2 Birds With 1 Stone Benefit Tournament

On September 29th I fished the 2nd annual 2 Birds With 1 Stone event on Black Lake NY. It was a chilly end of summer/early fall morning and water was calm as you could ask for. We got right in the middle for launch number. We heard our number and the skeeter was off. First spot we busted a top water, Ned rig, and even a crankbait for about 20/30 minutes with no bite. So we up and left to our 2nd spot. By this time the wind started to make a chop on the water. First cast with the Xzone nedzone resulted in our first legal fish, a 3.5lb largie. Fished a little more in the spot to only get one short. By the time we made it to our next spot the wind was pretty bad. We pulled up along the main lake side of an island where I picked up a 16” smallie for our 2nd legal fish of the day. By this time we only fished for little over 2 hours. Then we waited for a bite from 9-12 eventually we decided to go back and try where we started in the morning. We fished up and down the island/shoal to have a fish jump right before we were going to go crappie fish ? We started moving back up along the shoreline towards where the fish jumped. Nothing started out way back down and told my buddy to cast parallel to the shore. He did and bam fish on. He reeled in a 5.40lb tank largemouth. Next cast he found this ones buddy at the 5lb range. Both of these fish cane of a Spro Little John crankbait in a crawl pattern. We then scrambled now to find a fish in the 3 hours we had left. It came down to one last stop for about 15 minutes. Came to the back side of an island with a shoal where we seen fish jumping. I snagged my Ned rig and broke it off so reeled that I’m to retire and decided to let a wacky worm sit as the boat drifted in the wind. Looked over to find my pole “snagged” picked it up to find it was a 4lb largie to give us our limit with no time to spare. My partner for the day made one last cast and managed to hook up on a slightly bigger smallie then I got earlier in the day giving us a few more ounces! These last 2 fish came off a Xzone 5” True Center Stick in Black and Blue flake. I added the Anise Crawfish scent by Liquid Mayhem to everything I threw that day. The Northward strong winds and cold front made the bite very tough and different from the last event a couple weeks prior on the lake. We went in feeling pretty confident. Knowing we were around 18.5-19.5lbs. Got to the weigh in and had 19.60lbs which landed us 1st place. We decided to donate the winnings back to the gentleman and his family that the tournament was helping this season along with the 2nd place team doing the same this I believe! We even almost had lunker with ours being 5.40 and the lunker of the day at 5.66! Couldn’t have asked to win any other event! Black lake has always given me struggles but my buddy kept my mind focused and we grinded it out! Was the perfect way to end the season. Big shout out to all my sponsors helping me along this year! 5150 Plastics, Nines Optics, Xzone Lures, 444 Sportswear, Liquid Mayhem, WOO! Tungsten, and big shout out to Sunline and 13 Fishing for the great products I know I can count on while on the water! Also a huge shout out to my partner for the day Damian PD Trimm, came in clutch with the big bites(braking his personal best bass) and keeping both our heads in the game and positive all day. Also like to thank Angela Roach and her family for putting on a great tournament that I look forward to continuing to fish!