I am terribly behind on my blogging...

My apologies, as mentioned in earlier posts, waterfowl season absolutely wipes my blogging abilities.  With that said, waterfowl season is over for me and I am ready to get back into fishing mode.   We had another incredible waterfowl season this fall, The last half of the season was as good if not better than the first half.  For those of you who came and hunted, I'd like to thank you, and we hope to see you back this coming fall!  Believe it or not I've got all of my hunting equipment cleaned up and put away, safely stored until next season.  I'm currently in the process of sorting through the fishing equipment and getting ready for what Lord willing will be another great year on the water! Check back, now that I'm back home, I'll be checking in more frequently,
God Bless,
Duke

We're Halfway through...

We just crossed the halfway mark of waterfowl season. Like all good things there should be a halftime break, but duck hunting doesn't come with one...so, I took it upon myself to do just that, take a break.  Actually, it's only going to be a one day break but I've enjoyed it.  All kidding aside, celebrating Christmas is an important part of life, it shouldn't be missed, it's the birthday of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (not just a reason to buy give and get presents).  With that said, I'll give the first half of the waterfowl season a B, there have been some tough days, but there have been some darn good ones also.  The first part of season was a little rough, especially during the full moon cycle, but as of late it has been fantastic!  I look for the second half to be better yet.  We're under a blizzard watch for my part of the country, and that should have the ducks running wild, with more cold weather forecast this weekend, it should make for some fun times in the duck blind!  I know my blogging has suffered during duck season, you can also follow me on twitter...  @Duke_Jenkel is my account name, so until next have a Merry Christmas, and take some time to remember the reason for the season!
God Bless,
Duke

Out of the frying pan and into the fire...

I'm sure when you read the title of this post you immediately recognized it as a well-known, often repeated one liner.  I couldn't think of a better way to describe the last three weeks.  I fished a BFL regional event on Lake Cherokee in early October, rather than bore you with mundane details, I'll give you the cliff notes version...I finished tied for 125th...with a total weight of 0lbs and 0ozs.  Yup, 0-0, your eyes have not deceived you.  It will go down as the second worst event of my career to date.  What did I do wrong?  I found a good dock pattern up river, never attempted to apply it to the docks on the lower end of the lake.  the fish up the river didn't cooperate very well and presto magic...0lbs-0ozs.  There ya go, its a not so subtle reminder that you can never work too hard, and you have to keep an open mind.  And with that the fishing season ended. 
Round two: Off to the races...well not literally, but I parked my boat and started my tractor.  I help my uncle farm, I missed a little bit of the harvest season due to my last two events, so I had some catching up to do.  During the harvest, we managed to plant close to 300 acres of wheat.
The final turn: As our harvest season ended it has allowed me enough time to start getting ready for duck season.  The season starts for the club that I guide at on Thanksgiving day, season in the area where I live starts this Saturday....I'm still behind, but I'm gaining on it.  We've got a pretty decent corn crop at our club, a little bit of water in the field (a few ducks are already using it) and more to be added any day now (the pump is in and ready). The pits are ready, all but a little camouflaging and we've got to check a few decoys and that'll be it!
Shew!!...this fire is hot.  Although it's a long season (nearly 80 days counting goose season) I'm ready for a single focus, no running around, just get up, go to the club, go home, sleep, repeat.  I'm getting excited just thinking about it!  Check back, as season nears and during season I'll be providing some updates on how it's going! We're all hoping it'll be a great season!
God Bless,
Duke

PAA Finale...Arkansas River-Muskogee, OK

The Arkansas River PAA event looked to be pretty interesting to me.  I enjoy fishing river systems, I've had some of my better successes on rivers.  This one had the make up of the type of tournament I like. for starters, in the summer/early fall weights are not usually real high, secondly, the AR river is not known for producing giant weights when its good.  Couple these two things together, and if you happen to figure anything out you can put yourself in a good position to do well.
As you read in my last post I finished 3rd at Illini Division BFL on Lake Shelbyville, I left there immediately after weigh-in and headed for Oklahoma.  I was on the water and practicing by 11:00 am Monday morning!  Not too bad for a cross-country commute.

Having never been to this river, and not knowing much about it. I chose to focus my first day of practice on the pool we were launching from.  I spent one more full day in this pool before driving up and looking around in the next pool up. Based on the practice I had, I felt like it was definitely going to be a low weight event, or at least I hoped so, because I wasn't catching them very well.  I had put together a little pattern running the mouths of creeks and sloughs, fishing any available wood cover located in these areas.  I had my best success throwing a SPRO Fat John Square-bill crankbait (Citrus Shad color) on the wood cover.  I had also caught several on a Lunker Lure buzzbait. It was apparent that the shad had begun to congregate at the creek mouths to begin their fall migration, which in turn had the largemouth grouped up pretty well in these areas.
The first day of the tournament was pretty below average.  I caught a small limit, managed to lose the best fish of the day, right at the net.  My limit weighed 8.61 lbs which had me in 29th place.  Not really how you want to start off the derby.  Day 2 was much better, between my co-angler and I, we boated 23 keepers for the day, my limit weighed 10.59.  I moved up to 20th place for the event, missed the top ten by a pound and a half.  That lost fish still haunts me a little bit but I can't change anything about it now.  I will say this, if ever you doubt the readiness of a lure, by that I mean sharp hooks, good not, split rings in good shape, stop right then and address the situation, bar none! That's advice I need to remember.
All in all minus the one lost fish, I had a decent tournament as far as execution goes. Without a doubt I had a good pattern identified, I believe had I adjusted to flipping a bait with a swimming tail on day one instead of a jig, I would have cracked the top ten.  The reason is this, my co-angler was getting 4 bites to my one flipping a Zoom Baby Brush Hog, when I switched, it was just about a complete reversal of those stats.  Which brings up another key bit of information, when the fish are feeding heavily on shad, it has been my experience that a "swimming tail" bait will generate more bites than a jig or other soft plastic baits.  Again, more information I need to remember.
The PAA season is over for me, I missed qualifying for the 2012 Toyota Texas Bass Classic.  Lord willing I'll have the opportunity to compete at the national level again next year.  Only time will tell.  Until then, keep your hooks sharp and your line tight!
God Bless,
Duke

Shelbyville, Oh Shelbyville...

The regular season for the Illini division of the BFL is over, it almost ended with a bang!  I pulled off a very respectable 3rd place finish.  Which moved me up another 15 places in the points race and qualified me for the BFL regional on Lake Cherokee the first week of October.  Despite having what I considered a very poor practice, I was fortunate enough to put together a pattern that at best I thought had "some potential".  As it turns out, the more I fished on day one of the tournament  and expanded on what I had found, I realized that I was definitely on to a little bit of something.  I managed to catch four keepers on day one that weighed 6lbs 7ozs, good enough for 8th place.  The top ten finishers from day 1 qualified to fish again on day two.  I expanded further on my little pattern on day 2 and managed four more keepers that weighed 7lbs 3ozs.  I jumped an amazing five places on day 2 to finish the event in 3rd place.  That's a great finish for me on Lake Shelbyville, I've always said it's my arch nemesis of lakes.  Looks like I won this round! Hallelujah!  lol. 
Here are few pics form the event. I'd like to show you more pictures of the baits I used to catch them, but I had one rod in my hand for this whole event, minus a few failed attempts to get a bite on other baits. So, here is a pic of the one and only I bait I caught them on:

Yep, you guessed it, the ol' Shakee head, a 1/8ths oz fished on 8lb Seaguar
fluorocarbon using a Powell spinning rod model 703 MEF

Hardware!!

 Always remember, in a tough tournament (low weight or tough bite) a finesse approach is hard to beat, it may not be the way to win a tournament, but it will definitely generate bites!

God Bless,
Duke

The Final Round...

I spent the first part of Labor Day weekend on Lake Shelbyville, preparing for my final BFL regular season event.  I'm spending the last part of the weekend preparing tackle, getting items ready and loading my truck for not only this event but also for the final PAA event of the season on the Arkansas River in Oklahoma.  When I leave Shelbyville, on Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon (depending on whether I make the final day cut in the BFL tourney) I will make a mad dash to Muskogee, OK.  Practice for the PAA event in Muskogee starts on Monday morning, so it's looking like I might be getting a pretty heavy dose of windshield time.  I'm not sure how long the trip is from Shelbyville, IL to Muskogee, OK but I'm sure it's in the 8-10 hour range...that does not excite me at all, especially knowing I'll make that drive right after I load my boat from the BFL tourney.  Regardless, I'm excited.  It's been a tough year, from several standpoints, but I've been blessed to say the least.  So, I'll head into these last two events, fired up, ready to make the end of the year a good one!  Keepin' the attitudes positive, 'cause ya never know the outcome 'til it's over.  To quote the great Yogi Berra "It ain't over 'til it's over!", Lord willing we'll end it on a high note.
God Bless,
Duke

Coming Home...

Sometimes it's nice to get back to where everything started.  I can vividly remember launching my 16' aluminum boat on the waters of Rend Lake 20 years ago.  Green as a gourd, hardly a drop of experience on public water, yet absolutely stoked about what layed in front of me. 
I spent countless days in that aluminum boat, can't tell ya how many fish I flipped over the gunwales of that rig, but it was a bunch.  Sometimes I think I'd like to go back, me and the ole 16 footer, the 40 horse Merc wound out, running as hard as it can go. There was no pressure to perform, it was just me, the pond and some ole green fish that had every ounce of my attention.  Trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together, good times indeed. 
The past five weeks I've had the opportunity to come home, I've fished five straight events at Rend Lake, something I haven't got to do in years.  The result, it's been a good five weeks.  Of the events I've fished one was a pro-am event, the other four were team tournaments.  The result: five top-ten finishes, including a "W", a win that is.  Undoubtedly it's been a blessed five weeks.  But more so than the tournament finishes, I believe the blessings lie in the memories.  Every day I spent on the lake in preparation for these events brought back some of the best memories I have, memories of the big one that I caught over there, or how the first time I learned a small piece about fish behavior and what I could do to trigger a reaction from them.  Days spent in the ole aluminum rig, thinking I knew it all, learning now that I didn't.  I see places where there "used to be" a stump or a lay down that "always" had a good fish on it.  Now, all I have is the memory, just like the cool days of fall fishing til dark, running back to the ramp freezing to death 'cause you didn't bring enough warm clothes. It's memories of sunsets and sunrises, pitching a jig in a flooded buck bush and watching the whole bush shake, just waiting for your line to jump, standing practically on your tip toes in anticipation of the bite.  Chills run down your spine, a smile comes to your face, just thinking about those things.  The lake has changed a lot in the last twenty years, I guess we all have and don't realize it.  I said it earlier, the last five weeks have been great, fishing at home, reliving memories of days gone by...thank God for the memories.  Don't let em go!
God Bless,
Duke

Illini Division BFL at Rend Lake

August 4th marked the fourth event of the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League (BFL) Illini Division.  A considerable amount of my fishing history, both early and recent has been centered around this lake.  I can't begin to tell you the countless hours I've spent on this body of water, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.  It's a neat deal to compete on your home water, to re-think all of the successes, areas where you've caught em, areas where you haven't.  It can be a double edged sword, those memories can be the first step in derailing a good tournament plan.  They will distract you from paying attention to what is happening in the here and now, and have you thinking about the great catches of yesteryear. I was fortunate during this tournament to avoid those pitfalls, concentrate on the present and turn in another top ten finish.  Here's how it all took place:

Practice
I practiced about 6 hours for this event, which is way less than I normally would have, but as I mentioned earlier I have a lot of history and knowledge of this lake.  In the early hours of my only practice day, I was able to identify not only what type of cover and locations the fish were positioned in, but also a couple of baits that were very productive.  I spent the remainder of my short practice riding around looking for similar areas.  One huge key was the presence of bait fish.

Tournament Day
Weather conditions had changed significantly for me during the tournament in comparison the the weather I experienced during practice. We went from slick sunny and calm in practice to windy cloudy and occasional rain showers. I had developed an early morning topwater pattern during practice.  It would last until the sun got up good, then it would fade away.  My initial thoughts on the clouds and rain had me pretty excited as I thought I would be able to run my topwater pattern all day, this turned out not to be the case.  Although I probably spent too much time chasing this pattern, when I reverted back to the methods I used to catch them in practice, I began to catch the quality sized fish I was looking for.  Overall I caught 9 keepers, carried a five-fish limit to the scales that weighed 10lbs 6oz and finished 9th.  I only had one fish get away from me all day, and of course it was a decent one, not a giant, but one I could've culled out a smaller fish with.  Regardless, I was blessed with another great finish, which in turn moved me up another 11 places in the standings to 36th, safely inside the top 40 cut for this fall's regional event on Lake Cherokee. 

Baits & Equipment
Here are a few of the baits I used and the equipment I used them with for this event:



3/8ths oz Lunker Lure Buzzbait - White on White.
Thrown on 20lb Maxima Ultragreen monofilament line with a Powell 705 CEF Max series rod




Hawg Caller 1/2 oz  Spinner bait in Sexy Shad
Thrown on 15lb Maxima Ultragreen monofilament with a Powell 714 C H Ex-fast Endurance Series rod




Gambler Tube in Black neon, 3/8ths Strike king Tungsten Weight and a Gamakatsu 4/0 hook
Thrown on 20lb Seaguar fluorocarbon with a Powell 775 CEF Endurance Series rod.


With only one event left in the regular season (September 8-9 at Lake Shelbyville) I feel like I'm in a decent position to qualify for yet another BFL regional and give myself a shot at returning to the 2013 BFL All-American.  But first, we gotta geet by Lake Shelbyville, Lord willing we will!

Home from Neely Henry

The Neely Henry event is over.  I finished the event in 29th place, although 29th place does not accurately describe my tournament, it does explain exactly where I finished. 
With out going into great detail, I had several key opportunities this week to do well, to use a basketball analogy, the ball rolled out of the hoop instead of in it.  Had those opportunities rolled my way, I'd have made the cut and be fishing today, since they didn't...well, you get the idea. 
Practice for this event went well.  I had identified a couple of productive patterns, mostly situational patterns, and had the bites to do well.  I felt like I made good decisions the entire event, kept myself in areas that were productive and even though the event was a grind, I fell like I kept my head in the game.  I had a limit for 11.18 lbs on day 1 and followed that up with a somewhat anemic 8.46 lb limit on day two.
The morning bite on Neely Henry was great this week.  I managed to generate several quality bites each morning swimming a jig around the bank grass in the back ends of the creeks.  Later in the day when the morning bite shut down I would switch over to a pattern of running rip rap banks adjacent to the creek channels, which produced a lot of bites for me.  I fished the rocks using a Lunker Lure Shakee head in 1/8ths oz paired with a Zoom Red Bug trick worm or finesse worm.  It seemed that several afternoons they would start the turbines at the dam (used to generate electricity) and the current that was created positioned the fish at the mouths of the bays and sloughs.  You catch these fish throwing a shallow crankbait, I used a Lucky Craft 1.5 and a SPRO Little John crankbait when running this pattern.  Often, once you got a fish to bite, you could catch one every cast.  Ultimately, lack of execution on day two caused me to finish lower than I had hoped for.  Monday the points list will be updated, and we'll see where I stand.  The last event is scheduled for the Arkansas river in Oklahoma in September.  All in all I'd be wrong in not mentioning that I was blessed this week to find several productive patterns, that generated the bites I needed to do well, I just didn't get them all in the boat.  Even though it stings a little, I know I was fortunate to have figured out what I did, and for that I'm thankful.
God Bless,
Duke



I threw the SPRO Little John with a Powell 703 CB Glass rod
on 10lb Maxima Ultragreen monofilament line



When shakee heading the riprap, I used a Powell 703 MEF spinning rod
and 8lb Seaguar fluorocarbon line.



The 1.5 was tied to 12lb Maxima Ultragreen monofilament line and thrwon with
a Powell 703 CB Glass crankbait rod



When I flipped the grass, I used a Big Bites Bait "Yo-Mamma" on a Gamakatsu 4/0 heavy cover flippin hook
on 25lb Seaguar Fluorocarbon line and a Powell 775 CEF rod



Kindling Fires and Building Memories

On very rare occasion do you get the opportunity to witness a first.  I'm not talking about winning a tournament, I'm talking about witnessing something happen for the first time, specifically watching something happen for the first time through someone else's eyes.  I got that opportunity this week and I gotta say I had a blast doing it!  A group of my friends from high school got together to eat dinner the other evening, and through conversation, one mentioned that their youngest daughter loved to fish, but had never fished from a boat and I believe she had never caught a bass.  So we planned a trip.  Results: Boat Ride-check, Bass caught-check, Ear to Ear smile-check!  We had an absolute blast! Watching her eyes when we took off and ran down the lake was absolutely priceless.  She caught quite a few fish, she's a drop shotting machine!
Needless to say, it's always a great time watching some one experience their firsts! I have to believe there were some memories made yesterday!

Here's a few pictures from our trip:

This was her biggest of the day!



My job was taking them off of the hook...she can catch 'em!