Thought it would be interesting to see if anyone else had an unusual amount of trouble catching the right size fish at the Berkley tournament. Here's a rundown of what we tried... and what DIDN'T work for us.

Saturday: We started on a main lake point fishing from 2-8' of water. Straight Money worms and Carolina rigged Bottom Hoppers. Caught a couple here, but both were dinks (11&14").
After a disappointing morning bite, we moved back in some creeks and tried several secondary points in 2-6'. We had just enough action to keep our attention, but were still only able to produce similar size fish... or even smaller. We fished mainly drop shot rigs here, but tried underspins with 5" swimbaits, too. No takers at all on the swimbaits.
Total Saturday: 9 fish, all 14", or less.

Sunday: Started the morning on a main lake hump, with lots of depth options. We spent a good amount of time in the 3-5' range, and fished all the way out to 17' deep. Carolina rigs, drop shots, search baits. We marked a lot of bait fish (most around the 12' depth), and a few fish, but couldn't coax anything into biting. We then moved to a secondary point, at about 9:00, and were able to get a couple in the boat. One was a nice chunky slot, just under 17"... the other, another 12 incher. While we were on this spot the ominous wall of fog rolled in. Not a single bite during the fog, so we headed back into a creek to see if we could find anything. We did catch one more slot here (right on the edge of the surface grass, 2/3 of the way back). We tried a couple of other secondary points, but never found a good bite, or the right size fish.
Total Sunday: 5 fish. 2 slots and 3 dinks.

In years past, the mid to late October shallow bite has been a dependable pattern. This year, at least for us, not so much.

Looking at the weigh-in numbers, it seems like a lot of anglers didn't have trouble finding the right bass. Hats off to all that cashed!

Fished Saturday and Sunday, On Saturday got set up on a Point with the boat in 18 ft of water, throwing up on flat in 4-6 ft of water. Caught 4 starting at about 7:00AM. Caught a 16-1/4" Slot fish, 15-3/4" (2.63), 15" (2.04), and a 12" Rat. Fished it till 8:35 and nothing else, then headed to weigh the fish I had. Won the 9AM hour with the 2.63 and 18th in the 10:00AM hour. After that fished another point that I normally fish and caught 1-13" er in about 8 ft of water. after that stopped back by starting point and caught another Rat. All of the previous fish caught on Drop shot with 4" Flute Worm. Left there went to the back of another creek and caught another 13" er on Maxscent wacky senko bait right on bank in patch of pond weed. So caught 7 fishing by myself on Saturday.

On Sunday Me and a buddy fished. We started on the same point as Saturday and only caught 3 Rats. Lack of wind was an issue IMO. So ran to 2nd Point and missed one. Only bite here. so went by Minnow bucket and got some gas and the fog set in. So the idled to a creek via GPS fished from mouth to backend. We caught 4 basically in the dirt around on some patches of pond weed. Caught these on the Maxscent Senko style bait. 3 Rats and 1-16"er + a hair. Just a hair over the slot when pinching and sweeping the tail. Finally fog lifted and made a long run up the west arm and I caught another Rat on a dock and my partner caught a 14"er that weighed 1.41lbs. So total was 9 fish and nothing to do any good. We never made it all the way north to the the heavy grass, but probably should have Sunday. Just lost to much time in the fog.

Didn’t get to fish it this year, but was out there the week before. For us there were a lot of dinks chasing bait up shallow with a decent under here and there. Bigger were suspended pushing bait in the creek channels but those are hard to target for me. No real pattern yet.

We caught rats shallow so we moved out to 15-18ft water and did pretty well on jigging spoon and bottom hoppers Carolina rigged in watermelon red. Our most productive was deep diving Fritts flatside crankbait
Some slots and one 3.07 that was just over 16”...that one hurt, LOL

That fog bank was very impressive...one of the weirdest things I’ve ever experienced on the water

Horrible just like last years...

Fished both days on the west fork both all the way up north on Saturday and down on the southern end on Sunday. 3 fish all weekend. Biggest was 1.5 lbs. fished shallow and deep. Dinks.

Bad weekend for me, only able to catch dinks. Stayed shallow

I fished for four days strait (Thursday - Sunday) and caught a total of 5 fish... It was a grind!

Luckily for me, two of the fish I caught won. Weighed a 2.45 on Saturday in the 11am hour that got 3rd for the hour and weighed a 1.95 in the 8am on Sunday and finished 11th and won a reel.

I fished everything from 20' to the bank so it turned into junk fishing and I tossed, pitched, flipped and skipped to every piece of visible cover I could find and got lucky a few times. I threw back a 16 1/8" football/fish and that was a heart breaker!

Funny story on the 2.45 I caught. I was farting around Friday afternoon before I loaded the boat and was flipping a jig around a point when I got hung up. I finally broke it free and when I reeled it in I had a Berkley 25.5 Dredger hooked to my jig. I took it as a sign and tied it on for Saturday and on my first cast with it I caught the 2.45 and never had a sniff on it afterwards. lol

The weather was pleasant to fish in but I'm sure it had something to do with the tough fishing and the fog that rolled in on Sunday was pretty crazy. I just trolled around and fished the cove I was in until it lifted but I caught the heart breaker 16" slot and another smaller rat and figured that I was probably fishing too fast through everything I was covering. I pitched at the same piece of cover multiple times before I caught each fish.

Still, I had a great time and everyone I fished around played nice and was friendly so all in all I had a good weekend.

Caught 2 fish each day , I would call it poor fishing , Saturday had 4 bite and 2 fish both on berkley spook and Sunday caught 2 on the rattle trap bait I got home and took all the berkley out of the boat and loaded it back with fish catching baits . Lol

Are the Berkley baits really that bad?

In this tournament it seems there are less "overs" weighed in than any other large big bass tourneys on fork.

I had the worst couple of days I've had on Fork. I caught one fish on Saturday on a crank and a couple on Sunday on a little gulp minnow on a drop shot. I'm not blaming it on the baits, but I did put them all in a big bag that I'll be saving for next year.

Nothing wrong with Berkley baits. I actually like most of them. Is seems every year the tournament is right around the lake turning over. Or a big cold front.

Nothing wrong with Berkley baits IMO. Fishing was tough, probably didn’t matter what you were throwing. The only other bait I wish I could have thrown was a flutter spoon. I actually got to meet Joe Spaits during the event and I toss his spoons a lot!

I actually plan to start using the Power Hawg more in comparison to the Zoom Brush Hog.

Yes I like the power hawgs! Was hard times on fork ha, still is.

And the Berkley Fusion hooks are awesome!