FLW Tour # 5
Kentucky Lake,
Water Temp: Kentucky-79 Barkley-83
Post Spawn


Being that the ride to Kentucky was going to be somewhere between 14 and 16 hours, I decided to leave at 3:45 am. The drive went by quickly and I arrived at the local tackle shop at 5pm central time. Berkley was having a Pro night there and I met up with Suggs and Morehead. We worked the event until 8 and then drove out to the camper that we were staying in. It was a nice camper with air conditioning, satellite tv, a kitchen, a couch; it was awesome. And best of all it was free!

Dan was sleeping in one room and Suggs and I were sharing another room. I told Suggs that if he snored at all during this tournament I would suffocate him while he was sleeping. The alarm went off entirely too early. I still had nothing tied on for the tournament and pretty much threw my stuff together in a big heap and into Dans boat. Dan has lived by the lake for his whole life and has won tons of money fishing here. He doesn’t like Kentucky Lake though, and spends most of his time fishing on Barkley Lake. The two lakes are connected by a short canal and either lake can be fished during the tournament. We launched about 30 miles away, mid-lake on Barkley. The first spot we pull up on is loaded with short fish (under 15”). We caught about 15 fish before I caught a small keeper on a football jig. By the days end, we had fished for 13 hours and that one keeper was it for the day. Dan was seriously disappointed and concerned about the rest of practice. BASS had just absolutely crushed the fish here the week before and now the bass were nowhere to be found. Later on we heard from Suggs that they caught over 100 bass, but only 2 keepers. That was pretty much what we heard all around; lots and lots of fish being caught, but only a few keepers.

We launch right by where we're staying the 3rd day of practice. Dan wants to check out the northern end of Kentucky and Barkley. He wants to try and find an area he can fish on his way back towards weighin. We don't catch anything after 30 minutes on Kentucky and Dan decides this is a sign for him to fish exclusively on Barkley. I really wanted to get some experience fishing on Kentucky since that's where 95 percent of the field would be fishing. Oh well, I'll just have to go with it. Dan caught them pretty good again. Not as many, but the quality was still good. He caught about 18lbs. I never got a keeper bite. Even though I wasn't catching anything, I was learning allot. I had never seen someone stroke a jig properly, or fish a 1oz spinnerbait, or throw a 14" worm, or rip a 6" spoon. It was awesome! The techniques I learned in this practice will no doubt help me in the future. While I wasn't very lucky with the keeper bites, I did somehow manage to lasso a little drum with a Carolina Rig. I thought I had a good one until I dragged it up to the boat.


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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.

This post will be fairly short. I'm leaving for the Reynold's customer appreciation tournament on the CT River in just 5 hours. From there Dusty and I are driving down to the Potomac River to practice for the first Northern Stren event. So I finished the first day on 51st place. It was a little further down than I would have liked, but it was still possible for me to make the cut with one of those giant bags that some people were bringing in. The guy I was paired with the second day had zeroed the first day because of mechanical issues. He had found a school of giant fish, but they were 80 miles away. Because he had zeroed the first day he decided not to make the long run. My chances of catching that big bag were becoming slimmer by the moment. We fished all day within 20 miles of the launch. I was able to catch 5 keepers by the skin of my teeth. I caught my 5th one on my last cast of the day. My boater was only able to catch 3 for about 5lbs. As were flying back to the launch I start to think of all the things that could possibly go wrong and ruin my day. I had worked so hard to catch the 5 I had. The boat could break down, we could get in late, the livewell could have drained while we were driving....... and it did. I had the worst feeling that when we stopped the livewells would be dry and the fish would all be dead. I almost asked him to stop, but realized that if we did we would not make it back in time. We pulled into check in with just 2 minutes to spare. I opened the livewell and apparently I had foreseen the future. The fish were lying there half dead in an empty livewell. He backed the boat up to fill the livewell faster. One of my fish didn't look good, and one of his was dead. I put some ice and rejuvenade in there and the fish all came back to life. Tragedy had been diverted. I weighed my fish, all alive, for 11-10. Good enough to move me into 40th place; another mediocre finish. I got a check for my effort and moved into 2nd place in the AOY race. Not bad, but 1st place is 97 points ahead of me. I could still win Co of the year, but I'm going to need allot more luck than I've had so far!

Nice report Jess, that funnel would have had me heading back to the launch. You must spend as much time on the road as you do on the water. Keep at it.