Hot Rod Baits Bass Series Event #1

Brian with a 5.5 pounder
on practice day

The Hot Rods Baits Bass Series kicked off this past Saturday at Little River Lake in Southwest Iowa.  This series consists of 3 events and is an "all or nothing" format.  Teams must pay for all three events before they even cast a line at the first tournament.  This takes commitment by team members and sets up the same competition all year long for the Team of the Year prizes.  Each event, members accumulate points on their finishes and amount of keepers they catch.  After the 3 events the top three teams will win cash prizes.  Brian Bowles and I have teamed up once again this year, hoping to push towards the top by the end of the year, and have a lot of fun along the way.
I was able to look the lake over the previous weekend due to another tournament I was participating in.  This allowed me to take a look at the lake, one that I haven't seen for about 15 years.  Needless to say I didn't remember much about the lake, and fishing has changed so much in the last 15 years I was starting over.  With water temperatures hanging around 60 degrees the bass were feeding and allowed me to put some pieces together.
On practice day Brian and I dissected the lake piece by piece, shallow water, deep water, rocks, wood, coves, main lake, and channel drops.  We found fish in a lot of different places, and the fish were feeding.  When this occurs it is fun, however it is hard to fine tune a game plan.  Along with the task of planning for the Saturday tournament, a major weather swing was coming to the area.  Winds were steady and from the north all day on Friday, and then the high pressure and southern wind started the night before the tournament.  We figured this would change the attitude of the bass, and it sure did.
Tournament day came on Saturday and we found about a third of the bites we did on Friday and the larger bass, those weighing over 2.5 pounds, seemed to disappear from us.  The forecasters actually had things right for once, winds out of the south up to 20 mph.  The combination of the Minn Kota 101 Fortrex and Talons put us at ease with the wind.  There is no need to shy away from days like this with the use of these tools.  They really make fishing comfortable in almost any weather situation.  We spent every minute of the 8 hour tournament working over our Quantum rods and reels looking for six keepers.  Brian ended up with the first one on a Texas-rigged craw bait, I hooked the next on a Hot Rod Baits tube.  We caught both in areas of coves that we caught keepers the day before.  Finally, we connected on two deep crankbait bass that made their way into the livewell.  We ended the day with 4 keepers and had our chins held high after a long hard day of fishing.  The weigh-in got started and anglers started reporting a rough day of fishing.  Things were tough for most teams, and that put our 4 keepers in 5th place at the end of the day.  All in all, it is a great start for us on the Hot Rod Baits Bass Series, next up is Lake Belva Deer in May.

Full results of the tournament are HERE

As a competitor and tournament director of the
Hot Rod Baits Bass Series, it was a very busy weekend.