Just finished up the 3rd stop of the Bassmaster Central Opens on Lake Neely Henry.
I guess you could say this is my home lake. I've probably spent more time on Neely Henry than any other lake in the country.
Even though I've spent so much time on it, I knew it would probably be one of my most challenging tournaments.
When you have so much experience on a lake it's very hard to erase the memories of those past experiences, the good ones and the bad ones.
The lake is in its fall transition and I knew I would need an open mind to do well in this event. So erasing those memories would be crucial.
Neely Henry has been fishing really tough for the last few months but we had some recent cool weather and I thought that with the cool weather and the water temp falling into the high 60/low 70's that the fish would be starting to feed up for the winter.
As I started practice, I thought my plan was going to work out as I quickly started catching quality fish shallow that were feeding aggressively on bait.
As practice continued with each passing day and warmer weather moving in and high reached into the mid 80s, the bite got tougher.
It got to where it was really tough to get a bite. You would have to fish miles between bites. Just picking up one here and one there. No consistent pattern.
It was hard to make a plan for the first day of the tournament, but I felt from practice that if I could cover enough water in the first couple of hours of the morning, I could pick up a couple of decent fish on top water, chatterbaits or a crankbait.
The first morning I did just that and picked up 2 nice 2.5 pound spots in the first hour. I picked a couple more on a shallow gravel bar by 9 am and was off to a good start.
It quickly went south and I didn't get my 5th and final keeper of the day until 1:30. I ended the day with 9.11 and was sitting in 32nd place but only 1lb out of the top 12.
Weights were stacked close!
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