is really deep in a river. That's kind of what you're looking at here.

Really, all the habitat you have here is, you've got some manmade riprap, rocks, lots of shallow emergent grass – which was how the tournament was won last year, in emergent grass. You also have stumps and laydowns. It's just a shallow-water fishery.

Anther thing this year is the water clarity. A game warden stopped me for a license check, and he was commenting how the water conditions are like they are in August. The water's so clear because there's been no rain. Last year the main river was really muddy, but this year it's really clear.

So that puts a little spin on things. The clearer water combined with the time of year makes it tough. I think we're looking at 19 pounds to make the cut.