Tales from Basschamps on Cedar Creek

Fished shallow grass, ledges, deep docks, shallow docks, burned a half tank of gas and had 2, 2 pound fish to show for it. Im clueless. Guess we should have just stayed on the bridge and saved the gas! lol Anybody else?

Struggled badly in a few practice trips. Caught fish but not on a consistent pattern. At least figured out they were on really shallow docks way back in creeks and on oddball stuff between docks. Thats what we decided to hit yesterday. Started really slow and had a couple keepers with a solid one in the mix. We headed way up in a creek where it narrowed up. Commenced to catching a ton of fishflipping really shallow stuff. Finished our limit and culled up a few times. Had the whole area to ourselves.
Moved out of there with about 2hrs left in the day to upgrade. We struggled on anything but really shallow docks. Caught some more and upgraded once. We were getting so many bites that we felt like we would stumble onto some better fish. Lost track of how many we caught so that part was fun. It was a grind and we worked our tails off for 12lbs but had one die on us just before weigh in. Not sure why as the 9j there 4 were super lively....


Crazy thing was there was zero topwater bite yesterday for us. Just felt a step behind all day. Usually with that many bites you hit a couple of solid fish on the head. Kinda described our whole year. We had to grind at every tournament.

Was on some fish in practice but blew my lower unit on the way to our first spot, not a good day for us lol.

I've been in that exact spot before. It does suck

We found some fish in the back of a creek in practice. We had 7 keepers cranking sk series 3 and dragging a lizard. I swear they were spawning. Three of them had bloody tales.. We fish boat docks and brush piles from 11:00 on. We caught 1 keeper on a retaining wall. I would love to know if someone actually caught a good fish off a dock. I fished 40-50 of them never had a bite.

Did the winners fish offshore?

Partner pulled 2 off of a shallow dock and ramp combination, one near that same dock on a concrete retaining wall, one in willows.

Our plan was to hit the 2 - 3 shallow spots and a deep dock we found in practice, then go deep searching for bigger fish. That plan started to unravel when we didn't get bit on the dock. We hit one other place we had found together in practice before going into an area I had found previously. That's were we found a magical area where my partner got three of our 5 keepers. We went all day without the 5th fish, until 15 minutes before our check-in time. The final spot was the narrow cut by the pump across the bay from the Log Cabin ramp. I set the hook, said there it is... We threw him in the livewell and came across to check-in. Thought we had a better limit than the scales gave us credit for; 5 for 10.80!

We fished probably 30 docks and caught one fish off them. We were shocked.

The winners definitely fished offshore. So did 2nd and 4th. Not sure where 3rd fished.

We actually had a really good practice and had the potential to have a really good tournament. We started the day on a bad note by drawing boat 190... out of 200 (I think). Still managed to get a spot on the bridge somehow without encroaching on anyone. My partner caught a 3.5 almost immediately. Then I had a good one pull off. Never saw her, but I caught a 7 there in practice that felt similar. Then my partner caught a 4.5. Stayed for another hour without a bite and decided to go run some brush piles after watching the guys who got 4th smack 20 pounds on a point near the bridge. Caught two more smaller keepers and another 3.5 along with quite a few short fish. Unfortunately, our smallest fish ended up dying, so we lost a pound there.

Ended with 15.51 minus a pound. So landed in 23rd with 14.51 and got a check. It was bitter sweet with losing that big fish early and losing $400 and 15th place because of a dead fish. We didn’t catch a ton of fish, but had the chance at a good bag. But it was good to finish the year with a check! It was a rough year for us...

Caught all our fish on a neko rig and a 5/8 Finch Nasty Vicktory Jig in Watermelon Jelly.

I don't bass fish alot but I am a fairly serious crappie fisherman and dock shooting is one of my favorite ways to catch fish on CC. There are, without a doubt, a ton of good looking docks on the lake but IMHO there are only a few of those that consistently hold fish. I've caught quite a few bass while crappie fishing so I tend to believe that they like the same docks.YMMV.....

100% agree. We spent hours in practice side scanning looking for docks with brush or some kind of rock/junk under them. With that many docks, you have to find the ones that are unique. Also, docks with a drop under them hold fish.

This event capped off our worst season in many years. We have a creek we fish every year that has produced checks for us 4 of the last 5 years. Well it was mudded out for some reason. not sure if the wind blew just wrong or something else happened but it was crazy the difference in it from a week ago. We also had 4-5 boats come and way point our main lake brush pile while we were fishing it. We just laughed like we always do until we left it to go hit something else for a while only to come back and find one of those boats sitting on it. We went back there 3 times and they were still on it. Good times.

In the end, we should have fished the bridge with the other 75 boats. Everyone I know that fished it caught some decent fish including 2 of our group that travel together, one of which who got 12th for $1030 and the other that just couldn't catch a 5th keeper that weighed in 12.35

We started off with a bang, hit two nice keepers within 30 minutes cranking. We lost a nice 4-5 on a dock but that was it. Everything else was short or a drum lol.

We had one of those funny moments....we were fishing a row of docks when another Champs boat pulled right up on next one we were heading to and commenced to dropping marker buoys and start fishing right out in front of it. They were close enough so we were confused to if they had just cut us off or should we just go fish the dock. They were fishing about 25yds off the end of it but not the dock itself. We laughed and just moved on. Some days it's all you can do to laugh it off.

Yep....just laugh and move on. That's all we did as well and have always done in the past. I fish for fun and enjoyment and nothing else, so there's no reason to get mad at someone else's obvious desperation. In your case, I think it would have been hilarious to just go right over the marker buoys and video them as you went by.

It wasn't a big deal. We had only been there a couple of minutes before they did. I agree it's not worth the drama.

We drew boat 10 so were fortunate enough to be first to the bridge. Caught a 6 lbr on the 3rd cast, then came the boats. We were within 30 yards or less of other competitors pretty much all day. A couple of boats got to close, but mainly it was us and one other boat working the bejesus out of the area. Got to watch 4th place out on a deep point smashing them all morning. We went the next 3 hours with one more bite... a toad on a 1 oz jig that broke me off. So we ran north and fished our docks that always produce... not even a perch bite. Fish were there in practice, not so much on tournament day. Went right back to the bridge and Jon caught a 5 then another 2 hours without a bite. Ran to a few more good docks, no bites, ran back to the bridge and filled out our limit. Caught #5 with 6 minutes to go. They went 14.96 and were good enough for 21st, would love to have put the "one that got away" in the boat but thats fishing!

Congrats to AOY winners Branden and Jeremy!

What boat were y’all in Buda? We were there most of the day as well. Wrapped Skeeter. Hopefully we didn’t get too close... we tried to be as courteous as possible. But fishing a spot like that, you’re gonna be close to people for sure.

I was in my ZX225 single console. Never saw you guys till weigh in, yall must have been on the other side. I expect close quarters on a deal like that, just like the summer tournaments on Fork. We never had to say anything to other boats about being to close, but the boat we shared the area with most of the day did. Really didnt matter because the boat pushed his way in there anyway. LOL. We just put our heads down and kept on grinding.

our was tough... we were 123 and by the time we were called and made our run to our morning spot.. the SUN was up... and we got to it right before it shut down on us.. we pulled 3 nice ones out of it before it shut down... easily would have 10-11 lbs on those three.. but that was all she wrote... it was dink city for us after that.. no matter where we went or what we fished... couldn't get 2 more to stretch for some dang reason..

so we threw those back in the lake knowing it was not enough to be competitive. We fished hard... didn't lose a single fish.. didn't break anything except our pride of not getting 5..
I wish Champs would move this lake up.... summer time is just too many skiers and [censored].. dang near had to throw hooks at some seadookies...

We still had fun.. that is all that matters...

Mo

I forgot to mention we got into a HUGE school of hybrids where after catching 7 that were all 4-6# we had to leave.

That watermelon jelly Vic jig is sweet they loved that thing on Palestine this year

We caught all of ares on 2 different jigs that I make and a Crig. Really thought we could of done better then what we did from practice 3 different trips had 25-31lbs boat traffic had to do little with it. We had the opportunity to win loosing a 3 1/2 & having to cull a 2 3/4 that swallowed the hook going to more likely die on us. Congrats to Joe and Joel on the win.

We drew boat 185 and were dissapointed. Figured there would be a boat on our starting spot. To our surprise there wasn't but the fish weren't there either so we moved to another area that we caught some in during practice and quickly caught one about 4.5 then we caught 3 more pretty quickly. Our 4th fish was the 7.48. We got our limit by 830 and had about 19 pounds. The bite slowed way down once the sun got up. We were getting a bite about every 45 min and were able to cull 3 times to get to 22.39. Props to Branden and Jeremy they had to come in 4th or higher to get AOY and they ended up second!

Wonder if thats the same point Castledine always fished during the ABA opens series tournies?