Last Saturday my partner Jeremiah Payne and I got out to fish a Sonora bass tournament on lake Comanche. I was able to get out a few days prior to pre fish. Water clarity was 3-5 feet and temps were still in the low 70’s. I had heard that the lake was full of fingerling Largemouth but had no idea what I was in for. I started my pre fish throwing big baits like punkers and River2sea S-wavers trying to imitate the small bass. With in the first 20 minutes I had landed over 10 fish between the two baits. None of the fish were over 12 inches. I quickly realized if I was going to catch any thing bigger I had to get it threw the schools of smaller fish that were all over the lake. I switch my approach to targeting deeper water in the 20-30ft range with a 3/4 oz under spin. I was quickly rewarded with a solid spotted bass. I continued to run that pattern and also dropped a 3/4 oz spoon when there were a few larger arches in the 20+ depth. I always left a spot after catching a keeper to be sure I didn’t exhaust the fish I was finding. I was able to put together a limit for around 11lbs.

Game day didn’t go quite as well! Our first spot were I had got my best bites in prefish was occupied so we decide to just go get a limit of of one of the island tops I’d had some success on days prior. Sure enough we put a small limit in the boat on the spoons paired with the Falcon BMC-66MH. The medium heavy rod is always crucial when fishing spoons to keep fish from throwing the spoon. We then shifted gears and went out looking for those couple of better bites. Unfortunately we never found them. We made two small culls throughout the day ending up with 9.50 lbs. I figured it was going to take 13-15lbs to win but at weigh in it was obvious that it was just a tuff day out there. 1st place had 10.28, 2nd and 3rd were tied with 9.55 and 4th and 5th were tied with 9.50. There were two other tournaments out the that day and the heaviest bag I heard of went just over 12lbs that came on jigs. It’s a great time to take a kid out to get them interested in fishing, you can literally throw anything and catch 8-12 in bass all day! Good luck out there and I hope this helps.