Crappie USA - Lake Eufaula,
OK 03/06
After competing
well in the CAST qualifier this past August '05, we felt
confident that we could do well at the Crappie USA Spring
Qualifier back on Lake Eufaula.
Since this tournament
was in March, that meant cooler temperatures, and fish
could be shallow one day, and be gone the next. We decided
to pre-fish the weekend before the tournament to give
us the best chance of patterning the bite for tournament
day.
Since we already
knew one area we could catch fish in, we decided to fish
another creek that fed into the lake. If this did not
work out, we always had our brush from last August to
fish.
The water temperatures
were cooler, so we began looking in shallower water. Wes
actually caught a large female white crappie about 3'
below the prop of the motor...and the motor was running.
Again, we had
success in locating plenty of brush, and we were catching
some quality "tournament" fish on nearly every
stop. The chartreuse/white Jigum
Jig was flat out knocking them off the brush.
We spent all
day in one creek, locating brush, catching fish, and then
locating more brush, and catching more fish.
By the end of
the day, we felt good about the area holding some quality
fish, and headed back to Texas to put our notes together
for the following tournament weekend.
During the week
prior to the tournament, we received a tip from Paul and
Jerry, who were not fishing this tournament, about a place
that we should check out on tournament day. It is a place
that I had heard about, but we had not had time to pre-fish
the area.
Over the next
couple days, Wes and I decided that since this other area
was not far from the creek we had pre-fished on, we could
try this new area first thing on tournament day...and
if it did not work out, we could always fall back on our
pre-fished creek.
So...tournament
day arrives, it is cold and pouring down rain...and we
are fishing an area completely blind. Luckily I had a
few extra jackets in my truck, and we were bundled up
in the rain. About 100 yards from the ramp were 7 or 8
stumps in about 8' of water. I told Wes "If we are
going to catch any fish in here, surely there is one or
two on this stump row". We set up our 12'
B'n'M ProStaff Trolling Rods, and made our first pass
through the stumps. About 2 minutes into the troll, the
graph showed us some brush next to one of the stumps...and
one of the rods doubled over.
The first fish
landed in our blind fishing trip was a 1.3 pound white
crappie. About 2 minutes later another rod gives us the
same action, and we quickly had another 1.4 pound white
crappie. We figured out pretty quickly that we would be
here the rest of the tournament day.
The rest of the
day was spent trolling stumps anywhere from 8'-18'. We
caught a lot of one-pound fish, and had 7 good fish for
the scales that were all between 1.2 and 1.5 pounds. Meanwhile,
it was still raining on us throughout the day.
We were running
pretty late trying to get back to the ramp, and kinda
"sped" off to the weigh-in. When we pulled up
to the weigh-in, the tournament director said that we
had 90 seconds to get our fish to the scales, and our
voucher signed. I got our voucher signed, and Wes got
the fish to the scales with 10 seconds left.
Our 7 fish weighed
in at exactly 9 pounds, and put us in 3rd place for the
tournament...our best finish so far in a National Circuit...and
only .66 pounds out of first place. We earned another
check from Crappie USA, and another top-10 finish earned
us a trip to Perry Lake, Kansas for the Crappie USA Regional
in June '06.
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