Back to the plan

   The plan... Go pre-fish the tournament locations before the one week off limits period to gain knowledge and follow it up with a solid five fish limit to compete with the best anglers around.

   Crane Prairie is another well-known lake in Oregon full of trophy size fish. This location was on our tournament schedule from the start and for good reason. We would be able to make the three to four hour drive over to Central Oregon twice in the month of June with our sites set on solid practice days to break this lake down and find where the fish were biting.

   What we found the first day of practice made us really focus and realize that tough fishing means opportunity. The winds were strong and the sky was blue most of June. This scatters the fish around as they look for food but also try to avoid becoming food for many of the lakes predators. The food chain here consists of eagles, ospreys, cormorants, pelicans, otters, raccoons, other fish, and many other threats that will pressure fish into hiding.

   After three days of practice we had found fish around isolated patches of weeds or lily pads. We caught fish on black baits, which we had expected, due to the population of leeches in the lake. Our fish came on black spinnerbaits, black worms, rattling All Terrain jig, and a topwater frog. This really didn't narrow down the bait selection but we knew we could execute our plan and get a solid limit and that was saying a lot considering the conditions.

      When tournament day came, we felt prepared but anxious to get that limit of fish in the boat early. The weather reports were for sunny clear skies and we really needed to make the most of our morning. Since Crane Prairie has a 10 mph speed limit on the lake, we made the long slow drive from the boat ramp to the location we had found the most fish in practice. We decided to use a buzzbait and a spinnerbait to search for aggressive fish early and then switch to black worms and other baits once we find any concentration of fish.

   The morning came and went and we had three fish in the livewell but only one of the three was the size we were looking for. Jim had managed to pick up the better fish when we had the trolling motor on high searching for anything that moved. He saw a fish swim by a log so he made a cast with a black worm and set the hook on a solid largemouth. We were happy to have the three but needed to find those other two fish somehow as the clock continued to tick.

   There are many points in a tournament day when you have to stop and make decisions. At this point, we generally grab and Amp Energy drink and a snack and quickly discuss our options. We chose to go back to where we started fishing and work our way East so we would be shortening our drive back to the boat ramp and utilize every minute of our fishing time. Tournaments can be won in the last few minutes of the day so using time wisely can be the difference in finishing near the top or finishing near the bottom. Knowing we had about a 20-minute drive back to the weigh in and only an hour left, we decided to pick our spinnerbaits back up and search for two more fish to fill out our limit.

   As we moved parallel with the bank, we found some isolated structure here and there to cast to and tried to make every cast count. With the wind picking up even stronger we were sure the spinnerbait was what we needed to use. Suddenly I felt a **THUNK** and "Fish!" Jim grabbed the net and the battle was on to keep this fish from jumping. It made two jumps that made me weak in my knees just hoping it would not shake free. Our fourth fish in the boat was almost four pounds so we were on our way! We just needed one more. We kept with the same technique and a few casts later Jim was hollering "FISH!". We saw this was another quality fish and Jim kept pressure on it to give me a chance to net it. Both battles were similar and both were great fish! We had our five fish limit and made it to weigh in with 2 minutes to spare.

   Another team from Mid Valley Bass Club (Cory Miller and Casey Stone) was there fishing that day and weighed in five solid fish to finish 8th place. The Amp team was able to take 5th and a feeling of accomplishment from executing our plan and not giving up when the fishing was tough.

                                                      ~ By Bobby Brown