When I woke up and went out to the boat, I checked my batteries and to my dismay, they weren't fully charged. I hope this doesn't continue to be a problem. The third day of practice was windy once again. I decided to stay in the river and find some more humps like I had found the first 2 days. Kevin had gotten his Canadian license the evening before, so we weren't limited to NY waters anymore. We fished both U.S. and Canadian waters. By the end of the day we had pinpointed the bigger fish, with both of us having close to 18 lbs. The first day of practice, it was cloudy and the bigger fish were up on top of the humps. Today we found that once the sun came out, the bigger ones had dropped off the sides of the humps where the rock ledge dropped from 15 to 25 feet deep.

Dusty decided to finally show up today. He would be practicing with me for the final 2 days. The wind was supposed to blow 10-20 again, so Dusty decided to take me down the river and show me some of his largemouth areas. We drove about 30 minutes and launched out of a small ramp in Chippewa bay. We fished Dusty's best largemouth spot with just a few blow ups. He said he had never seen the area so void of life. The water was colder than normal, and the grass just hadn't grown in yet. After no luck fishing for largemouth I decided to run my hump pattern up in this section of the river. We ran a little ways from the bay and started fishing. It didn't take long. My first smallie was a hefty 4+. Once we figured out how the fish were positioned on the humps it was on. We smashed them! Dusty ended up with close to 18lbs, and I was up around 20. I was starting to feel excited and worried all at the same time. My incredible practice at Potomac ended in a very disappointing finish, and I was concerned I was heading down the same road.

My batteries were actually charged this morning and I was excited. Not only were my batteries charged, but the wind was only supposed to blow 10-15 today. I was finally going to get a chance to get out on the lake. We ran out about 25mi into Lake Ontario to an area known as the Ducks. The seas weren't too bad, and it only took about 35 minutes to get out there. We started out fishing some of the deeper reefs without success. I realized that the water temp was only 61 one degrees out here. I looked at Dusty and said "the water temps only 61, there's fish on beds somewhere out here". We went in shallower to throw a jerkbait and do some looking. I had a big smallie follow my jerkbait right by a rock. I reeled in and realized that the bass was on a bed. We looked around a little more and found 5 or 6 more locked on. It was my little slice of heaven. I was pretty sure no one else had found these fish. We went around the whole Island and ended up finding quite a few. After seeing what was out there, I was certain I could catch 18-20lbs if I could get out there during the tournament. To boot, Dusty had caught about 18 lbs just throwing a dropshot around while I was looking.