NBSFA Lake Utopia Qualifier

A typical tournament day at Utopia over the last few years has been hot and sunny with lots of recreational boater traffic. My brother commented earlier in the week that it would be nice if it rained, to cut down on the boater traffic. Well we didn't need that much rain! Depending on exactly where you were, it rained between 3" and 7" in the surrounding areas on Friday. The canal where the water typically exits the lake was running backwards and pushing chocolate brown water and debris back into the lake. Current was running backwards by 3 - 4 mph. The water rose by over a foot throughout the day. A number of teams settled down to fish the areas outside the mouth of the canal, just outside the dirty water. The fish seemed to bite in spurts throughout the day. Every time one boat got a fish, several others seemed to as well. We finished the day with just over 10 lbs., good enough for a third place finish. We finally post a top finish to get us jump started on our TOTY points race. We'll be looking to put up a few more top finishes at the next 3 tournaments, if we have any chance of defending out title this year.