Just fished the FLW Everstart tournament and the California Delta. Had a great practice catching numbers of smaller fish, it was a lot of fun catching 1 or 2 fish a day 5 lbs or more. I knew it would take at least 40 lbs per day to qualify for the top 10 cut. During practice the fish wanted a 4 1/2" Folkestad Special, a 5" Senko and a few chatterbait fish.
Lesson #1 learned from practice: In order to catch 20 lbs per day I decided to use a 6" Senko, wacky rigged and weightless when possible instead of nail rigged. Consequently the number of bites I got per day were way down during the tournament, but the bites I got were quality allowing me to weigh in 40.05 oz for two days. This allowed me to qualify for the cut and fish the 3rd day. When I needed a keeper fish I would fish a 4 1/2" Folkestad Special which would give me a quick limit allowing me to comfortably fish the 6" Senko to get the quality bites I needed to make the top 10 cut.
Lesson #2: The 3rd day fishing the cut, the winds were 25-35 mph out of the south. With fighting the wind and rain all day, and getting cold, it's easy to have a tenancy to get a little lazy because every time I stop to do something the wind would blow me 100 yards away. The big mistake I made was not checking and retying my line like normal throughout the day. I got lazy and it cost me when I broke off two GIANTS!
Without these two mistakes, I had a chance at a FLW win. Lesson learned, don't get lazy regardless of the elements!
I ended up coming in 7th place winning $5,215