Golden State Shootout: Day 3, Saturday at Clear Lake

Well, I thought it was going to be a real good day. And I guess it would have been a good day if I’d been fishing on any other lake in any other tournament.

I caught a little over 17 pounds and that put me at 68-9 for the tournament. That would probably lead any other tournament we have this year. But not this one. I finished at 26th place.

The thing about it is I’m not that disappointed.

The people having success out here are fishing swimbaits. Those are big ole’ giant baits, about 12 inches long - just a big, nasty jumbo bait. They’re designed for fishing lakes out west.

When you reel in the swimbaits they look a dying fish. You can catch some big, big fish on those baits if you know how to use them. But I’ve never had a lot of luck with them. I just haven’t spent enough time on these lakes to figure out whether I’d feel comfortable using them.

It’s really only in the west where these things work. They were good at Amistad and out here in California. You throw those swimbaits back at some of the lakes we fish in the south and the east, it’ll scare the fish to death.

I was talking to Skeet Reece, and he said he threw the swimbaits all day Tuesday and they didn’t bite. But look what he did today. He had more than 35 pounds.

I was hoping we’d have good conditions for sight fishing, which is what I do well. But it didn’t happen. We had great conditions the first two days, and today the wind picked up and made the water choppy and I just couldn’t see as well I needed to. It was weird. It was coming from a different direction, like from the northeast.

I went to one spot where I was pretty sure I could get some big bites, and the wind, like all of a sudden, picked up. So I anchored my boat and just there, waiting for it to die down. But it never did.

To be honestly, I wasn’t unhappy with the way I fished. I probably caught 20 fish during the day, but catching a whole bunch of 3-pounders just won’t get it in this tournament.