Brushy Creek

[super ron]

Jay,

Give us details on the tourney.  Heard you came in third.

Ron

[Javelin 409]

Maybe Bassthumb will fill you in on the details.....

http://www.geocities.com/tricountybass/tourn.html

Fishing was good.  They were fat and healthy and plentiful.  We found fish Saturday deep, along creek channels, points and roadbeds.  We checked out some spots, they checked good and we moved.  They were stacked, and I mean stacked on Sunday a.m. in our first spot.  We were on fish fast.  Jeff and I had a good system and a pretty quick limit.   We used finesse worms and dropshots in green pumpkin then picked up DD 22's (cranks) and burned em to get down on a 7' rod, 10lb fluro line and I mean burned em 5:1:1 ratio.  We threw back probably 5 limits and another 40 that were short.  Jeff and I had the second biggest weight of the T @ 13.5 lbs for 5 fish.  Our other boat had 3 fish for 4.5 lbs.   I think only 3 or 4 limits were weighed.  I had a 3.35 and big bass of the day was 4.02.
Cell phones were authorized for the team event and they were used....... to call the other boat and let them know what the pattern was.  We did that.  The key was lighter line, a 7' rod and you had to burn the crank to get it deep.  Cranking slow or normal didn't cut it.........  If you've never thrown one of these cranks, let alone all day, they will wear you out fast.  BUT, and I say BUT when you are catching THAT many fish, you do what you HAVE to do to catch them.  I don't necessarily like to throw DD22's, but they were tearin up the fish!
We had a good time, caught alot of fish, but when you know you have at least 12 lbs in the box and are that kind of crank pattern and see everyone throwing jigs and plastics and we were hitting that many on cranks.... we had a chance to do better and move up on the podium with more $$.

[Skipper (ripnlips)]

hahaha, I heard school opened early at Brushy Creek Elementary

[Bassthumb]

Yessiree school was open early...

But I don't know who was schooling...Jeff or Jason.  We (in the other boat) were the schoolees.  I did learn a few things though.  It wouldn't have hurt to had a light-line set-up in the boat, it also wouldn't have hurt to own some DD22s.

I think over this winter, I am going to take a hard look at rods and reels, instead of stocking up on [terminal] tackle.

A person really needs to be able to change gameplans, and having the equipment sure would make it easier.

but now for the rest of the story:

I worked Sat on a shallower pattern, and found quite a good one, using two types of shallow lures.  I had a hell of a [Sat] morning using a shallow CB and the brush hog in thick timber.  So,naturally, my half of the team went into the thick stuff, especially for the morning bite.  I caught one short on the 10th cast, and an hour later caught a slew of dinks on the brush hog.  realizing we were not helping, we moved out onto a road bed, and started cranking (sorry, using a BPS deep diver) and caught a keeper in relatively short order.  we moved south west on the road bed and caught 2 more 14.99" shorts when the cell rang from the J's.  we immediately headed north, and ended up playing cleanup to our other boat.

I caught a second keeper in the first spot where J&J were, again, not using a DD22 or a 7' graphite rod (but then again, I only caught 1).

We went up lake even further, and had to by-pass a known spot (someone was on it), when they pulled off, J&J pulled on and killed them again, hence a second cell call, and I ended up snagging our #3 keeper.  they again moved up the lake, and found another spot, and called us on the cell, but all we could do was catch 14.5"ers..

So now, I am considering adding another rod to my locker, rigged almost exclusively for cranking...  It will more than most likely be a Esox https://www.esoxfishingrods.com/index.php crankbait rod, and either a high speed Diawa, Quantum, or Abu reel.  Picked up the DD22s yesterday...

B
T

[super ron]

So, what made you go to burning a CB?

[Javelin 409]

I felt like burning some calories that a.m. 

I was always under the impression, and still am that using a moderate retrieve ratio is perfect for cranks.  The real I had was a 5:1:1 and Jeff was using a 5:8:1.  Too fast of a retrieve and the crank won't perform true.  I had in the back of my head I had to get this bait down quick.....so, I/We would bomb it as far as we could, roughly 40 yards and I would crank like mad at first to get it down.  Well, I must have kept cranking like mad through the cast and started catching fish, sometimes 5 out of 6 casts.  It worked, it sucked, we pounded fish.

I wouldn't say playing cleanup referring to BT's post.  I don't think you guys were realing fast enough.  Just IMHO.  The fish were there, it was a matter of getting down to them.  Every spot we hit, 17 FOW and cranked like hell.  We caught fish, regardless of how many boats were there.