Our last day of practice was pretty much like the first. Actually it was almost exactly like the first. Dan decided we should go back and check a bunch of the places we fished the first day now that he had a better idea of how the fish were positioned on the drops. Unfortunately like the first day, there were still lots of small ones and no keepers. We hit a couple more new spots and Dan caught a few more good sized keepers. I was able to manage one keeper the final day of practice. As the sun started down over the horizon I was filled with mixed emotions about what to expect in the tournament.


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I knew exactly how I would fish if I drew someone who fished on Barkley. In all of practice we only saw 8 FLW guys on Barkley, so the chance of me drawing someone going there was slim to none; which I was happy about. I only caught 3 keepers behind Dan in 4 days of practice. Guys fishing Kentucky were making runs as long as 90 miles to fish large groups of behemoth largemouth. My only concern about fishing on Kentucky Lake was that I had no experience fishing on it. I asked Dan what he thought I should throw and he said if he was fishing there he would have a jig, worm, swimbait, and spoon. I had never seen a spoon that big before, let alone thrown one. I ran to the tackle shop to get some jig skirts, hooks and sinkers. And just like in this post I forgot the spoons. Our day off was nice and I spent the better part of the morning lounging on the couch. I went to the meeting and found out that people were absolutely smoking giant bags of largemouth on the south end of Kentucky. I heard whispers of bags as big as 30lbs being caught with single fish weighing as much as 10lbs. When they called my name I was half excited and half irritated. I was paired with Stetson Blaylock. Stetson is a great fisherman, and was pretty much my best competition on the Co-angler side. He however was able to switch to the pro side this year, and I'm still a little jealous about that. Jealousy aside, I knew at the least, we would have fun.