Weather Conditions:

Low – 36

High – 62

Mostly Sunny

Wind – Northeast 5-10mph

            Freezing water temps, muddy water, and a high pressure day can’t keep the Southern Boyz Bass Club away. We had 34 anglers with 5 new members show up for the first tournament of the year which was held on the Red River at Grand Ecore landing and well the season didn’t really start out with a BANG like it did last year. The recent 4 snow storms really had the fish in a lazy funk! With the water temps hanging around 45 degrees fishing was slow to say the least and for power fisherman like myself it was downright torture. Only 9 anglers were able to bring a fish to the scales. But someone ALWAYS catches them, and for us it was the slower than molasses fishing of the Woodson Brothers that brought in the heaviest two sacks!! With so many of the anglers that you usually see at the top of leaderboard not catching a fish and some new members catching fish, the points race is starting off very interesting which should make for an exciting year.

            Anytime you fish the Red River there are lots of decisions to be made. Do I stay in the same pool or go through the locks, which one of the numerous oxbows or back waters do I try first, do I fish the stump filled flats, the deeper creeks, or the structure filled banks, or do I find some rock filled banks. Well two of our anglers made the right decisions and put a solid game plan together. Kevin Woodson brought the only 5 fish limit to the scales. His sack weighed an impressive 19.08lbs. This sack was anchored by two big sals. One weighed 6.02lbs and the other over 5lbs. Congratulations Kevin!! This was a very impressive sack on a really tough day. Second place went to Wallace Woodson with 13.8lbs. He only caught 4 fish but the biggest was 6.61lbs which was big fish of the day. Both men were basically fishing the same pattern. They were dragging some type of beaver like bait in 6-8ft of water in pool #3. The fish were not holding to any type of structure but were holding to deeper banks with real deep water nearby. They both said you had to fish as slow as you possibly could imagine. If you thought you were fishing slow, you were probably fishing too fast! That takes A LOT of patience!!! Third place went to Dan Stevens with 7.82lbs. Rounding out the top 5 were Bruce Fisher with 7.03lbs and Jeremy Sonnier with 6.33lbs. Both men had a fish over 4lbs.

            Overall only 22 bass were brought to the scales with an average weight of 3.12lbs. This is a good average but very few bass were caught. We are defiantly not in a prespawn situation yet, this is still winter time fishing. Our next tournament will be March 1 at Toledo Bend. If this warm weather keeps up the fishing should really be awesome. We might even see some 55 degree water and some prespawn conditions!!!! Hope to see everyone there!

Below is a video I made of the most boring boat race ever! No one was willing to get out of line and the lens was fogged up at first. This is something I am going to try to do every tournament. Sorry Josh Sikes but I had to keep your part in there!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1gLt5wvYcY

Brandon Nugent