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Last week at Wheeler Lake I managed to achieve one of my goals, the one about enjoying each day of fishing. I enjoyed the week because I got to catch lots of bass using my favorite techniques in shallow water. Unfortunately, they were uniformly too small to make a big hit at weigh-in. You would think a jig and spinnerbait in the flooded bushes would produce at least one big bass during competition instead of just during practice.
After an event like that, it is soothing to recall the details of an event that produced a better result. The better result that comes to mind this week is the 1991 Bassmaster Classic on the Chesapeake Bay near Baltimore. That's the one I won, of course, and as usual, there was an amazing chain of events that led to the win.
There was a pre-fish period about 30 days before the event and after several days running around and fishing the Bay, I identified two potential patterns. One was targeting laydowns in a tributary creek in the upper bay. This worked best on low tide. The other potential pattern involved the submerged vegetation in the upper Susquehanna flats. Because it appeared less dependent on the tide, this seemed the more reliable pattern.
I might have found more, but I went home to Oklahoma early because I missed Tammy and the twins, Hunter and Tanner, then five years old.
When Classic time came, two practice days were scheduled immediately prior to the competition. Then along came Hurricane Bob. Bob wiped out the first scheduled practice day, leaving us just a single day to sort out the fishing.
I spent the morning of practice working out the wood pattern in a big creek that I felt had the most potential. The tide was already rising when the day began and the resulting catch rate was pretty dismal.
The day escaped quickly, and I found I didn't have time to run the 20 minutes to reach the major grass beds in the Susquehanna, so I chose to stop and fish a small grass bed in the Elk River. I had noticed this great-looking area during my pre-fish period but had no strikes there. It was on my route back to Baltimore, so I stopped to at least check out the potential of a grass bed, not the grass bed, but at least it was grass. Pretty grass, too.
My first cast to the grass clumps resulted in a bass, about 3 pounds. I gave a similar spinnerbait to my press partner and he caught a fish that weighed 2-15 on almost his first cast too. I know how much it weighed because in those days the press guys had a big bass competition during the practice day and this bass won the $500 that day. Press anglers fishing during Classic Practice? Only on their own time, nowadays.
That little stop was the key to my winning the event and I owe it to Hurricane Bob. I ended up catching virtually all my winning bass from that little grass bed and the adjacent riprap.
If you take notice of any significant, memorable event in your life, you will undoubtedly have made several decisions that led to the event. Some of these decisions may have been beyond your control, but still they led to the outcome. As I think back to the Baltimore Classic, I am reminded of many decisions that put me in the right place and time to win. I can take credit for making the decisions, but I have to thank Bob for making the right choice more obvious.
So, thanks, Bob!
Since I'm headed back to the Chesapeake for the Northern Open next week, I wonder if I can expect another hurricane. Probably not, but I hope to make a similarly good decision, or several of them.
If anybody has a similarly remarkable chain of events that produced a wonderful outcome, I would like to hear about it.
For more information about Ken Cook's career and and his Tarbone Ranch, go to >KenCookOutdoors.com
Click here to read the next installment as Ken Cook blogs about his final season on the Elite Series.