Tough Tournament

Here is a little recap on the tournament I fished August 3rd on Badger Lake. I was able to pre-fish on Saturday (August 2nd) since I had never fished this small natural lake before. It is a deeper lake that is clear, it had 15-20 feet of visibility. Which made the fishing tougher. During practice I found a couple of places that held decent fish. I even caught a nice largemouth that weighed close to 6 lbs, but the fishing was still tough. I only caught a couple decent fish all day during practice. So I knew it was going to be a grind going into the tournament. I got off the water at 6:30 pm on Saturday to head to a friends house for the night. As I was taking the boat out of the water the winds picked up drastically. Once I got to my friends house I realized they had lost power due to the brutal winds. Fortunately my friend had a generator so I was able to charge the boat batteries for the tournament the next day. The power never came back on, so that meant no way to charge my cell phone and having to take a cold shower. The things I endure to fish!! I woke up at 3:00 am to a very dark and silent house, I then got the boat ready and headed to the lake. The tournament started off great for me. I was able to catch a fish very quickly in the morning on a reaction bait! It then started to get tough later in the morning. I proceeded to loose two decent largemouth on a Spro Little John DD one right after the other. Then I went 4 hours after that without catching a keeper. The sun got high later in morning and it got even tougher. I was able to catch a lot of small non keepers just nothing over 12", my Bass Pro Shops measuring board got a workout! Finally after what seamed like hours without getting a good bite (it actually had been a lot of hours) I set the hook using a V&M Shakey Shad on a good fish and I fought it back to the boat only to have it come off as well. I thought to myself "this can't be happening", on my very next cast I hooked another good fish with the Shakey Shad but it came off close to the boat too. Believe it or not it got even tougher for me after that. I went another 2 hours without a decent bite. With a hour left in the tournament I hooked into a good smallmouth drop-shoting the Shakey Shad with my own Signature Series Team Rainshadow Revelation spinning rod. I fought the fish and worked it to the side of the boat where I was able to use my Bass Pro Shops net to land the 2-3/4 lbs fish. That fish would turn out to be my second and only keeper of the tournament. Back at the scales I ended up in the bottom of the pack. It was a tough tournament for all competitors with 13 lbs for a 5 fish limit winning the tournament. There had been talk from the guys that know the lake real well that said it could of very easily taken 20-25 lbs to win prior to the tournament. I think that having the tough post front conditions like we had added to the crazy summertime pleasure boat traffic made it the toughest tournament I've fished in a long time. That's fishing though, you never know what mother nature is going to throw at you! I'm going to keep on working hard at it and hopefully the next one goes better for me! My next tournament is September 27-28 on Banks Lake. It should be a very good tournament, I know Banks way better then I knew Badger! So I'm getting excited all ready!