The last few weeks have been very busy for me.  I fished several tournaments, took a long distance trip and had many other things going on. With that being said, it was also one of my most successful months ever, in terms of fishing. Finally, I took a short trip to Mexico to do some salt water fishing with my dad and a family friend and his son. We had some fun doing that and caught some nice fish.

At the end of this Blog, you will find that Chris Wood and I also put together a “Top 25” for college fishing.  Our “Top 25” is similar to rankings in every other college sport.  Like every college sports ranking, it may cause some controversy and debate, but we did our best!

I started my Christmas break with 2 tournaments in the first 2 weekends.  I had a Jacksonville Bass Club Tournament on Lake Sampson and a Florida Bass Network tournament on Lake Kingsley.  Both were productive.

The Jacksonville Bass Club tournament on Lake Sampson was the day after I got out of school, so I was unable to practice and had to go with things that had worked in the past. It worked!  I went from Lake Sampson to Rowell, as that is where I have had some of my best luck in the past. On this day it was cold, windy and rainy, this caused water to push through the lake moving schools of shad to the mouth of the lake, causing the fish to school. I was fortunate to be able to capitalize on this.

After about 25 minutes, I finally got my first bite, a fish that went about 3 pounds. Shortly thereafter we doubled.  My co angler landed one about 6, and my fish, which felt larger than that, straightened both treble hooks on my jerkbait. After that happened, I picked up a redeye shad, with the new BasStar Rotating Treble hooks on it, and quickly put a limit in the boat that went around 11 pounds. 

I had 3 good fish and 2 small ones. I was feeling good and went to a community hole in Lake Sampson where about half the boats in our tournament were, I found out that one boat had 2 fish over 4 pounds each (these fish ended up going 7 1/2 and 4 1/2),  I figured I’d better go back and try and cull my two small fish. I finally got back into Rowell, but the wind and rain had picked up and the temperature was dropping into the low 50’s. When I got to my best spot another boat from our tournament had pulled in but was not catching them too well and told me to pull in as well.

After about 5 casts, I culled my little 12 inch dink for about a 3 ½ pounder.  About a half hour later I culled my other little fish. I was confident I did well but it’s always hard to tell how well you will finish when there are very talented fisherman in a tournament and a lake with some big fish in it.

When everything was over, I ended up 3^rd with right at 13 pounds, I was one big fish away from a possible win. The only negative I took away from the day, was the fish I hooked in the morning that bent my hooks; if it was a bass it was big and would have made a big difference.

For the second tournament, on Lake Kingsley, I got to pre-fish. The day we went to pre-fish the weather was perfect, a light wind, warm and mostly sunny. We did well, catching about 30 fish up to 2 ½ pounds.  On Tournament day, the weather would not hold, but the bite did. 

The tournament day weather was not nearly as good as the pre-fish.  It was very windy and cold, but the bite got even better for us. We pulled up to one patch of grass we found in about 14 feet of water.  On my 2^nd cast I had my first keeper.  It was small but a keeper.

In the first hour, we had a very small limit, I caught all of them, but my granddad was just waiting for his bite. His first one was a good one, about 3 pounds. This was how it went most of the day.  I would catch a whole bunch of little fish by drop shotting redbug finesse worms, watermelon baby flukes and jerkbaits, my granddad would get much bigger bites on weightless watermelon seed flukes.

We fished 3 small grass patches in between 13 and 19 feet of water all day. We caught about 40 fish between those 3 spots and several bream and crappie.  At the end of the day we knew we had a decent weight for that lake but did not expect to make the top 3 and get a check. We weighed in 3 fish my granddad caught and 2 I caught.  His were about 3 pounds apiece and mine were only about 1 pound per fish, coming to around 11 pounds.  When we got to the scales we found out that almost no one had really caught them and we were in the lead with 10.8 pounds.  There were 2 teams who ended up beating us out.  The winner had 13.3 pounds and 2^nd place had 10.9 pounds (and big fish of 6 pounds) -- yes beating us by .1 pound! We were not thrilled by this but it was a good friend from our club  so that made it easier to swallow.   

After those tournaments we had a crazy week due to some family issues and stuff like that but that’s another story for another day.

Finally, the day after Christmas, my dad, a family friend and his son (Jeff and Slayton Morrow) and I flew out of Orlando to spend a couple days saltwater fishing on Holbox Island, Mexico. This was a short trip - only 4 days and fishing 2 of them.  Or that was the plan.

We got to fish the first day.  My dad and I fished together with a guide.  The Morrows fished together with a guide. My dad and I had some problems, mostly because we could not get the barracuda to leave us alone. While we did chase a lot of Tarpon and Snook we simply could not get them to bite. At the end of the day, we caught a small snapper and 2 very large seatrout.  One trout pushing 5 pounds.

When we got back to the beach and talked to the Morrows we learned they caught a couple of snook and jumped some tarpon. So thankfully between our 2 seatrout and their snook, we had plenty to eat for dinner that night; and plenty of fun to talk about. The 2^nd day we had planned on going hand lining for grouper, but due to some rough weather we were not able to go so we took the day to relax and look around a island.  The Island was a fishing village up till the early 2000’s when people started learning of this great beach and what can be fantastic tarpon fishing for world class size tarpon. But what brings the majority of people to Holbox in the summer, is  the largest migration of Whale Sharks in the world and a tarpon migration at the same time.  I am trying to go back this summer as long as it does not get in the way of fishing the national championship.

I am very excited that next week is the opening tournament of the Bassmaster Southern Open at Lake Okeechobee. With this being my first year fishing these tournaments, I will be fishing as a co angler.   I hope to see a lot of people there. I also want to thank everyone who has helped me be able to fish these events this year including my Parents, Grandparents, and the companies who are helping me fish tournaments this year by either sponsoring or pro-staffing me, these are Big Bear Rods, Ardent Reels, and The Fish Harder Company. 

Over the past couple of weeks, Chris Wood and I have been putting together a ranking system like there is in every other collegiate sport. Our first rankings are below.  Just to clarify for everyone, this is just for fun and we don’t mean anyone any disrespect.  We want to recognize teams that did well consistently this year and that are what we based our rankings on.  If you have serious problems with where you are ranked or not ranked, just remember - this is just for fun!