I just got back from competing in the FLW National Guard College fishing tournament at Lake of the Ozarks.  The Lake had a lot of fishing pressure with the Stren Series and the Big Bass Bash being held over the weekend. The fishing was pretty tough.

We launched at about 7:45 am and we ran to a couple of spots in the morning and we didn't have a whole lot of luck. The topwater bite seemed to be almost nonexistent.  We finally found some fish around 10:30 in a windblown creek. The first keeper fish I hooked up on came on a shallow running Smack Tackle Gizz 3 in green pearl. The fish didn't get hooked up good and it managed to pull off.   It wasn't too long until I hooked up with another keeper spot and this time I got him in the boat.  My partner Mike McCarthy was throwing a 10 inch worm out the back of the boat and he caught a two pounder just working it through some brush on a dock. Minutes later Mike hooked into what appeared to be a keeper largemouth that was able to get off.  As we made our way out of the creek and I was able to connect with a nice keeper that went about 17 inches on the Gizz 3 just burning it down the side of a shady dock. The fish crushed it. After a couple of runs under the boat Mike was able to scoop the fish up with the net.  We fished around the area some more catching only a couple of shorts and decided to give the area a rest and hit some other nearby windy creeks in hopes of hooking up with some more active fish. This failed to produce and we made our way back to the creek where we caught our fish to try and see if the area had replenished. As I fished down the bank I was able to connect with a 15 inch keeper on the Gizz 3 and get him into the boat.  We pounded the area with minutes to spare and then we had to leave to make a 30 minute run back to weigh in which was at 2:30.   The weights were pretty low for the tournament.  Our 4 keepers weighed in at 7lbs 11 oz which was good enough for 8th place out of 40. We were about 2 1/2-pounds out of the money.   Looking back on the tournament we shouldn't have left the area were we caught our fish but then again hindsight is always 20/20.   We had already qualified for the regional in Ft. Madison so we had the option of taking a gamble and it just didn't work out. The fish we lost during the tournament might have been enough to put us in the top 5 and sometimes stuff like that just happens. Now we've just got to focus in on our next tournament which is the FLW College Fishing Regional at Kentucky Lake at the end of the month.  Thanks for reading and until next time good fishing!

The setup I used for throwing the Smack Tackle Gizz 3 was a 7 foot AiRRUS Copperhead Cranking Stick with 20lb Gamma High Performance C0-Polymer Line with a 6.31 baitcast reel.
Article by Spencer Clark who is a collegiate angler attending Truman State University.