August on the Mighty Mississippi River

This past weekend Brian Bowles and I teamed up once again in a club event on Pool 10 of the Mississippi River.  We had about a half of day on Friday to look things over for a two day tournament.  We decided to go to Pool 9 and check things out, if we didn't find anything, then we knew that our focus would be in Pool 10 the entire weekend.  We found a few areas that were holding fish so we knew we were headed there the first day of competition.
Saturday morning came and we headed north.  We filled our limit of 6 bass in about 3 hours and started to upgrade our catch.  We caught dozens of smaller fish, which kept the day a lot of fun.  We focused on trees and eel grass in current.  These areas were also loaded with minnows, making our bait choice an easy one.  Most bass were caught on the Hot Rod Baits River Minnow Tube.  We ended day one in the lead by a slight margin.  With that news we decided to stick to the same plan and hope the similar or better results.
Sunday came and off we went to our best spot.  We caught a couple bass right away for our first two keepers of the day. After that, no bites, not even smaller ones.  Something had changed, but what was it?  Mayflies...they were not in the area this day, and thus the fish left.  A simple little bug put a damper on our day.  We hit some other areas that we caught fish on Saturday and even expanded on those areas to fill our limit and upgrade slightly a few times.  I knew we didn't quite have the weight we did the first day, and I had a bad feeling about things.
The bad feeling was true, we ended up 0.09 pounds out of first place.  Yes, a few drops of water, but that is how things go in world of fishing tournaments.  I have been on the other side of a weigh-in like that, and this time it was my turn to denied by a narrow margin.  It was still a great weekend, made some money and spent time with a great friend catching Mississippi River bass.

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