[March] April 2002 [Final Farewell]

Jeff drove us to the airport at 6:00 this morning. It was difficult to leave once again, after having a nice visit home with the kids and family. We flew to Memphis, where Geoff and Shelley King picked us up at the airport. We had left the truck and boat at their house, and they were hoping we would get to stay with them overnight tonight. Unfortunately, we need to be at the Ranger factory first thing tomorrow morning, so we just had lunch together before it was time for us to get on the road.

The drive over to Flippin wasn't too bad, and it was nice to have it just Dan and I in the car driving again. We arrived in the Flippin area around 9pm and slept in the truck in a Walmart parking lot.

Arriving at our campground around 3:30, we had time to set up our tent and get everything organized. We did not have time to do groceries though, so we grabbed Dwayne Horton, who is camped next to us, and the three of us went out to dinner at the top of the hill.

I'm still excited to be here though, and can't wait to get out fishing. First things first though, and I spent most of the morning setting up the new boat, which included installing my LOWRANCE X15's. In the afternoon, finally, we did get out on the lake, and while I did fish a little, most of the day was spent breaking in the new YAMAHA engine.

Today I fished mainly a crankbait in the flooded bushes. The original shoreline, where the bushes start, is eleven feet deep right now. I also fished a spinnerbait back in the shallower bushes. Never had a bite on either one.

Four years ago, the water was high like this for the FLW tournament and I got to follow one of the top-ten guys in the camera boat. He was flipping a three-quarter ounce jig in what they call trash pockets - places where pine needles, leaves, and floating wood collect and form a dense cover over the backs of small, steep-sided pockets. The key was high water, steep banks, and ultra-clear water. I have tried to duplicate this technique many times, but conditions were never right for it. They are now. I caught two fish flipping a TERMINATOR Jig into trash pockets late in the afternoon, including one three-pound spotted bass. That's the other nice thing about this technique - it has the potential to catch huge fish.

I spent all day today with a flipping rod in my hands. I fished those trash-pockets the whole time, and had four or five bites doing it. That's not too bad, especially considering that fishing should improve as the days go by. We had sunshine and temps in the high seventies today. Water temperature ranged from fifty-two to fifty eight, but for some reason in the last pocket I fished the water was up to sixty-two degrees. That will bring the fish up before too much longer.

I had six or seven flipping bites. Two were short fish, one a sixteen-inch largemouth, and three others I just plain missed. I'm wondering if I need to wait on the fish I'm missing - perhaps they are charging the bait and just trying to kill the crawdad, and would then come back to eat it after it fell down dead. I'll try that tomorrow. It's time I stopped jerking on fish anyhow.

A local tournament went out of here today with sixty boats. Annie went down to see the weigh-in. It was a team tournament, and exactly half of the boats zeroed. No fish at all. The winners had a six fish limit weighing eleven pounds. Apparently the locals don't have 'em figured out yet either.

The rest of the day I spent looking for clear water and fish moving up to the bank. I finally found some. The temperature hit eighty degrees, and I found three of four little pockets where the fish were up and fanning out beds. One problem though is that there's not a lot of clear water. One pocket will be clear but just a hundred yards away it will be too dingy for sight fishing. I'll certainly be looking for more bedding fish tomorrow though. I've been dreaming of sight-fishing on Beaver Lake for a whole year now!

I fished some more trash pockets today also, but the falling water I'm afraid is killing this bite off, and I had only one bite flipping the jig. That's okay though, if these bedding fish are going to be ready to bite by Wednesday. The last bed I found today had a two pound male locked-on, and both a three pound and a five pound female anxiously circling with the bigger one chasing the smaller one off.

Annie writes:
Yesterday the power steering pump in our truck burnt out, so as soon as I launched Dan this morning I drove over to the local Chevrolet dealer. I had no appointment, I was in a strange town and at the mercy of the garage, but they were very accommodating. I had to wait three hours, but I had no problem with that. At noon time my truck was as good as new. When we are on the road and something like this goes wrong, if Dan is fishing he can't be interrupted, so this is part of my job on the road.

GAMBLER 4" tube;
GAMBLER 6" Icesickle finesse worm;
GAMBLER Dion's Classic hula grub;
GAMBLER Swacky worm (floating worm fished "wacky" style);
TERMINATOR jig (3/4 ounce);
TERMINATOR spinnerbait;
Also a 3" worm on a drop-shot rig, and a Norman Deep Little "N" crankbait.

At the partner pairings meeting, I drew boat number 92. This was somewhat disappointing, for an earlier boat number would have allowed me to run directly to any one of the big-fish beds I've got marked on my GPS and be the first one there. As it is now I'll probably have to run to quite a few before I find one without a boat sitting on it. I'm sure I'll find plenty of new beds tomorrow too, but the weather forecast is calling for strong winds so that first hour in the morning, before things get stirred up, is much better spent sitting on a fish than running the boat around.

Annie writes: Seeing that Dan has put in so much practice time, he took today off. It gave us plenty of time to get the boat and all his tackle ready. The weather was beautiful and we had a GREAT day together. It helps to take some of the pressure off when you can relax on the last practice day like this.

The new YAMAHA ran great - this was it's first real test, the first time I've run it flat out for more than a few minutes at a time. Not a single boat passed me, and I passed a few myself during the twenty mile run.

I had decided to run almost all the way down to the dam, to an area of three little pockets with a number of bedding fish in each. I figured I had a better chance of finding at least one of them open to me doing it this way. As it worked out, I was able to pull into a pocket which had one boat already there, but that boat was working a bed on the other side and I was able to slide into position on one of my "big red X's" from the other day. It was a fallen cedar tree which had two big fish on a bed underneath on Monday. As I eased in for a look, I could see that one of them, a three pounder, was still there now.

The trouble with this bed though is the tree. It is very difficult to get a bait into the bed, and almost impossible to do it without hanging your line over one of the branches. On the other hand the tree offers the fish some sense of protection, which allows me to position the boat closer.

I worked this fish for fifteen minutes or so before making her bite. I was fishing the drop-shot rig at the time. When I jerked, I stuck her good. The fight went on for perhaps thirty seconds, but it all took place right there on the bed. With my ten-pound test line, I was not able to move her out of there. The line was wrapped on at least one underwater cedar limb, and as the fight progressed the fish managed to eliminate me all together. She was soon fighting just the tree, and we tried to get in there with the net before it was too late, but we didn't make it. She finally shook the hook out and raced away to safety.

That was my excitement for the day. After that I wasted time catching a fourteen inch largemouth, and then I went to every one of my other marked beds. They were either already empty, or had a boat sitting on top of them. The big disappointment of the day was that there were no new fish up. Sunday is when they started to come up, and Monday was when they made the big move. I went to places Monday afternoon that were barren just the day before, but when I returned I found three or four beds with fish on them. I figured that that was just the start, that they'd keep on coming after that. The surprise today was that I never found any new beds, nothing that was not there on Monday. And unfortunately, with all of the boats that are sight-fishing today, there are not enough of these to go around.

This afternoon I spent a couple of hours flipping the big jig into trash pockets, but as I guessed was going to happen the falling water level moved all of the fish out of these places. I spent some time crank-baiting a "can't miss" spot that a fellow fisherman told me about, and I even took my partner to his fish for the last half hour, but both of us ended up zeroing for the day.

It took me four hours, alternating back and forth between these two beds, to catch both fish. I caught the "other" one first, the one the guy couldn't catch yesterday, and it was a two and a half pound largemouth. Much bigger than it had looked down on the bed, perhaps because the bed was six feet deep. The other fish, the one I had lost yesterday, I made bite probably ten times throughout the morning, but each time it was too smart to grab the bait near the hook. I kept telling my partner that sooner or later he'd make a mistake, and finally he did. At 11:30 we put that fish, a three-pounder, in the livewell and went off to look for more.

Not far away, in another cove I had marked, some new fish had come up overnight. Big fish too, but very spooky, and they wouldn't let you get near them. I finally settled on one bed back in trees, where we watched a four-pound'er chase a carp away, actually biting the carp on the tail as it did. I thought this looked promising. As I circled around and got into position in the trees, I saw that there were actually two fish, a three pound'er and the four pound'er. Both were very spooky, and over the course of the next two hours I saw the four pound'er only two more times. The longer I stayed though, the more accepting that three pound'er became of my presence.

I worked that fish relentlessly, but it was in a very difficult position. I couldn't cast, pitch or flip. It was kind of a cross between all three to get the bait in there. I even tried throwing it in there by hand. I told my partner that even having zeroed yesterday, with five and a half pounds in the livewell right now this fish was worth $2,500 to me. This one would get me a check today.

I never did get it to bite. When I finally gave up on it, we had about fifteen minutes of fishing time left and a half hour run back to the weigh-in. I made one stop, looked for fish in the back of a cove, but didn't find any. I made another stop, and this time there was a fish, on a bright new bed right up there on the bank. With about five minutes remaining I started pitching to it. On the fourth or fifth pitch, BANG, he nailed it, and I stuck him. In fact I hung him right out of the water - my line was over a limb and the fish was dangling in mid-air. We crashed the boat through the trees to get the net under him, and soon had him safely in the boat. My partner measured it while I cut my line out of the trees and then extricated the boat. He said it was close, but he thought the fish touched the line at fifteen inches. I said just throw him in the livewell, and we'll measure him again when we get back. We had a twenty minute run and twenty one minutes to do it in!

Back at the weigh-in, which we DID make in time, I brought three fish up to the holding tanks. There, where they give you a last chance to measure your fish before presenting them to the weigh-master, that third fish did not measure up. I weighed-in just the two, for right around five and a half pounds. That was my total weight for the tournament.

I thought I was a decent bed-fisherman. I guess what I've learned this week is that I can catch smallmouth and spots okay, but I need more practice on the largemouth. And I'll be happy to do it, too. I like to bed-fish. I know that a lot of people have issues with this. It's a controversial topic. I don't care. I still like to do it. I like to watch how fish respond to my bait when it's right in their face. I like the challenge of making them bite, in ultra-clear water, when they're looking right at you and they know it's the wrong thing to do, but you make them do it anyway. That to me is a thrill. As for the controversy: for every hundred fish I catch off the bed, maybe one or two get taken away to a weigh-in; the others are all released immediately, and get right back to doing what they were doing before I caught 'em.

Ah, well. That's the end of this tournament for us. We'd like to have stayed to see the final two days, but on Sunday we have to be 1,200 miles away, in Washington DC, for the final event of the year in that "other" tournament trail.

This tournament is going to be historic for at least one reason: it will be the last draw-format tournament ever held by B.A.S.S. All of the major tournament circuits have switched over to a pro-am format, and B.A.S.S. recently announced that these Open events will convert over next year as well.

The major complaint we have about draw formats is that you have to split your fishing day with your partner. On this body of water probably half of the boats are going to head north on tournament day, and half south. It would be difficult to fish both north and south in one day, so unless a guy wants to risk not being able to fish on tournament day for fish he found in practice, the smart thing to do is to find some in both directions.

Today we fished south. Craig met us a daybreak at our campsite at Goose Bay, and we launched the two boats there. It was Annie and I in our boat; Craig by himself in his. We fished a bit in Goose Bay, then moved over to the Nanjemoy. On the grass flats there we started catching a few fish. I had a couple on a Rattletrap - strong, solid fish, but they wouldn't measure up to the springtime fifteen-inch limit here. Annie was throwing a TERMINATOR spinnerbait, and she nailed two beauties - both three-pounders that would easily keep.

From there we moved up to Potomac Creek, and fished the mouth of that. Nothing. Around the corner was Aquia Creek, with perhaps the best grassbed on the river right now. In fact they say this area was on fire just a week ago, everybody was catching 'em here, and a tournament was won with a huge bag of fish. Not so right now. They had a major cold front this last week, and though the weather's not bad now, the fish have not recovered yet. After checking this area out we motored all the way to the back of Aquia Creek, through miles of no-wake area, and fished until after 6pm. The only fish we caught all day were those ones in Nanjemoy Creek first thing, though we covered A LOT of water today.

Craig and I met at the launch ramp a few miles below D.C. We put the boats in and immediately crossed over to the lee side, where we could fish a little out of the wind and make a plan for the rest of the day. We decided to work our way north, up into D.C.

The first stop we made was at the lighthouse, at old Fort Washington. This is a small rock point, jutting out into the current flow, with a backwater area on either side. This is a community hole, and probably gets hit by a dozen boats on weekends and tournament days. There is a reason for that though, and today I experienced it. I had been throwing a TERMINATOR Jig, and a GAMBLER tube, black & blue and black & red, and never had a bite. Today I switched to green pumpkin on the TERMINATOR jig, and immediately got these results: I caught a limit of fish at the lighthouse, all fifteen-plus inches, in about fifteen minutes. Craig, in the boat right next to me, never got a bite. Wow!

We left the lighthouse and headed on up towards D.C. The wind never slacked off though, and that effectively kept us on one side of the river all day. We eventually gave up here, and ran back down to the protection of Mattawoman Creek, where the tournament is going out of. That was a mistake, for everyone else who was trying to escape the wind was hiding in here also. After leaving the lighthouse this morning, I don't think we caught another keeper all day.

With only one day of practice remaining, we decided to fish the D.C. area again tomorrow. Having never fished there before, there is a lot of water to cover and to eliminate. The success we experienced at the lighthouse though will do us no good come tournament time if we have no other fish to go to in that area.

So we went on up the river and stopped on the east side, within sight of the Woodrow Wilson bridge but still south of the city. For two days in a row now we've caught fish early in the morning, and then done very little for the rest of the day. For that reason, I wanted to be on what I hoped was a fishy area during prime time. Because of yesterday's success on a rocky point, near the river channel and with current washing over the area, I chose to start on another point today, at the mouth of a large grassy bay. We started perhaps a quarter mile apart. Craig worked in one direction, I worked the other, towards each other. By the time we met we had both had a few bites on the jig, but nothing we could get the hook into. We were both working the grassline (milfoil) in four to five feet of water, on the edge of the channel drop. Craig continued down the outside of the grass, while I moved in towards the bank and started fishing shallower. This was the key.

In one pass down the next three or four hundred yards I caught three good, solid fish before I stopped jerking on them. I shook off the three or four others, but simply couldn't take the jig away from a couple more before they stuck themselves. By the time I caught up with Craig again I was excited! I now had two spots within sight of each other where fish, big fish, were tearing up that TERMINATOR jig.

Craig in the meantime had still failed to catch any on his jig, and had switched to a Carolina rig. He was getting bit and catching smaller fish, with an occasional keeper. Annie, in the back of my boat, had not had a bite at all throwing a spinnerbait and a Rattletrap. I decided then and there to put all my other rods away and throw nothing but the jig for the rest of the day.

We continued to move north, passing under the bridge and fishing a number of places up the western (Virginia) side of the river. At the Pentagon we turned around and headed back down the Maryland side. Whether it was the tide, or the time of day, or whatever, for the third day in a row we failed to catch more than a couple of short fish throughout the remainder of the day.

By the time the partner pairings meeting began that evening, I was both nervous and excited. Excited because I had two spots to run to that I knew held quality fish, and nervous because of the draw format of this tournament. If I failed to convince my partner for tomorrow to go to my fish in the morning, that could be disaster. As it turned out, I drew out with a local fellow. Most often this is a good draw if you're not catching them in practice, a bad draw if you are. This fellow is not only a local, but also a full-time guide in Florida for half of the year. Uh-oh. I've really got some selling to do here.

We met and shook hands, and moved outside to discuss our plans. His name was Jim Towns, and as I was afraid, he wanted to fish south - forty miles from my fish. He had not even practiced up north, and had absolutely nothing to go to up that way. To top it off, remember how I said the other day that the fish were on fire down south a couple of weeks ago and a tournament was won with a big bag of fish? Guess who won it: Jim did, with six fish, twenty seven pounds! In what turns out to be perhaps the most significant event of the entire tournament for me, I somehow convinced Jim to ride in my boat and fish my fish tomorrow morning. We had both said our piece, and were standing side-by-side in that uncomfortable silence when you're waiting for your partner either to continue the argument, to give in to your arguments, or to suggest a coin toss, when he turned to me and said "Dan, I haven't ever done this before, and it's against my better judgment, but I will ride in your boat tomorrow and we'll go fish your fish."

(Still, a week later now, do not know how this happened. The more I think about it though, the more I realize that Jim's decision, however arrived at, was absolutely critical to my ultimate success in the following days. Thanks again, Jim.)

Take-off is at 6am. We are boat number ninety-something. That's bad. My plan for the day was to run up to the lighthouse. If I could get that spot to myself, and those fish are still there, then it's a quick limit, and I would want to stay there all day guarding that spot.

Of course boat number ninety-something is not nearly low enough to get there first, and there is a boat already working it as I cruise past. You probably could put two or even three boats in there, it wouldn't be against the rules, but it would definitely make the first guy mad. I kept the throttle down and zipped on by at 67mph.

Two minutes later I set down on my other spot. It was raining and windy. Yesterday was calm and bright. I didn't know if this would effect my fish or not. I did know that I felt pressure to make this spot produce, since I had sold it to my partner last night. The tide was very high this morning, and my first pass down the bank I made real shallow, pitching the jig up against the bank, into the laydown trees and the root systems of the standing trees. I had one or two bites and missed them both. We drifted around the corner into the slack water, and between us caught three fish in the next couple hundred yards. All were short though.

I turned around and went back the other way. Instead of pitching to the bank this time, I stayed out deeper and pitched to what looked like, at this tide level, open water. I quickly caught my first keeper, on the TERMINATOR jig. After depositing him in the livewell and re-tying my line, I fought the current back up to where I'd just caught him. Twenty feet from that spot I got that oh-so-sweet jig tap, reeled down a couple of times and reared back on it. Wow! This was a fish! Bigger than anything I had seen all week! She leaped out of the water and tried to throw the jig. Like every other fish this week though, this one had really sucked the bait in, and there was no way she was going to shake it out. When she finally came to the net and was safely aboard, she was right around five pounds. I think that was the moment when both Jim and I acknowledged that we'd made the right decision to come up here today. It was 7:30am and I had two fish that weighed 7 1/2 pounds.

By keeping the boat out and pitching out away from the bank, but still well inside the grassline, I had a five fish limit by eleven o'clock. One of them was so close though, I was afraid that by the time we got back to the weigh-in it wasn't going to measure. I asked Jim if he'd mind if we stayed there a little longer until I got one more good one. I'd had about twenty-five bites, and caught fifteen or sixteen fish. Jim had nothing, maybe three or four shorts. He said "Dan, you're really smoking me here today. You do whatever you want the rest of the day and I'll stay out of your way." He had tried every bait in his box, and just couldn't make 'em bite.

We stayed on this spot for four more hours, watching the tide drop out. Fishing slowed significantly, as it had every day this week, and I never got another keeper bite. What we did see though was that instead of it being open water where I was catching these fish, really there was a series of boulders in about three feet of water. This has to be what the fish are holding on. With twenty minutes of fishing time left we finally gave up on this spot and headed back. I told Jim I wanted to stop at the lighthouse if there was no one there. A guy was pulling up his trolling motor and leaving just as we pulled in. I picked up my magic jig (as I had begun calling it by this time) and made a cast. Nothing. I made a second cast, and was not even paying attention, talking to Jim and positioning the boat, when my line just took off and headed south. I reeled down and yanked. A fish! Here she comes! A good one, a solid three-pounder. This was my culling fish.

Jim just shook his head in amazement. We had pulled in to a spot that another boat had left just seconds before. I catch a three pound'er on my second cast.

The first thing I did after netting that fish was cut off that jig and hand it to Jim. He said "What are you doing?" I said "Are you kidding? I could be leading this tournament right now, in large part because you let me do my thing today. Now I've got my limit, and it's your turn to try this magic jig."

We ran out of time before Jim could make it work. After a nasty ride back to the weigh-in, which we just barely made in time (why do I keep doing this to myself???), I signaled to Annie when I saw her on the bank that I had five fish. She flashed five fingers, two times. "Ten pounds?" I flashed fifteen. I'm surprised she didn't faint. She told me later that she was thinking "He'd better not be kidding me!"

I was bagging up my fish, and there was one more in there who was oh-so close to the fifteen-inch line. These beat-em-up boat rides are bad for the fish. I measured him once - short. Rolled him over - still short. Rolled him again - still short… no wait! He touched the line! Was his mouth closed? Close his mouth. Measure… short. Try again. He touches. Mouth open though. Darn! What am I going to do?

Decision time. Do I throw back a two-and-a-half pound fish? Or risk it, and see if the officials can make him measure on their board. There is a big penalty if I lose this gamble. But there is also no guarantee that I can catch 'em this good tomorrow. I decide to risk it.

Up at the official's measuring board, it doesn't look good. There are two guys checking fish, and both of them are volunteers. I've made this gamble before, and I've found that you always want to get the guy with the most experience. Nothing against these guys, but neither of them look like they do this for a living. I hand my bag to one of them, and he dumps the fish in the tank. Four fish aren't even considered for measuring, and in fact draw ooh's and aah's from the onlookers. They're put back in the bag and what remains is just the one.

He gets measured. Short. Again. Short. The official is muttering that he's not going to make it. By this time we've drawn a crowd around the tank. Someone else steps up from behind and says "Let me try it." He measures… once, short, twice, short, three times… "He touched! He touched the line! Did you see that?!" "Five fish!" declares the official, and into the bag he goes.

Up on stage the weighmaster, Fish Fishburne, is up to his usual antics. The fisherman in front of me has his family in the crowd, and Fish insists on weighing one of this guy's young children. Hurry up! Hurry up! My fish are drying out here while I wait. Finally it's my turn. Fourteen pounds, fourteen ounces. Some people are saying I'm in the lead, others say 2nd place by one ounce. I don't know for sure. What I do know is that it feels awfully good to be up here in this position, telling Fish that I've got a magic bait that outfished my partner more than five-to-one, that all day long I never had another boat move in on me, and that I'm really excited about going out there and fishing again tomorrow.

Weighing Dan's first day limit.		Two beautiful fish...		With a five-pound kicker!

Off the stage I kiss my wife, sign some autographs, do an interview with Bass Times and another with a local paper. Next it's over to the ESPN camera crew. All of these guys I know very well from having worked in the camera boats so many times in the past. They are more excited than I to have the chance to get me in front of the cameras tomorrow instead of behind.

ESPN Interview		Newspaper Interview

We meet up with my partner for tomorrow. Another local angler, Jason Strobel, he has a reputation as a big-fish fisherman, and he knows the D.C. area like the back of his hand. Also, according to reports, he would be leading this tournament right now if he had landed all of the fish he had on today, or had his boat not broken down. As it is he weighed three fish for over nine pounds, is in twentieth-something place. He has a shot at it. This is not good for me. The worst part though is that he's a young guy, this is his first-ever B.A.S.S. tournament, and he is just way, way over-excited.

Of course the best draw for me would have been someone who caught no fish today, and who offers to just ride with me tomorrow and let me do my thing all day. That's not what I got. Jason did agree to go in my boat, and to fish my fish in the morning, but he kept insisting that if it didn't work out, he had tons of places to go up there to catch jig fish. He lost two four-pounder's today. He might be leading right now if he had landed those fish. Did I mention that he was over-excited? This is not what I need - someone who is going to be wanting to pull me off of my fish all day. So even though I proved my fish to today's partner, I'm now faced with proving it all over again tomorrow morning.

I met the ESPN camera crew on the dock at 5:30 this morning. They were there to wire us up with microphones, and to go over how they wanted to cover us today. They asked how I was doing, and I told them I was anxious, in part because my partner was just so excited. They said they would talk to him, and let him know that he'll get good TV coverage, but that they were really out there today to cover the guy in second place.

After the camera crew left us, I pulled out away from the dock to have my own talk with Jason. I told him that I knew this was his first B.A.S.S. event, that it was on his home water, and that he was doing well. I said I thought it was great that he was in this position, and that he was so excited about it. In fact if the day ever comes that you're not excited at a time like this, it's time to get out. On the other hand, I explained to him that I do this for a living. It is not my first time. I am controlling my excitement in order to focus on the task ahead. I asked him to respect the fact that I need to concentrate, and that I will not be very talkative or receptive, at least until I start catching fish. Then my demeanor can change drastically, and you may not be able to shut me up.

Jason was very receptive to this little talk, and I commend him for it. I just hope I did not come off as being a conceited jerk, but I felt I needed to say these things to him before I could concentrate on what I needed to do today.

Once we took off, my plan for today was exactly the same as yesterday. I was going to run up to the lighthouse, stop and claim that spot if there was no one already there. That didn't happen. Even though we were boat number twenty-six today, someone beat us there again! So it was back up to yesterday's honey hole.

We didn't waste time fishing up against the bank this morning, and we didn't waste time fishing too far upstream or too far downstream either. Instead I concentrated on just one little stretch, about a hundred yards long. Just like yesterday though, I missed the first two bites. I don't think they really want it first thing in the morning. The third bite of the day though made it all worth while. A fished clamped on to that magic TERMINATOR jig, and when I jerked on this one it just about broke my rod. The ESPN camera man was in the boat with us, and he was almost knocked over when Jason dove for the net and slid it under this monster as I worked it in close to the boat. Once aboard, I held it up for the camera. I turned and showed it to the BassMaster cameras and to the cheering spectator boats who were watching. She was at least five pounds. I must have been smiling from ear to ear, as well as mumbling all kinds of goofy stuff to the camera around that time. What a way to start the day!

A half hour later I put my second keeper in the boat, again to the cheering of the spectator boats. This is awesome. By this time, since I had caught two five-pounders within fifteen feet of each other between yesterday and today, I was really focusing on a very specific section of this bank, hardly moving the boat at all. In the back of the boat, Jason was great, offering nothing but encouragement, and not rushing me or crowding me in any way. I'm not sure he had had even one bite yet, so he was going through his bag of tricks back there trying to figure out how to catch 'em behind me. He did, too. He tied on a crankbait and with a special technique of his, caught a keeper out of water that both of us had just seined.

Encouraged, he kept throwing the crankbait and his next bite surprised us all: another five-pounder!!! I hadn't moved the boat in probably twenty minutes, and that makes three five-pounders from one little ten-yard stretch!

I said to him at that point "Jason, I want to thank you, for two things. First, for letting me fish my fish this morning and do my thing. That's exactly what I needed. And second, for showing me that these fish can be caught on something other than my magic jig, which they must be getting tired of seeing." He immediately offered me a bait identical to the one he was throwing, and I accepted. Thanks, Jason, for that crankbait caught my third keeper of the morning.

Around 10:00 I had one more good, solid jig bite, but I broke him off on the hookset. After that things really slowed, and by eleven I conceded that maybe that was it for this spot, at least for today. I had three fish for over nine pounds, and Jason had two for around seven. I told him it was his turn to pick a fishing spot.

Before leaving though I idled up to the boat who was fishing a few hundred yards away. It was Joe Horvath. I told him I was leaving, but would return soon, and if I promised not to fish beyond a certain mark then would he honor the water I had been fishing all day? He had already made up his mind that he wasn't going to come down and fish my water if I left. There are some really good people out there.

We took off and went up around the bridge, then up into D.C., and fished four or five different areas. Other than a couple of short fish we didn't catch any more. With an hour of fishing time remaining I asked Jason if we could return to our earlier spot and try to figure something out. It was dead-low tide when we pulled back in. Joe came down and told us that he'd had to chase any number of boats out of there, beginning as soon as we left. That's going above and beyond what I had asked of him earlier. Thanks, Joe. So we settled down and started fishing the grassline. Where else would these fish pull out to when the water dropped? It was slow, but my partner missed one on a Brush Hog, and then I got one more bite on the magic jig, but I broke him off again on the hook set! That hurts.

I weighed in only the three fish today, for around nine-and-a-half pounds. That was good enough for first place at the time. Of course there were lots more pictures taken of the big fish I caught, and when I got off the stage I did more interviews with the newspaper and another with the ESPN cameras.

At the scales the second day...		With two more great fish!

When I met my partner for tomorrow, Jeff Stephens, this time I did get someone who offered to just sit in the back and stay out of the way. He even offered not to fish, and said he'd feel terrible if he caught a big fish off of my spot. I said that that wasn't fair, that he paid to get into this tournament like everyone else, and that he should bring his rods and fish. Later on though, I did tell him that if he was serious about not wanting to catch one of my big fish, then he could just cast out into the grass all day, and not in towards shore like I was. He said that that would be fine with him.

My first place standing dwindled as the day wore on and the fishermen came to the scales. By the end of it all I had dropped to sixth place. I think that had I landed those two fish today that I broke off, I might have added another five pounds to my weight and remained solidly in second. I don't know what to do about that though - that's twenty pound line I'm breaking, and I don't have anything bigger. I guess I'll just keep a closer eye on it tomorrow, and retie every time I put any kind of stress on it.

The other reason I'm feeling calm today is that I have absolutely no decisions to make today. After the success I've had on that one hundred-yard stretch over the previous two days, I am committing to it for all eight hours today. I'm going to live or die on that spot, and I'm going to do it fishing the magic TERMINATOR jig and the crankbait that my partner gave me yesterday.

So we took off today, with the camera boat and spectators tagging along, with the exact same gameplan as yesterday and the day before. Race up to the lighthouse. If there's someone there, keep on going; otherwise, stop in and see if we can catch a few quick ones. As we round a bend fifteen minutes north of takeoff, the lighthouse comes into view. It is still miles ahead though, and we stare at it the entire time as we approach, trying to discern whether or not there is a boat sitting on it. Eventually it becomes obvious that there is not just one boat, but more than that. In fact, there is a camera boat, and probably spectators, too. It's one of the Top Five guys, but I don't know which one.

I race on by and sit down on my honey hole. Joe is already there camped out on his spot just above me. I found out last night that they took five that weighed seventeen pounds off of that spot yesterday. Coincidentally, we took five that weighed seventeen pounds off of my spot. Let's just pray that there's one more day's worth of fish left.

Right off the bat though, I got the feeling that it was going to be different today. I caught a short fish quickly on the crankbait, and my partner caught one out of the grass, but after that we fished for over an hour without any bites at all. Finally, I got a jig bite and put a nice fish in the boat, but no matter how sweetly I talked to it, it just wasn't going to stretch out and touch that fifteen-inch line.

At eleven o'clock I did put a keeper in the livewell. This gave us a little hope that the fish had just been waiting for the tide to get right, but it was a false hope. Nothing else happened. Eventually I wandered all the way up to Joe, to ask how they were doing. They had caught fifteen or twenty short fish, but only one keeper.

As I was hooking up the boat early this morning, long before the first light of day, I had spent a few moments looking at the moon. Big and round and full. As we were racing upriver this morning, I remember saying to myself how beautiful it was seeing the sun rise above the horizon on my right, with the full moon setting down on my left. Here's what I think was happening this week: These fish, these beautiful, fat fish that I had been catching now for three days, were moving up out of the river channel and getting ready to spawn. They were staging on these shallow rocks for a couple of days, and the full moon last night just triggered them to move on around the corner to do their thing.

Just one today for Daniel Keyes...

At the end of the day I weighed in just the one fish. I fell to nineteenth place in the final standings. Overall though, I'm still very happy with my performance this week, with all the media attention, and with just knowing that I was really close this time. We'll be driving home from this tournament feeling good about ourselves, and really, really looking forward to coming back.

And one final thing. Remember how I talked about having found the winning fish in practice in two different tournaments already this year, and then not going to fish for them on tournament day? Well guess where this tournament was won. At the lighthouse.

Link to: Final Farewell