C.A.S.T - Lake O The
Pines, TX- 03/05
Our second national
tournament was with the C.A.S.T. (Crappie Angler Sportsman
Tour) tournament trail. This tournament was held on March
19, 2005 at Lake O The Pines in East Texas.
Neither of us
had ever fished this lake for crappie. I had the week
off from work, so a buddy and I headed up to the lake
a few days before the tournament to scout things out before
Wes and I would pre-fish later in the week.
We spent the
better part of the morning and early afternoon just graphing
the lake and marking spots on the GPS to fish later. I
knew I had another day to pre-fish, so my main focus was
looking for structure/brushpiles, and dropoffs.
The last couple
hours of daylight were spent in an area of the lake that
had a lot of submerged stumps and brush. We fished for
a little while and caught 15-20 fish, so I was feeling
pretty optimistic. A few were over a pound, but no monsters.
I had heard that it might take a 10-fish weight of over
20 lbs. to finish in the money this weekend.
Wes and I got
back on the lake the Friday before the tournament. The
wind was howling at 25-30MPH, when it had been absolute
glass when I was fishing the lake earlier in the week.
The wind limited our ability to cover a lot of the main
lake. I had received a tip that I needed to check out
the main creek channel that ran down the middle of the
lake...and to fish the edges of it. With the winds the
way they were, there was no way we could fish out there,
but we sure could get out there and mark the channel with
the GPS. It was a wild ride out there, but the Alumacraft
made short order of the water, and we had our channel
marked. After that was over, we headed back into the area
that I had caught fish earlier in the week. We fished
for a little while, and only caught 1 legal fish. I did
not like that feeling, but knew we could catch fish there
in the morning when it counted.
The morning of
the tournament arrives. I actually slept good the night
before, and we were both eager to get on the fish. A short
trip from the ramp put is in the area we wanted to start
with. We had planned to fish spot #1 until about 10am,
and then head out to the creek channel, as the winds were
back to almost nothing.
By a little after
9am, we were culling fish, which felt great. This tournament
was a 10-fish weight, and we had caught about 15 fish
already, and had 10 keepers. A couple over a pound, but
needed more. We ended up staying at that spot until about
10:30. It is hard to leave fish when they are biting,
but tournaments are not about numbers of fish caught,
but about the weight of the fish you are catching.
Spot #2 was the
main creek channel in the lake. We got out there, and
met up with about 10 other boats. We dropped our trolling
rigs down, and got set up. Our lines had not been in the
water 20 seconds and "Fish On", and it was no
small fish. We pulled up a good 1.6 lb white crappie that
was easy to cull off of a smaller legal fish we had in
the livewell. That was the only fish we caught at spot
#2.
We decided to
head over to a point that was nearby and watch the graph
for schools of fish. As we approached the point in about
22' of water, the graph went black with fish. We dropped
a buoy, dropped the trolling rigs, and it was a frenzy.
We pulled crappie in almost as fast as we could get the
baits down. Several fish over a pound, and we were feeling
a lot better. We knew we did not have enough to win the
tournament, but had certainly improved our total weight.
We headed in
to the weigh-in with a smile on our faces. We figured
we had between 12 and 14 pounds of fish. Final weight
for the 10 fish was 13.42 pounds...a tournament best for
us. This tournament pitted amateurs and professionals
all together. We finished 9th overall...ahead of several
pro teams and seasoned veterans...and a spot in the C.A.S.T
Classic Tournament to be held at Lake Oolagah, OK in May
'05.
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