For anyone interested, here is the story. First off a lot of my credit has to go to my fishing partner Michael Allbright for his time and dedication to studying the upper end of Palestine both countless hours of just graphing and on Google Earth locating holes, creek channels and anything else he thought could potentially hold fish.
We ran to Kickapoo with what looked like the about 2/3 of the 60 plus boats fishing the tournament, as soon as we were let go at safe light. We fished moving baits until our arms and shoulders were about to fall off from ripping through the grass that is up there and just covering a lot of water. According to Michael those fish can turn on any time up there and it can be a slug fest so we just kept chunking and winding. Finally at around 1:30 with only 2 fish for about 4 lbs to show for the day we decided to start moving to the opposite side of the bridge to fish along one of the creek channels he had marked. He pointed to a stump and said the week before in Fishers of Men his wife had pulled a 5 lbr of of a particular tree. It was at the very edge of the channel in about 8-10' of water. I pitched my little Zoom Speed Craw up there rigged on 17lb floro and a 3/16 tungsten weight and the fish hit as soon as my bait hit bottom. I set the hook and the fish had me under something so we were playing a little seesaw. I would pull, it would pull back. I told Michael to take the boat over to the tree and I pulled but was no longer able to feel the fish pull back. I let slack in the line to see if it would pull the slack and it was just limp. I reeled down and put my thumb on the spool to break it off and I felt a little pull so I raised my rod back up and the fish came rite to the surface. we boated and weighed the fish on his scales and it was marking rite at 13lbs. We were both pumped up pretty good at that point!! I retied and pitched back to the same tree and caught a 5 lbr that sealed the deal on the tournament.