After the pre-fishing was over, the general question was, where have all the big fish gone? Thirty two teams ( 18 DIV I; 14 DIV II) hit the water Fri morning for day one of the two day event. The bite had been tentative during pre-fishing and that didn't change for Fri or Sat. Small baits seemed to work best with natural colors, shad or minnow imitations accounting for a lot of bites. With the frontal passage late morning Fri, the fish got tight lipped. Same was true Sat with NNE winds gusting to 15 making for some difficult fishing with light baits.

Minnows didn't help us at all. Max fished minnows for 3 hours without a bite while I was getting bit on jigs. Presentation had to be with a lot of finesse to entice a bite for us. I never felt a crappie thump a jig in four days. If I got a thump, it was a catfish and we caught plenty of those. They loved the minnows Max was using. We averaged 45+ fish each day, but 25+ were dinks.

Congratulations to Eric Walker and Matthew Carroll as State Champions in DIV II 15.16 lbs

Congratulations to Ahn Nguyen and Larry Kirkland as State Champions DIV I 18.21 lbs

Congratulations to all the teams that competed in some tough conditions.

Congrats to all who fished'!!

Nice job

Tuff!
Thanks CAT for another well run event.
Now getting back, the fishing conditions were as tuff both days as I can remember.
I will admit, even being my home lake fish weren't hard to find, but making them bite was the trick.
Eric and I had a game plan for both days and stuck with it.
Jigs tipped with minnows was our choice. Thanks Eric for putting up with Old Jigum this year.
Now it's time to do some fun fishing the freezer needs some filling up.

congrats to y'all

wtg ladies and gents!

Congrats to all the winners and the folks qualified to fish it.

It was a tough 2 days of fishing!
The best bite for me was on a 1/32 oz jig head, which was double slow in the high winds.
I picked up a rod with a 1/16 multiple times, but it wasn't getting bit as well as the 1/32.
The fish were biting as the lure was slowly raised up, heard a lot of guys say the same thing.
The fish knocked the drain/overfill plug out in my livewell on day 1 and we lost our 3 big fish, had to work to get a limit again.
At the end of day 1 we were in 5th place, 1/2 of a # down from 1st.
Day 2, by noon, we only had 3 dinks in the livewell. Had to head to new water out of the wind and search for bp's.
Slowly but surely, we put some nicer fish in the box.
At day 2 weigh in we were in the "Hot Seat" till the final team to weigh in, Eric and Matthew.
The knocked us out of 1st by having .20 #'s more

Congrats Guys!!!!!
Glad the year is over, but already looking forward to next year

Congratulations to all.

We to had some issues day one with bigger fish dying ect...the reason I mention this is because other teams had no problem sharing some tricks to keep them alive for day two. The members of this club are good ole boys and surely help me become a better tournament fisherman. Thanks guys!

Congrats to all

Thanks again to all the CAT officers and volunteers that put on another great tournament! These CAT tourneys are always very well organized and go smoothly. If you're a crappie fisherman and haven't joined CAT or fished a tourney, you're missing out. I was never a big tourney guy until I joined CAT, but now I love it. A few years ago I was just a novice(fill the freezer) crappie fisherman like most of you guys, but now I have a few plaques for the wall.

As for the tourney...
Pre-fishing weather was perfect and yielded some very productive spots. Pre-fishing actually produced a much bigger stringer than our two tourney days, but weather was a big factor. Many people, including us, couldn't fish their most reliable stuff because of the weather change. I focused my pre-fishing on areas that would be fishable in the NE wind that was expected, and that paid off. Matthew and I stuck to those areas both days. Patience paid off, although I was pretty nervous headed to the weigh-in on day 2.
I felt pretty fortunate to hang onto the day 1 lead with guys like Todd & Richard and Guy & David breathing down our necks, but it felt good to get the "W" when it was all said and done.

This is a short stray from the tourney,but this is the perfect reason for the G2G,i know mr carroll,but now i can put another name with a face,Eric.congrats!

Best plastics for us were the natural colored baits like the Slab Bandit in black shad and Thermocline in natural shad and pearl ice. I caught a lot of fish on a 1/24th gray hand tied jig from Skip48. The short profile seemed to draw bites when the bigger baits would not. Fish were biting on a very slow rise or slow fall or pitch over the structure and let the bait swing back. Holding the bait dead still would get some small bumps but hardly a bite. I think the fish were actually bumping the bait with their nose or nipping the tail. When the bait was falling, the line went slack and it was down in their mouth. By falling, I was lowering the bait much slower than it would fall naturally. Had to stay focused to detect a bite.

We also experienced problems with fish not faring well in the live well. Day 1, I added some catch and release and I think that was a problem. Day 2 we simply cooled the water with ice and kept the recirculate pump on interment. Fish did much better on day 2. I believe the catch and release I have is old and that caused the problem. I'm also going to clean the live well with a brush and thoroughly rinse it. Too much slime and gunk in there. Probably has bacteria growing in there.

I don't think the catch and release works for crappie Ken. It killed all but the last few of our fish at Fork and our fish looked terrible Friday morning early so I pumped it all out and just used straight water. We lost a good fish in the livewell friday and lost them all at 11am Sat due to either my knee hitting the switch bouncing from spot to spot or Langdon piled up in the drivers seat napping. Who knows. Was heartbreaking to look at a pile of dead dry fish in a livewell at 11am. We managed to come back with just over 7lbs but had 4 dead ones that we coulda used for sure. Glad we held on for 3rd place. Was really excited to get such a nice plaque and the check was totally unexpected!! Man CAT does a great job!! Thanks to all of ya'll for all the hard work and all the attention to little man!! He's the reason we showed up at Palestine and we just sorta calf roped Clay into it all and I think he's hooked now too! Langdon wore his new CAT jersey all weekend and wanted to wear it to bed but settled for letting mom wash it and going to bed with all his bags of plastic baits he got and his new dock shooting rod from Weston!! I think his mother and I both have had to tell him no shooting crappie jigs in the house at least a couple times already!
Looking forward to next year!!! Congrats to all. Was neat to see people catching fish so many different ways on the lake!

Even better the whole family was there for weigh in and watching the LSU game last night pops said that stunk we lost out because of dead fish and that needs to be fixed so boats headed to the shop tomorrow for new pumps and switches. New 3 bank charger. Normal maintenance and a LSS-2 box. Look out next year boys and girls!!

You boys and girls done good .Congrats for your hard work .Now time for fun fishin.Darrell