2nd place finish FLW BFL ILLINI DIV

Saturday July 18th was my 3rd event as a rookie on the FLW BFL Illini div. The prior tournaments had been tough for me and were virgin waters. I had great practices but just could not put it together. This was the 2nd time around on Rend and I felt like I knew the lake a little bit better. I left on Wednesday the 15th and drove the 5 and half hr drive by myself down to the hotel to prep for practice on Thursday. Practice on Thursday consisted of me cruising around scanning both with my HDS 9s and my eyes. I ended up going to few of the spots I had caught fish last tournament to check them out but nothing looked promising. Then I decided to start from scratch and find new water. I looked at the Navionics and decided to run north. I navigated threw some stump fields and went to the spot I picked out on the map and started looking around. I quickly realized I had found the bait! Where there is bait there is bass! I found all sizes small fry bait, medium size and the big ones. I started flipping some bushes and quickly caught a 3lbr. Success! I went through it again and had bites but didn't set the hook. I left the area and went back to launch and pulled the boat out. That night I reflected on my area and tried to duplicate it on the map for the next day. Friday morning I had my friend on the boat and we headed up north again starting in a different area but in the same location on the lake. Wind was blowing today and so we decided to throw the spinner bait in this location. The bait were there and so were the bass. We immediately started getting bites and decided to leave them there for the tournament. We cruised around to different areas just explore for fun and got off the water around 1 pm. Tournament morning I wake up with pinched nerve in my neck and can barely lift my head off my pillow. My Luck! I took some Advil and off I went. I drew 49 out of 101 for flight which I thought was great! Immediately went to my area where I caught them slow rolling the spinner in the creek on the edges of the bushes and my Co angler caught the first keeper. The weather had been so steady all week and temps in the mid to uppers 90s so I figured the pattern would hold. After he caught his keeper I caught a ton of shorts but nothing to put in the live well. Soon enough it was 10 am and decided to run to my flipping area to see if they were there. 30 min later I flipped into a bush and set the hook on my 4lb 10 ounce Rend Lake giant. At last i was on the board with a really good one. We continued to flip the area with no bites. I then went with my gut and decided to go back to my spinner bait area. We got back in there it was like a light switch turned on. I hooked a 2lbr and put him in the well. 2 min later I hooked another giant that went 4.8lbs. Then we came back through and I caught one that measured 15 inches thank god. I had 4 in the well and was confident I had 12lbs. I tried to get my co a few but he only caught some shorts. It cooled off and the bites stopped so we decided to start flipping the other area before we had to head in. No dice. We went back to the weigh in and from talking to people I thought I would be sitting pretty. 6.8lbs was the leader at the time I weighed in and my bag on 4 fish was 13.00lbs. I was in the lead. The guy behind me had 5 and I knew he would be close. He weighed 13.50lbs. Which bumped down to 2nd but I still had big bass at 4.10lbs. I eventually lost big bass to a 5.3 but remained in 2nd through the whole weigh in where I ended up finishing. It felt great to grab some points towards regional and to have a nice FLW trophy on the mantle not to mention a nice check. In the end I trusted my instincts and kept after where I thought those fish would be and they were there. Ironically this was my first event out of my new rig! My 2015 Legend V20. I am missing the next event but will make the Super BFL on Shelbyville. If I do well on Shelbyville I will get into regional. Going in with positive attitude and hoping for the best and fishing my strengths! Thank you for the read! Good luck out there!