Last night was the 5th event for the FAB Tour series. John Haynes and I headed out to the lake with little knowledge of the lake. Rumor was it took 24 pounds to win during an all day event last year and the winner from that event would be there. I managed to get out on the lake with my dad just over a week ago but wasn't out long and didn't find too many fish. I did manage to get an understanding of how the lake was laid out and the kind of cover it provided. Many times that is the most important thing you can get out of pre-fishing.

We started on a set of docks that I had caught a couple fish off of in practice. The first 6 or 7 docks didn't produce so much as a bluegill tap. Finally we came to a dock and I pulled a decent fish of over two pounds off it on a Wave Worm Tiki Bamboo Stick. John had just dropped the net and fish in the boat before his rod bowed over with a decent keeper off the same dock. Now we were in the groove. We continued down the row of docks and managed just a couple more bites before running out of docks to fish. We started the big motor and ran to the other side of the lake where I felt the docks may continue to produce. As we came off plane another boat was fishing the area we had hoped to hit so we went another direction and started fishing again. We fished for a while and filled our limit with a couple small fish before John hooked into a big fish. I happened to be looking at his rod when he set the hook and thought for sure he had just set on the dock itself. The rod bowed in half as he pulled the 3.6 pounder out from under the dock. That fish culled a 13 incher nicely for us while a competitors boat watched from nearby.

Since we had a limit and had again run out of docks we decided to hit a deep water turn with large weed clumps that I had seen in practice. I hadn't fished it but idling over it we could see bait fish everywhere so we felt it was a good spot to try to upgrade. The plan worked out. Although I missed a couple fish that felt really good, including one that completely straightened out my Owner Down Shot hook, we managed to cull out three more times using jigs and mojo rig. We felt fairly confident going to the scales but still not too sure after loosing a couple fish.

We weighed over 14.5 pounds of fish. Plenty of fish for second place but just a pound shy of first. It was a great day on the water. Had we not missed a few, we would have been very happy with how we did. But knowing that we probably had the winning fish on the line and lost them was hard to deal with on the ride home.

This weekend is Minnetonka. I haven't gotten much practice out there this year so I will be winging it again. Hopefully it goes as well as it did last night.