3rd Stop of Younkin_Archer Tourney - Lower Potomac 5/9/08

Launch Point: Smallwood State Park

Boater: Jeff Archer

3rd Passenger: Customer of Jeff's pre-fishing for FLW Tournament

Fished: 8 am - 6:00 pm

Weather: Mid 60's with very heavy rains the night before. Mostly cloudy throughout the day rain showers. Winds picked up in the afternoon to 10-20 mph. Tides were very high with flooding and mud increasing throughout the day.

With the winds calm early in the morning and the heavy rains having just stopped before we launched, we decided to run down to Mallows Bay in search of pre-spawn and spawning bass. There were all ready a couple of boats fishing in the bay. Winds were calm with heavy clouds so we chose to focus on topwater. Jeff had one blow up on topwater and that would be the only activity on top all day. Back in the bay we saw lots of feeding fish on the plentiful bait fish. Had some bites and Eric caught a nice size yellow perch on a Rick Clunn Lucky Craft 1.5 crank bait. BUT NO BASS. We were shocked.

We then moved around a little and fished Blue Banks with no luck while the wind beagn to pick up. We headed back towards Mattawoman with a quick stop at Chickamuxen in the Northern mouth of the river and the guest caught one bass while we all had a few bites in the shallow protected bay. Lots of bass boats on the grass beds in the center on the creek.

Headed to the no wake zone of Mattawoman and fished the first hard bank with no takers as the tide began to move out then tried the pad fields with no takers.

It was getting late so we headed back to the ramp and hit our Jeff and Eric's hot spot at marker 5. The water was remarkedly clear with no mud. Started catching them on the light grass just west of the marker. And had consistent bites until 5:30 or so. Jeff did best with a purple fleck Gulp shaky worm rigged Texas Style.

Mishaps: I would have taken the tournament having 2 fish in the boat to Jeff's zero if I had stopped at 2:00 when we dropped the guest fisherman off at the ramp to get to his tournament meeting. Only other mishap was that Jeff's one year old Kistler $220 rod broke while he was casting and caught my line. The rod spilntered right in teh middle of it.

Results:

Eric

2 Keeper - 10 points

First Fish - 10 points

1-13, 1-10

3-7 lbs Total Bag - 55 points

Total Points for the day = 75 Points

Jeff

4 Keeper - 20 points

Big Fish - 15 points

Big Bag - 20 points

1-3, 1-13, 1-0, 3-0

7 lbs Bag = 112 points

Total Points for the day = 167 points

Tournament YTD Results

Eric = 158 Points

Jeff = 198 Points