Tournament Report: BFL SuperTournament Lake Eufaula

When I first started taking tournament fishing seriously, Bass Fishing League (a.k.a. "BFL") tournaments were some of my favorite events to fish.  With excellent participation numbers, good payouts and a great pro/am style format, I always jump on the chance to fish a BFL.

Last week I had the opportunity to enter the Bulldog division SuperTournament on Lake Eufaula, and ended up having a pretty good event despite some setbacks.  

Here is how that event went down.

Practice

Due to arriving late on thursday, and then getting sick later that day, I decided that rest was more important than a long practice and ended up putting in only about four hours on the water. During that short practice, I was only able to get one keeper bite, however, I was able to find some good looking water that I felt was very promising and that fit my style of fishing.  

Day 1

The best looking water that I saw during my abbreviated practice was a creek several miles up the Chattahoochee River.  The mouth of it had a sea-wall leading the way into the back of the creek, and inside there were several stretches of beautiful vegetation mats.  

The sea-wall was the first to catch my eye, and the overhanging brush and tree limbs casting shadows against it were just screaming "throw a frog at me!"

It didn't take long for me to get my first bite, and before I knew it I was sliding the biggest fish of the day into my livewell- a fish close to 4-pounds.  

My second keeper came only a few minutes after the first, again from the sea-wall.

After fishing the sea-wall as thoroughly as I felt was necessary I moved on to a shade line that was quickly disappearing with the rising sun on a wooded bank.  I ended up catching my third keeper skipping that hollow bodied frog under overhanging limbs and small patches of grass.  

I ended up making a move to another creek up river that I had not seen before after feeling I had done what I could in my first creek.  Here I caught my final frog fish of the day and also discovered a strong punching bite in some healthy looking hyacinth mats, which I used to catch my final keeper and cull once more.  

The bite had been brutally tough, but I was happy with my performance but was surprised when I found out that my 15lb 14oz bag was good enough to lead the event going into the final day.

Day 2

Going into the second day, I knew I had my work cut out for me.  I had worked the only areas I had very thoroughly, and I wasn't sure if they would replenish or not. 

With conditions seemingly unchanged from the first day, I felt my best shot at another quality bag was to cover water quickly with the frog, covering the sea-wall and other new areas I had spotted on the ride to weigh-in the day before.  

After a few hours of working the frog on overdrive without so much as a sniff, I got the memo and put that rod down and picked up the punching rod.  I was able to finally catch the one keeper I caught that day with the punch rig before I had to head to the weigh in.

At the weigh in it was obvious that everyone had a tough day and most anglers either got skunked or caught 1 to 2 fish.  

Not surprisingly, I tumbled down the standings a bit to settle at 9th. 

Conclusion

I can't lie, I hate it when I don't win an event when I put myself in contention.  However, when it comes to this event I am satisfied with the finish.  Sure, I wanted another SuperTournament win on my ledger, but in the end I fished clean and made the best of what I had to work with after a short practice. 

Tackle

Frog Rig: 7'3" MH casting rod; 7.6:1 casting reel; 40lb Vicious Braid; various hollow bodied frogs with white bellies and yellow accents to imitate sunfish.

Punching Rig: 7'6" Heavy casting rod; Quantum Smoke 8.1:1 casting reel; 65lb Vicious Braid; 1.5oz Tungsten weight (pegged); 5/0 Trokar TK133 hook; Zman Turbo CrawZ (Dark Melon).