Falcon Lake Tournament day 1

Today I woke up at 5:30 and got ready to go catch some fish. I had a really positive attitude and knew the weather would put a lot of guys out of it mentally from the get go and that got me to really focus on the task at hand.

I met my partner at 6:30, launched the boat, and motored through the fog to the blastoff site. The fog was of great concern to the tournament director who worried about our safety. Because of this concern he held us from blasting off for about an hour. We headed out onto the lake at 8:30 and gunned it to our first spot. On my partners second cast he landed a 5.5lb fish. I was stoked because it mean we were around fish. About 5 minutes later I felt the familiar tick and swung big. Fish on. Got him to the boat and put him in. The fish was about 3 lbs. YES! Monkey off my back and a big confidence booster. I was using a carolina rig with a magnum fluke in watermelon red flake. I knew after that fish that I would probably not put down the c-rig the rest of the day.

About 15 minutes later I got my second fish on a Carolina Rigged brush hog in watermelon red flake. Then I followed that with my 3rd and 4th fish on the same bait. Things were working out really well and I was stoked. I needed 1 more fish for a limit and then I needed to go big with a donkey. A few casts later I got a solid bite set the hook hard and as I did I literally bent my reel handle in half. As I struggled to reel I was unable to keep the pressure on the fish and get him in. Lost my limit fish.

After moving to another spot the weather began to really take its toll. The wind was 30mph and the rain was coming down fairly hard. I missed my next two bites one of which I was able to feel the weight on before he popped off. Decent fish. So a few swings and misses and I still need my limit fish. An hour or so goes by and finally I get a bite and set the hook. There it was my 5th fish. It was a huge relief to catch that fish. For the rest of the day I continued to cull up by ounces but lacked the big bite I hoped for.

As we started to head back to the weighin we gave ourselves 2 hours to get back. As we got around a point heading into the main lake my heart sunk. The waves were 8 feet and my boater looked over to me and told me we were gonna have to call someone to come get us and we could not weigh our fish. We decided to just go fish and enjoy the rest of the day until someone could come get us. Within 5 minutes my boater got a bite and set the hook on a good fish. The fish was about 5lbs. He looked over at me and asked if I wanted to try the run. "Hell yeah, I didn't come this far to not weigh fish," I said. So we prepared the boat and ourselves for the worst boat ride imaginable. As we removed the graphs and loaded up our gear the wind died down for a few minutes and gave us a small window to run the left side of the lake. We went as far as we could until the waves started up again. With no other option we decided to keep going and just pray we make it to shore. With 8 foot waves crashing everywhere we had the roughest ride imaginable. We speared a few waves, shattered his trolling motor into pieces and each got thrown around like rag dolls but we made it to weighin with 20 minutes to spare.

As I looked around I realized many guys had 2 or 3 fish and some even had none. I was a bit optimistic. Once I got up on stage and weighed my fish I was surprised to see 13-00 pop up on the screen. I figured I had a little over 10 lbs but to my delight I weighed in higher and was currently in 7th place.

When it was all said and done I ended up in 18th place after day one. Ironically the guy I am partnered with tomorrow is one position below my boater from today. My pro Ricky Campbell weighed in with almost 19lbs and is currently sitting in 24th place.

I am very confident heading in to tomorrow and hope to go out and show Texas what us California boys are all about.

Wish me luck and watch my weigh in live at 4:00pm (Texas) or 2:00pm (California)