I woke up at 1:30 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. Got up about 3:30. Checked the wind conditions on the computer. They had improved some. 3:45 hit the shower. 4 a.m. leave for JBT to sign up. 5 a.m. Teresa opens up. I sign in and wait for my partner. 5:15 he gets there and signs in. Ty and Casey show up. Ty makes jokes,we leave.
Lots of fog on the ride to Perry. We get to ROCKYS store for the breakfast bar. NO BREAKFAST BAR on Sunday. We eat a BREAKFAST PIZZA out of the carousel. Junior Dice and his Seatrout partner Laura show up. We talk awhile. Still 1 hour before daylight. About 7 a.m. we leave ROCKYS for the Fenholloway ramp. Get there in the fog and launch the boat. My partner Ashley puts his 90 Mercury in high gear. The Triton is doing 40 mph down the middle of the river..in the dark..in the fog. We pass a pole on our left. He makes a course correction to the right. There goes another pole. Another correction..another pole. Then he says "grab the rail and hang on". There goes another pole then another. Then he says "you can let go". Of course I couldn't let go.
Then he tells me we were in 6 inches of water with a mud bottom and had to be moving fast to get out of the river. Then says there are rocks on each side of the mud and in the fog wasn't sure if he was in the right place. 
We get about a mile out and the fog begins to break a little. We head towards Rock Island. Near there we stop aon a small rock bed and start throwing topwater.
BAM!! My partner puts a nice 19 incher in the livewell. Then nothing. We move to another spot. BAM!! He puts another 19 in the boat. Then BAM!! another 18.5 in the boat. I switch to a hard jerk bait in hopes of helping him. BAM!! I put a nice 23" in the boat. We set up on the drift again and he gets another nice trout. We aren't doing too bad. Not yet 10 a.m. and we have a limit. He decides there is enough water by now to try go down to Keaton and try for a couple big fish.
Off we go. About 12 miles later we zoom into about 1 foot of water and start throwing topwater again.
Ashley nails a chunky 4 pounder. I pick up 1 at about 20". He has a couple hogs pull loose from his plug. BAM!! I snag another 23.
We put both 23's on the balance scale and release the lighter fish. We fish a while longer and land nothing else.
We make the run back towards Fenholloway and fish several spots we have done well in before. Nobody home. We fished and fished and never caught another fish.
Back on the trailer about 2:15 for the ride to JBT.
We got there and was greeted with some hot off the grill HOTDOGS courtesy of Teresa Miller at JBT.
They were good. Thanks, Teresa.We had no idea until we got back that we might have a chance to place in the tournament. Several teams were talking about no fish or less than 5 fish. We thought we were the only ones struggling with only 8 fish for the day.
Several teams brought some impressive looking fish to the scales. As the weights were called out, we knew we had been beaten.
Zack Bahorski and Eric Worrel weighed 12pounds 4 oz and had a 4 and a half pound big fish. Eric Keyser and Bryce Hill weighed 12.4 with none over 20". Several other teams were in the 11 to 12 pound range.
We waited and weighed last still hoping. We had no idea our fish would go over 13 pounds. In fact they went all the way to 13 pounds 11 ounces.
I want to thank my partner Ashley for having a good plan that worked.
I want to congratulate Zack,Eric,Eric and Bryce for a strong finish. And everyone else who fished and tried. Some times the plans just don't come together.
Best lures for us were;
bone colored Zara Spook,
gold colored Renegade
New Penny 7" GULP jerk shad.
We need to give Eric and Zack a run for there money this year... We're coming boys!!!
