Grenada Lake CUSA weekend
Grenada lake this weekend was as tough a lake to fish, in some really tough conditions as any lake I ever fished. The lake is REALLY low, REALLY muddy, and it was REALLY windy. The results say it all.
My dad and I left Friday morning about 3:30am. We got to the lake about 7:15 after stopping for minnows and liscence. We put in at Choctaw boat launch and fished up toward greysport. Holly cow was it low. Where I prefishe dlast year it was 8-10 feet. It was 3 feet this year. I idled a long time because I was hitting logs and stickups the whole time. On top of that, they had alot of rain last week so some water was coming into the lake, and it was RELALY chocolate, even for grenada lake. My dad and I fished for 5 hours without a bite. WE talked to about 10 boats and they all had the same story, either one fish, or no fish.
We put the boat back on the trailer and headed to the dam. We put in and found a secondary slough to get into. By the way, the wind was out of the NW, so the water around the dam was absolutely dangerous. We found a pocket with stakes and stuckups put out by the locals that was out of the wind. I took off all of my grubs, and went back to basics. I tied on an aberdeene hook, a split shot, and put on a cork. WE went from stickup to stickup cathing 3 fish from 2-3:30. THe water warmed from 51-56 by 3:00 just in that pocket. The biggest was 1.78. THat is small for grenada standards, but who cared at this point. My dad caught one of the fish. THere were 9 boats in thsi slough and I didn't see them boat a fish. I don't know what I was doing different, but something was paying off.
We went to the meeting and there were a lot of people there. I decided last minute to stay in amature. I did this because a lot of people from other regions who have not had many tournaments were there. I thought my chances of qualifying for the regional was better in amature.
We woke up at 4:15am, went to huddle house (full of drunks), then launched at 6am. Went straight to the slough and set up camp :) We had 6 fish by 10am, but nothing over a pound. WE went up the lake and tried fishing in some deeper water, but holy cow it was rough and hard fishing. We came back and caught 3 more. We weighed in 5.11 pounds and 7 fish. We caught our fsih on just pinnows under a cork in 4-6 feet of water. The bright sun brought them up shallow and they just didn't want anything but minnows from us. We were one of mayber 18 teams in both divisions that had a limit. We finished in 9th in amature, qualified for the regional, and brought home a check for $100.
I can't tell you how excited I was when I saw 8th place at 3:45. One more amature team came in after that and bumped us down to 9th. If I had just one of the fish I caught Friday, we would have been in 5 or 6th.
THis was a special weekend for me doing all this with my dad. Very special. Something funny, because of crappie.com and my posts, I had several boats, teams, and people at the meeting walk up to me and ask "Hey, are you David Waters". My dad thought I was some famous fishermen. hehe. That is the power of this website. People know who you are. I met jigdragger, speedy, Todd (crappiehunter)and talked to several who read posts and haven't joined yet from Kentucky and Jasper, Al. Hey, if you read this, make sure you join!!!!!!!
A great weekend. I will see everyone at the regional! Woo Hoo :D
