Tales from Basschamps Ray Roberts

Big fat zero. Nothing worked! Frogging. Grass. Flipping. Top water. Deep ledges. Just never got on em. Drank 100 ounces of water when that ran out we went home! How did you guys do?

We nearly passed out late in the day from the heat but still had a great time. Going in, we knew the first 3 hours of the day were going to be key and that turned out to be exactly the case. We had 16-17# in the boat by 8:00 then culled a few ounces 6-7 times. One big problem. About 11:00 I looked in the live well and our 5#er was floating. Still alive but floating and was not needing to be fizzed; she need oxygen! Our recirc pumps has stopped working and we hadn't realized it. We hauled butt to weigh in trying to save the fish and get her weighed in. She died before we got there. Then we go to head back out to fish and saw another one starting to float. We then made a strategic decision to weigh in all but our smallest (3#) fish since all we could do was to run the fill pumps all day and knew it could cost us big if we lost another fish much less 2 or 3. Those 4 fish weighed 15.79 but we lost 1 pound for the dead fish. So, an hour of lost time and we head back out with only 1 fish to try to cull up. Got lucky and culled up 4-5 ounces with about 40 minutes to go. Had 18.62 after the penalty which got us 12th place. Thankfully that penalty only cost us $80. We didn't catch a fish deeper than 4'. Given the lake dropping and surface temps approaching 90, I would guess that is about to change and fast.

try a capful of hydrogen peroxide if that ever happens again.

The funny thing is we talked about that exact thing after the tourney because we used to carry it and use it in conjunction with Sure Life and some ice if needed.

saved me once on Texoma, same issue happened.

We stunk it up pretty good, had a 4 and a 3 fairly early, lost a couple pretty nice ones. The blast off out of jordan was a sight to see, sure happy i was not driving, it got pretty western. Did anyone see the 3 deer swimming across the lake from wolf island ? That was nuts, boats flying everywhere and deer in the middle of the timber opening south of the island.

Had a decent day practice Friday believe it or not covered 55 miles hunting for water I liked even found Lilly pads. Wasn’t on giants but possibly a last check.

Went to dinner Friday night Got to bed by ten. Then about 1 AM what ever I ate wanted out , spent the next 7 hours puking my guts out with a nice finale of dry heaves.

Wussed out went home went to bed slept until this morning, On to tawakoni

We knew Jordan would be a nightmare so we launched at State Park. There were maybe 10 boats that launched in there. It was awesome.

We changed our starting spot after launching from Jordan to avoid running the gauntlet in the dark. It turned out great. New starting area produced three keepers for close to 10 pounds in the first hour plus. We had a good practice on Friday and had gotten a bunch of keeper bites so we were confident. Then Ray Roberts turned in to Ray Roberts and we went 5 hours without a bite. Ryan caught another fish on a second time through our main area on a squarebill and that was it. Spent the last two hours trying to get a bite out deep while our brains slowly melted. Weighed 4 for 11.98 and went home frustrated

Had an abnormally high amount of bites Friday during practice in multiple areas. Only stuck a couple for a quality check and shook off the rest. I was extremely uneasy because I know how Roberts can be. Here one day, gone the next. I still thought we could catch about 17-18 pounds at worst. Well my "at worst" estimation was way off. Caught one 3 pounder at about 11:45 at that was it. Never adjusted to figure out where those fish moved to. Oh well. Down the road we go.

That was the biggest cluster F I've ever been involved in driving a boat. I was walking everybody down until the lead boat crossed over in front of me and I had to back out. I just wanted in front to get away from everybody. I had too much faith that people wouldn't be idiots and would file in line and run the lane like you're supposed to. Nope, IDK how many boats wide we were at the cut but people just made their own lanes. Blown away that nobody hit a tree, or a deer apparently. That deal would have been fine on a lake with no timber, Basschamps should really rethink that plan if they have to trailer at RR again. One thing is for certain, I won't be in the middle of it next time.

I cannot believe we did not hit a tree, my partner just took off across that timber on the southeast side of the island, saw several trees that we narrowly missed.

We had about 10 lbs, didnt even bother weighing them... just wasnt our day. We launched from Pond creek, no problems with the 515 shotgun start. Looked pretty cool seeing all the boats from the marina, Pond, and Jordan all running across the lake in the dark.

While sitting on our starting spot I noticed something I never thought about before... we watched boat after boat run around idling deep spots. Shut down, check it out, and take off to the next one. So a bunch of folks spent that hour from when you could leave the ramp to first cast graphing until they found a spot with fish on it. I know its not against the rules, but it sure feels like thats not the spirit of being allowed to leave the ramp an hour before first cast. Always thought that leave time was to allow you to get to an area and hunker down reserving your starting spot not to locate fish. Learn something new every day I guess, worth keeping in mind for trailer tournaments moving forward. An extra hour to graph before making a cast is a huge advantage for those that have mastered their electronics.

That wasn't too bad. Now if you fished Texas team trail a while back with same type deal (leave the ramp at 515) and about 50 boats launched at Buck and most of them were going left under the bridge, that was bad,real bad. We just waited till the chaos was done. Now that was a miracle something bad didn't happen.

If people who want to go to the south end from Jordan they should position their boat on the south side and not on the north side of the launch so they don't have to cut across everbody.

I was at that Buck Creek debacle as well lol, Jordan blast off was very similar trying to get through the opening heading towards Indian and other east side spots

I wasn't there but I would think that was considered pre fishing which is the act of looking for fish before the tournament starts.

It’s not in good sportsmanship, but it is very common practice. Specially when social distancing was in full effect. TDs didn’t want a crowd at the ramp, so it was pay-n-go. The “go” part was graphing till first cast time.