Greer's Ferry FLW BFL 7th Place Finish!

Just got back from Greer's Ferry Lake down in Arkansas. I made the drive down Friday night through a torrential downpour with tons of lightening.I had to drop off my boat in Waynesville, M0 because I was going to fish the USA Bassin Tournament on Lake of the Ozarks on my way back. After driving over 6 hours through rain and lightening I finally got down to the lake. I had to rig up a bunch of rods and reels since I didn't get to doing any tackle prep during the week because work has been really busy. I called my boater the night before and he said that we would be mostly fishing for smallmouth. He was a local that fished Greer's Ferry Lake all the time and he said that we would catch a lot of fish but finding the right size might be an issue. I went to bed at about 12:30.

It rained the entire night and I woke up Saturday morning at 4:30 am to meet my boater at 5:15 am at the boat ramp. It was still raining a little bit but it looked like a lot of the rain was going to move out just in time for the tournament. We were boat number 5 so we were going to be taking off at 6:30 am. After the national anthem we blasted off the down the lake and my boater headed to the back of a creek to start on a little secondary point. He quickly caught two keepers throwing a Carolina rigged lizard. I was able to pick off a nice little spotted bass off the same point on a wobble-head shakey rigged full sized brush hog. I was just crawling the bait through the rocks.

We moved to another point in the creek and my boater continued to catch some smallies on the Carolina rigged lizard. I was able to get a shot in with my wobble-head brush hog and boat another nice Kentucky spotted bass. It was then that we decided to pick up our crankbaits. I was able to put one of the smallmouths I weighed in the boat on the crank and catch a couple more. We left the cove that we had been catching fish in to go to another spot up the lake.

It was at this point that we had the FLW camera crew show up and now we were headed up to the next cove up with the camera boat following us. Hopefully we both get some time on TV. We stopped on a gravel point and my boater was able to put another fish in the boat on the Carolina rigged lizard and I was able to boat two keeper smallmouth on the Alabama Rig. The fish were really biting. We made a couple more moves to some points and continued to catch fish upgrading here and there by a couple of ounces. This went on all day.

Towards the end of the day we made a move to another spot and both my boater and I doubled up. He caught a nice smallmouth on the Alabama rig and I managed to make a good upgrade on the jerkbait with a real nice smallmouth. At the end of the day I had no idea that I would be making another top ten finish. The fish were really biting good and I figured there would be a lot of people that would catch fish. Almost everyone caught a bunch of fish and I think like 40 co anglers had a limit but my 9lbs 3 oz of smallmouth was good enough to hang in there for a 7th place finish. The tournament bumped me up to 37 in the points in position to qualify for the Regional. The next tournament will be on Lake Dardanelle for the Arkie Division. I've never been there before so it should be an interesting tournament.