31st Place out of 97 Pros Lake of the Ozarks Drake Harbor FLW BFL

Just wrapped up the BFL out of Drake Harbor on Lake of the Ozarks. It was a challenging tournament for me just because the conditions were not great to catch a big bag of fish in the upper part of the river.

I ended up not having a great practice for this event and looking back I wish I would have fished it differently. One of the hard parts of fishing the upper portion of Lake of the Ozarks is making sure not to damage the boat.

I spent some time the weekend before the tournament learning how to navigate this stretch of the lake and caught a couple of fish but not exactly the kind that I needed to have a shot at winning the tournament. I ended up getting a bad boat number in the tournament which is brutal on this stretch of river because with the water being low there wasn't as many fishable areas.

I was just going to go fishing and let the chips fall as they may. One of the biggest things I've learned when it comes to fishing is that you cannot win them all but you can really stink it up if you overthink it. I knew the fishing was going to be a grind regardless with there being no current and that I was going to have to work hard all day to catch some fish.

There's an incredible amount of fishing pressure that gets put on the fish during these kind of tournaments and my boat wasn't going to have the range to get away from the crowds so I'd made up my mind to grind all day.

I ended up getting on a good crankbait pattern in the morning and a jig pattern in the afternoon which produced 4 keepers for me that went 7lbs and change which wasn't what I wanted but it kept me in 2nd Place in the Angler of the Year Standings heading into the final tournament.