Newman Lake Tournament: 2nd Place

This past weekend was another Spokane Bass Club event. This time we fished Newman Lake, a lake I know pretty well since it is close to home and I am able to get out there quite a bit. Going into the event I knew it would be a drop shot tournament. It always works there and my confidence doing this is very high. I went out the day before and fished some new areas and caught two really nice fish and with my past experience I had a great feeling about the tournament.

I started off the day at three stretches of docks, hit them all for about 20 minutes and caught two at each spot. It was just after 7 and I was already culling. I caught them on a 4.5" Roboworm in several dark colors. After I had that quick limit I felt relaxed and decided to start with the Eco Pro Tungsten Heavyweight flipping jig in 1/2 oz. I switched between that and the drop-shot and caught quite a few more fish but still only had around 10lbs at 11:00. 

It was foggy and overcast all day and then it began to pick up wind speed and the fish really turned on for me. I started at a main lake point and just fished while on the trolling motor for three hours straight, hitting every dock in between. Once I caught a three pound fish on the jig I didn't put it down for the rest of the day and slowly culled out all of my original fish. It didn't really seem to matter about depths or bottom composition, the fish were really just keying on the docks. I fished as shallow as 2 feet and as deep as 12 feet and caught them on the sides and front of docks. The biggest factor I think was how much water I covered, it was non-stop pitching for most of the day and I had my trolling motor on high just hitting the highest percentage areas.

This was also one of the first times where I fished my Powell Endurance rod for an extended period of time and it was great. I only started pitching with it since my regular rod broke a guide and I am happy I did. The rod is a flipping model, the 775 Endurance, it's 7'7" and I was able to pitch much further with it.

At around 1:00 I had around 14lbs and was feeling pretty good about my bag up to that point when I hooked into a good one. The fish weighed 5.83 and won big bass of the tournament. It also allowed me to cull out a 2.50lb fish and put me over 17lbs.

I thought I would have a good chance to win but still fished hard looking to upgrade some more. When I returned to the weigh-in I knew it would be close since it seemed like everyone caught big fish. I ended up 2nd, losing by half of a pound. Overall it was a great event and I had a blast catching that many fish.

I recorded the tournament and will have a video up soon. The big fish of the tournament will not make the video because my GoPro batteries were charging during the time.