April 26th was the date of the Rend Lake BFL with the FLW. There were 133 Boats entered, only 53 caught at least 1 fish. This was a terrible tournament for even seasoned FLW anglers (which we had many from out of state that were attempting to obtain qualifying points for the divisional).
I went down on Wednesday before the tournament to pre-fish and the weather was already somewhat tenuous. We had warm weather -- but lots of wind, gusts around 40 mph was not uncommon. After launching the boat, I was ready to explore, so we headed north to see if we could find some warm water. The surface temp. was about 68, I thought this would make for a really good tournament as long as the weather stayed together. On that first day, I did pre-fish a little and came back with a single bite, this was curious to me, such a big lake and only 1 bite! Well, the next day, we headed out earlier in the day around 7am, I landed two bass and felt pretty good about the fishing. However, the skies were starting to cloud and the wind was howling, leaving us with 2-4 waves on the main body of the lake. On Friday, the weather was about the same, I got one short fish and headed in as the wind picked up yet again, only this time much earlier in the day. To my surprise, many boats were coming back to the hotel as well -- seemed we all knew that the weather would become a major factor in this tourney. Friday night we had a tremendous thunder storm and heavy rain, the news called for a cold front to pass over night, as if the strange weather already wasn't enough, now we had a cold front appear.
Saturday morning, we were up at 3am and on the water by 5:30am for check-in. I drew the second flight, and we were fishing by 6:30am. The air temp. was 45 and the surface temp. on the lake had dropped almost 18 degrees. The fish had lock jaw -- boats were running back and forth across the lake all day looking for warmer water and fish that would bite. After 8 long hours, we headed in, empty handed along with the majority of the boats. So, my first time on Rend Lake was not a real fruitful event, except that I met a really kewl pro angler, Rick Eyman. Rick took time to chat and discuss each day's events with me, I really enjoyed his company as well. So all was not lost.
The next event is on Shelbyville Lake, let's hope that brings better news...
Tight lines!