OH Ivie Texas Bass Couples West 3.27.11

Good Grief! I am not sure who ordered the cold weather and they certainly don't want me to find out! It was down right cold all day! Well until about 2:30. When Frank tells you he is shivering so hard he can't tie on a new lure, IT"S COLD! This tournament was out of Kennedy, so we had to get up and over there to get in the water in time for live well check. Frank wanted to hit a place by the dam early and that's where we headed. We actually thought it was going to be a good day. He boated a 3+ on about his fifth cast. And then there was nothing. We didn't stay there much longer, nothing was hitting and the wind was killing us. It wasn't a heavy wind, just cold. We went back to flipping the hardwoods with the same worm. Had a bit of productivity, but no size. We had 4 fish in the boat early, but we needed a kicker over 18" and we just couldn't get it. Late in the afternoon we decided to head to the ramp and fish in that area until weigh in. I am so glad we did. Not only did the clouds finally break, we upgraded lots of fish. I was so glad to get rid of that little guy that weighed less than a pound. We ended the day with four fish going 7.57. I told you we would be wanting the fish we had the day before! Even though we froze it was a good day! Any day is a good day when I'm on the water with my honey! Love ya' Frank and thanks for putting up with my antics on the boat!

Final Tournamet for TBC West - It was Hot!!

Frank had been to Ivie the past two weekends with no luck. Some times pre-fishing gets you discouraged instead of helping you out. So Saturday, I actually went with him. I didn't do much fishing. I hate pre-fishing the day before a tournament. I love to fish tournaments, I love to pre-fish at least two days before, and I love to just go fish for the sake of fishing, but please don't make me pre-fish the day before a tournament. So when I wasn't sleeping, I was taking pictures. It was a good thing I did, because I sure didn't take any today! It was just to hot and we were fishing hard.

We hit the lake a little later than what we intended, but we sure did enjoy our breakfast at Concho Park Marina and the visitation with our friends. We did make it out early enough for sunrise, so of course I had to take a few pictures of that. I tried to get Frank in some to change them up a bit.

If I had a dollar for every sunrise picture I have, I could probably fund our fishing habits! You just never know what your going to get when you aim the camera into the sun and can't see what you are actually looking at.

These next two pictures are reversed and I am just too tired to fix them!

We don't fish up in the creeks much. Why? I don't know. We used to fish creeks all the time. So we headed up into Elm Creek just to see what was going on. I can't remember if he was throwing a Texas or Carolina rig, but I do know he was throwing a brush hog, watermelon with the tail dipped in chartreuse. He pulled out this nice little guy probably between one and two.

He threw a buzz bait most of the morning, actually more like most of the day which is odd for this time of the year! He caught this nice little keeper about 9:30 yesterday morning. He had a few more blow ups on it, so we marked this spot and headed on out into the main lake.

We marked a few new humps we hadn't seen before and headed up into the creek. This young lady couldn't decided weather to run off or come on down and check us out. She posed long enough for me to get a couple of pictures, then she was off. We see deer around the park all the time, but not very often when we are out on the lake. Isn't she an odd orange color? All the deer are this color right now. Usually they are more brown before the turn sort of grey during the winter. They sure do show up in the brush!

After loading up and getting our showers, we headed over to Elm Creek for registration. On our way over Frank said he saw a plane on the lake. And sure enough he did. We tried to get to a good place to take pictures before they took off, but didn't make it. We could tell it was a Coast Guard plane, but couldn't figure out what they were doing. Some of our friends were still on the lake when they landed and they went over and talked to them. They are based out of San Francisco and just came over to check out the lake. Pretty neat if you ask me. It's not every day you get to see a CG plane land on a lake in west Texas!

After a wonderful dinner and some strange happenings at Big O's in Valera, we headed back to Concho and of course had a bit more fellowship with our friends before we hit the sack. Had to get up at five this morning! Two days in a row just kill me!

Most of the morning on Sunday, we threw our buzz baits into stick ups. Not these kinds of stick ups, that would be to easy.

These kinds of stick ups! What you can't see is the grass just below the surface of the water. Chunk, wind, pick off the grass! That gets old after awhile! I think you can see Frank's buzz bait in this picture. This was right at sunrise. Remember, I didn't take many pictures today.

I bet Frank threw that buzz bait until 11:30. I changed over to a spinner bait after a bit. It's easier to get the grass off one of those. And it's what I caught my one little keeper on. Frank caught four of his on the buzz bait I think. I kind of forgot some stuff today - I am sure it is the heat wiping out my brain cells!

We stayed here most of the morning then headed over to the dam to fish some of the new humps we had found with no luck. Then headed into Elm Creek. And after that we headed closer to weigh in where we finished out the day. We were going to keep fishing until about 3:10 because we were so close to weigh in, but after a check on the fish and finding we had some stressing out, we decided to call it a day. We finished the day with five fishing weighing in at 12.16. Points but no money! The story of our lives.

This was the last monthly tournament for the West Region before the Championship (being held at Amistad) and Pam said we may have made it into the top six. After checking out last months standings and estimating the points today, it will be a push. It would be nice but I am not getting my hopes up. We have one more tournament for the Panhandle region. It's in two weeks at Lake Stamford. Maybe we can catch enough there to end in the top six. I'll let you know!

Have a great week!