Suwannee River Tournaments

So a few weeks back, I fished a series of Wednesday-night tournaments on the Suwannee River in Branford, Florida launching at 5:00pm and weighing in at 9:00pm. The series lasted about 2 months with a tournament each week, so I am going to give a little rundown of my finishes and what I figured out on the ever so changing Suwannee River. Here goes. Week #1: So the week before, it was announced that there would be a new series beginning on the river, a $40 entry fee with guaranteed $1k to 1st place. I figured I'd fish them, that way even if I don't win, I'm not out a ton of money. Plus, it helps out a friend get more boats and recognition for his tournament. So I didn't even prefish for this derby and you could tell. By the time tournament day came around, I hadn't been on the river in nearly 4 months and on a river that changes on the daily like the Suwannee, that's bad news. See, the Suwannee is an interesting place, it doesn't pattern the same way the rest of the state does. It's completely spring fed, so the water is the same temperature year-round, only differing 2°-3° in late December-early January. Anyways, we almost bomb the whole deal pitching to cypress stumps and laydowns. But right before weigh ins, I figure something out and I start hammering them on a Strike King Series 3 crankbait with Trokar TK310's. So we wind up catching a limit worth 7lbs 12oz and getting 4th place out of 19 boats. 9lbs 6oz won, big bass was 4lbs 8oz. Week #2: We prefish the day before the tournament and to my suprise, they are still on a crankbait bite, so once I recognized that, I began trying to broaden my lure selection. I tried flipping laydowns, spinnerbaits, football jigs, shakey heads, buzzbaits, prop baits, jerkbaits, everything. But the only thing I could get them to bite was a Chili Craw and Orange Belly Craw Strike King Series 3 crankbait. Come tournament date, I'm jacked because I believe we have this thing down packed. I lay out all of my 6'9" Medium Crankung Duckett Micro Magic Pros with Quantum Smoke HD's of varying speeds on the front deck of my Nitro Z-7, ready for battle. We launch, run 6 miles up the Santa Fe River to our first spot, and right off the bat catch a 2lb Suwannee Bass, then a 1.5lb Suwannee Bass, and then another 2lb Suwannee Bass. After about 20 minutes with no bites we run farther up the Santa Fe to our next spot with isolated boulders and submerged piles. We catch the rest out out limit, nothing to special, but we have a limit before 7:30pm nonetheless. Being as we have a pretty decent limit for the Suwannee, I'm feeling pretty comfortable. So we run back to the Suwannee and about 3 miles up river we begin cranking on a channel bend that almost always produces a fish. About 10 minutes in, I'm thinking about where I'll run to next as I make one more cast, perfectly to the right of a lay down in an eddy, I crank down three times, and BOOM! I catch a 3lb 15oz Largemouth which is giant for this river. My limit now sits at about 10.5lbs and I have it locked in. We continue to fish around for the remained of the tournament, just fishing the bank as we drift down current. 8:30pm rolls around and we decide to head in to avoid other boats traffic. We went on to win the tournament and big bass with 10lbs 12oz/3lbs 15oz for $1,350 Week #3: Everyone had to work everyday this week, so we weren't able to prefish this time around (big mistake ?). We pull up that evening, pay our entry fee, and launch and you can hear the other guys whispering, "He's the guy that won last week" and "Here's the hammer" and I'm not gonna lie, it felt good. So I'm going out with all the confidence in the world that I can do good again. I was wrong. The fish completely changed from weeks prior and we caught two Suwannee Bass all day for 2lbs 7oz and 9th place out of 30 boats. This week, we only caught our fish by flipping the very few areas of matted vegetation we could find with a Blue Craw Strike King Rage Bug, rigged on a 3/4oz Strike King Tour Grade Tungsten Weight, and a Trokar TK310 Flipping hook with Crawlic Liquid Mayhem. Week #4: Had to work this Wednesday night, couldn't fish. Week #5: This week, we made sure to prefish after the butt whooping we got a couple weeks prior. We never really found them out this time around, the river came up about 4ft and really blew it up honestly. But we still fished because I had nothing better to do. So we launch, and I place about 7 rods on each side of the front deck of my Nitro, all rigged differently. Junk fishing at its finest. I have everything from a 6XD to a KVD Sexy Dawg Jr. tied on and I'm ready to go swing for the fences. We battle it out for a good 3.5 hours and 8:30 comes along. We have a respectable limit, suprised we had a limit at all, given the conditions; nearly black water, water temp dropped 6°, and nearly all shoreline cover is not submerged. We weigh in wind wind up in 2nd place overall with 7lbs 6oz. Big bass was 3lbs 1oz, 7lbs 13oz won. Week #6: Worked again, couldn't fish. Week #7: Worked again, couldn't fish. Week #8: It had officially been 3 weeks since I was on the river, so of course, we prefish hard again. This time the river was back to normal height, water temp was normal (76°F) and the water was the normal tannic, sweet tea color. I knew what the deal would be. I was wrong. Completely. After not getting a single bite all day on the Strike King Series 3, I decide to slow down and go back to the roots, a Texas Rigged black Strike King KVD Fat Baby Finesse Worm with a 1/8oz lead weight and a 2/0 Trokar TK110. I absolutely demolished them. No mercy. Straight destruction. Tournament day comes and it's the last hoo-rah for the season and I'm ready to go out with a bang. We head out, run to our first spot, catch out limit and we're done in about 1 hour. So we head in, stop by Ellie Rays, grab some wings and wait for weigh-ins. 9:00 comes around and everyone is nervous because I said "I want to weigh in last for dramatic effect." (?) 9lbs 1oz is currently leading the tournament and it's finally my turn to weigh. I pull out my mesh bag, lay it on the scale and BOOM! 15lbs 1oz of pure Suwannee River STUDZ! We won the tournament and got big bass at 5lbs 7oz for $1,600. I can't wait for next season, it was nice to fish some tournaments mostly for fun, but now it's time to make a run at the Elite Series. Wish me luck in the 2018 Bassmaster Eastern Opens!