Kentucky Lake Stren Series Event

Whew!! I totally missed the boat on this one. I started the week's practice flipping flooded bushes and willow trees. You could catch a hundred fish per day doing this, but end up with your best five keepers weighing only 10 lbs. I knew I would need more weight than that to do well, so I ventured off-shore, in search of productive ledges.

In five hours of fishing ledges, I had a limit that weighed around 17 lbs. So I dedicated my whole last day of practice to finding more ledges.

On day one of the tournament, I went flipping to get a quick limit, which never materialized. At around 9:30 I started fishing ledges, and managed only two keepers by days end. I probably fished 30 -40 ledges in 6 hours, all of them places I had found in practice, places that were holding good quality sized fish. Needless to say I was not in the best of spirits knowing I had put myself in terrible position after day 1, I beleive I was in 147th place. Not where you want to be considering the Stren Series is a four tournament series where you accumulate points at each event (the higher you finish, the more points you get) to qualify for the Stren Series Championship.

Day 2 started much better, by 11:30 I had approximately 15 lbs of fish with four keepers, knowing one more good bite would put me in real good shape, it never happened. We experienced severe storms, high winds and a torrential downpour that when it ended, apparently shut down the fish in the area I was fishing. I never boated another keeper, however, I did end the day with 15.01 lbs of fish that moved me up to 89th place. Not great, by any measure, but definitely a huge improvement. Thank God for one good day to keep me from digging myself into too big of a hole in the points race.

With all of that being said, this experience is yet another chapter in my endless attempt to figure out the why's and how's of Kentucky Lake. And of course, a little more work in the character building area. Enough said, about Kentucky Lake...I need to start thinking about the Detroit River, that's stop number 2 for the series. Until then God Bless!