An Awesome Week On Pickwick 2024
everythingthatswims reply :
Pickwick treated me really well this week, I caught lots of big fish and had a blast! My fishing partner and I competed in the BASS College Series Southern Tour event on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. There was a field of 266 boats from schools all across the country, many traveling even farther than we did from WVU.
Fluctuating water levels were a big factor this week. On Sunday, the lake rose 3 to 4 feet from heavy rains, and the current was RIPPING! We didn't start practice 'til Monday, so we never saw the lake before it rose. This definitely helped us out in my opinion. Many teams found fish over the weekend and then the water levels changed everything. There were two main approaches taken by anglers at this tournament, largemouth fishing in the lower portions of the lake, or smallmouth fishing at the base of Wilson Dam in an area named "The Horseshoe". The horseshoe is notorious for producing incredible numbers of giant smallmouth, many teams who fished there would only end up with 4 fish, but still have 14-16lbs! I decided to not go near that area of the lake, I don't like fishing community holes and it was the craziest one I have ever seen. 50+ boats there fishing each day. The even crazier part is how 20lb+ bags were caught there each day despite all of the fishing pressure and boat traffic.
All of the locals seemed to agree that 99% of the smallmouth in Pickwick are at the dam this time of year, but I found that hard to believe. My partner and I spent a good bit of time fishing rocky current breaks on the main river, and while there weren't many, we found some BIG ones! My friends who live down there didn't believe us when we told them our smallmouth weren't coming from the dam. I think we found 4 smallmouth spots on the main river during practice. Three of them produced fish during the event! The go-to bait for smallmouth this week was 'ol uncle ned. It's incredible how effective that darn thing is. We used a ZMAN 1/6oz weedless shroom head and a TRD.
We spent most of our time this week flipping for largemouth. There was an abundance of flooded bushes, and with it being this time of year with 60 degree water temps, there is absolutely no reason for the fish not to be in them, so we worked hard until we found some and figured it out. As the water dropped, the flipping bite got better. Fish would pull out to the deepest piece of cover, and you could almost call your shots. The main way I caught fish was to find a laydown or bush with current pushing on it. This would pile up sticks and debris, creating what we call "trash mats". I was flipping (okay TECHNICALLY I was pitching @Catt) a d-bomb with a 1/2oz tungsten weight on 20lb fluorocarbon, and it was deadly. The key was to drop the bait in the middle of whatever your target was, there were tons of boats around but they were throwing moving baits around the edges and making pitches to the edges of the cover. I'm sure that worked too, but I wanted to target fish that no one else was bothering.
Our main dilemma on tournament day was to figure out how much time to devote to smallmouth, and how much time to devote to largemouth. We decided to hit our smallmouth stuff early, then go flip once the sun got up.
Day one produced a 4lb smallmouth in the first 10 minutes, it was actually the same fish I had caught in practice, it was on the same current break in about 15FOW. We spent a good bit of time looking for another one but it just didn't happen, so we put down the spinning rods and picked up the big sticks. I caught about 30 fish flipping the bushes on day one, more than I wanted to, but I never got a kicker bite, and had to make up for it via culling by ounces all day. 17lbs 10oz on day one put us in 22nd place, I knew I made the right call by catching so many of them, you just have to bring your a-game on the Tennessee River. I also knew that with our area being so close to the main river, and it being time of year for the bass to do their thing, the area would probably reload overnight.
Day two did not start with a big smallmouth, there was a boat sitting where we planned to go, so we started early on largemouth. I put a limit together quickly but it wasn't very heavy. Luckily I caught about a 6lb largemouth at 10am, the kicker bite we had hoped for on day 1. I made a few more upgrades while largemouth fishing, then we headed to our smallmouth spot. My partner caught a big smallmouth as soon as we pulled up on our spot, it was the only bite we got there, but it was the right one! We then went back to largemouth fishing for the remainder of the day, and ended up with all quality fish besides one that was around 2&3/4 that we wanted to get rid of. With 15 minutes of fishing left, we headed to a spot that never produced a big smallmouth, but had the potential, and I cracked a very nice one to trade for that largemouth. Day 2 was definitely our best day decision-wise, we made the right calls at the right times and the bites happened when we needed them to, it was a perfect day! Our 5 fish limit weighed in at 21lbs, 2oz, jumping us from 22nd place all the way to third!
Going into the final day, we knew we needed to catch 20lbs in order to win, nothing less. Once again we started on our smallmouth spot. We always caught some spotted bass while smallmouth fishing, but they are Kentucky strain fish, so most of them aren't very big, and they aren't worth targeting in a tournament where 20lbs is a strong possibility. To our surprise, we popped 3 very nice spotted bass in the first 30 minutes, all of them very close to the 3lb mark! Within the next 10 minutes, I caught a 3lb meanmouth, and my partner got a largemouth that was barely over the 15" size limit. At 6:51am we had 5 fish with plenty of time to go upgrade... Well the day didn't go as planned, at all! The water had been dropping every day, and had finally gotten so low that there was no longer any brush in the water to flip to, the fish were swimming around in the sloughs in 2FOW that used to be 5-6FOW, and they were extremely skittish (probably because I had already caught most of them!). There was also a large high school event, and a BFL taking place on the lake. Couple that with it being Pickwick on a Saturday in April, and you have a LOT of boats on the lake. You really couldn't try to go fish a new pattern because there were boats sitting on everything. We hit our smallmouth spots HARD, hoping for one or two big bites, but it just never happened. I did a good bit of flipping too, but everything I caught was tiny. I finally got rid of our small largemouth in the last 15 minutes with a largemouth that was a little bit bigger.
We had 14lbs, 9oz on the final day. I figured we would get bumped down several places, but the conditions were tough on everyone. The guys higher up the leaderboard had a tough time, but the guys lower in the standings almost all had a great day, one of them bringing in 21-11! I would bet money that the guys in the top had fish leaving them, and the other guys had fish come to them, no idea what the circumstances were but it was easy to see that the fishing had drastically changed compared to the first two days.
We finished in 2nd place, brought home some hardware, new rods, some money, and some good publicity for the team and our sponsors. I am extremely blessed to get to do this, and it really is the coolest thing in the world to me. Thanks to everyone on BR for the support and just paying attention, there aren't a lot of people who understand what any of this stuff is, so I gotta talk to you guys about it!
Catt reply :
That's some fast adjusting to conditions!
Congrats ????
DSTN reply :
Good work, congrats!
Gundog reply :
Bravo 
Will Wetline reply :
Congratulations to you young bassmasters! That's some savvy patterning and presentation you did to place 2nd in a field of 266.
And thank you for your usual excellent report. (I'm guessing you're an English major.)
shimmy reply :
2nd place out of all those teams! Well done man. Well earned and you got prizes. Sounds like an awesome experience.
TimberTodd reply :
Nicely done, congratulations to you and your partner!
A-Jay reply :
Very Nicely Done ~ All of it.
Keep it up - there's an angling future waiting for you.
And there's a better than average chance it includes one of the Major Circuits.
Congratulations.
A-Jay
Darren. reply :
Wow. Nicely done. Congrats!
TnRiver46 reply :
Congrats!!!! Is that a spot in your left hand on the last picture?
everythingthatswims reply :
On 4/23/2018 at 7:52 AM, TnRiver46 said:Congrats!!!! Is that a spot in your left hand on the last picture?
Yes sir, the one in my right hand is a meanmouth, and the one in my partner's right hand is also a spot. We had another good spot in our bag that day too, just the one largemouth. Pickwick has some big kentuckies!
On 4/22/2018 at 9:12 PM, Catt said:That's some fast adjusting to conditions!
Congrats ????
And I need to become even more comfortable with making changes on the water. If I was fun fishing, I would have probably scrapped everything and started from scratch on day three, it's just hard to take risks like that in a tournament!
Catt reply :
On 4/23/2018 at 10:11 AM, everythingthatswims said:And I need to become even more comfortable with making changes on the water. If I was fun fishing, I would have probably scrapped everything and started from scratch on day three, it's just hard to take risks like that in a tournament!
With experience comes confidence!
What helped me was when I quit "fun" fishing & started fishing the same intensity tournament or not!
Fuzz reply :
On 4/22/2018 at 8:41 PM, everythingthatswims said:Pickwick treated me really well this week, I caught lots of big fish and had a blast! My fishing partner and I competed in the BASS College Series Southern Tour event on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. There was a field of 266 boats from schools all across the country, many traveling even farther than we did from WVU.
Fluctuating water levels were a big factor this week. On Sunday, the lake rose 3 to 4 feet from heavy rains, and the current was RIPPING! We didn't start practice 'til Monday, so we never saw the lake before it rose. This definitely helped us out in my opinion. Many teams found fish over the weekend and then the water levels changed everything. There were two main approaches taken by anglers at this tournament, largemouth fishing in the lower portions of the lake, or smallmouth fishing at the base of Wilson Dam in an area named "The Horseshoe". The horseshoe is notorious for producing incredible numbers of giant smallmouth, many teams who fished there would only end up with 4 fish, but still have 14-16lbs! I decided to not go near that area of the lake, I don't like fishing community holes and it was the craziest one I have ever seen. 50+ boats there fishing each day. The even crazier part is how 20lb+ bags were caught there each day despite all of the fishing pressure and boat traffic.
All of the locals seemed to agree that 99% of the smallmouth in Pickwick are at the dam this time of year, but I found that hard to believe. My partner and I spent a good bit of time fishing rocky current breaks on the main river, and while there weren't many, we found some BIG ones! My friends who live down there didn't believe us when we told them our smallmouth weren't coming from the dam. I think we found 4 smallmouth spots on the main river during practice. Three of them produced fish during the event! The go-to bait for smallmouth this week was 'ol uncle ned. It's incredible how effective that darn thing is. We used a ZMAN 1/6oz weedless shroom head and a TRD.
We spent most of our time this week flipping for largemouth. There was an abundance of flooded bushes, and with it being this time of year with 60 degree water temps, there is absolutely no reason for the fish not to be in them, so we worked hard until we found some and figured it out. As the water dropped, the flipping bite got better. Fish would pull out to the deepest piece of cover, and you could almost call your shots. The main way I caught fish was to find a laydown or bush with current pushing on it. This would pile up sticks and debris, creating what we call "trash mats". I was flipping (okay TECHNICALLY I was pitching @Catt) a d-bomb with a 1/2oz tungsten weight on 20lb fluorocarbon, and it was deadly. The key was to drop the bait in the middle of whatever your target was, there were tons of boats around but they were throwing moving baits around the edges and making pitches to the edges of the cover. I'm sure that worked too, but I wanted to target fish that no one else was bothering.
Our main dilemma on tournament day was to figure out how much time to devote to smallmouth, and how much time to devote to largemouth. We decided to hit our smallmouth stuff early, then go flip once the sun got up.
Day one produced a 4lb smallmouth in the first 10 minutes, it was actually the same fish I had caught in practice, it was on the same current break in about 15FOW. We spent a good bit of time looking for another one but it just didn't happen, so we put down the spinning rods and picked up the big sticks. I caught about 30 fish flipping the bushes on day one, more than I wanted to, but I never got a kicker bite, and had to make up for it via culling by ounces all day. 17lbs 10oz on day one put us in 22nd place, I knew I made the right call by catching so many of them, you just have to bring your a-game on the Tennessee River. I also knew that with our area being so close to the main river, and it being time of year for the bass to do their thing, the area would probably reload overnight.
Day two did not start with a big smallmouth, there was a boat sitting where we planned to go, so we started early on largemouth. I put a limit together quickly but it wasn't very heavy. Luckily I caught about a 6lb largemouth at 10am, the kicker bite we had hoped for on day 1. I made a few more upgrades while largemouth fishing, then we headed to our smallmouth spot. My partner caught a big smallmouth as soon as we pulled up on our spot, it was the only bite we got there, but it was the right one! We then went back to largemouth fishing for the remainder of the day, and ended up with all quality fish besides one that was around 2&3/4 that we wanted to get rid of. With 15 minutes of fishing left, we headed to a spot that never produced a big smallmouth, but had the potential, and I cracked a very nice one to trade for that largemouth. Day 2 was definitely our best day decision-wise, we made the right calls at the right times and the bites happened when we needed them to, it was a perfect day! Our 5 fish limit weighed in at 21lbs, 2oz, jumping us from 22nd place all the way to third!
Going into the final day, we knew we needed to catch 20lbs in order to win, nothing less. Once again we started on our smallmouth spot. We always caught some spotted bass while smallmouth fishing, but they are Kentucky strain fish, so most of them aren't very big, and they aren't worth targeting in a tournament where 20lbs is a strong possibility. To our surprise, we popped 3 very nice spotted bass in the first 30 minutes, all of them very close to the 3lb mark! Within the next 10 minutes, I caught a 3lb meanmouth, and my partner got a largemouth that was barely over the 15" size limit. At 6:51am we had 5 fish with plenty of time to go upgrade... Well the day didn't go as planned, at all! The water had been dropping every day, and had finally gotten so low that there was no longer any brush in the water to flip to, the fish were swimming around in the sloughs in 2FOW that used to be 5-6FOW, and they were extremely skittish (probably because I had already caught most of them!). There was also a large high school event, and a BFL taking place on the lake. Couple that with it being Pickwick on a Saturday in April, and you have a LOT of boats on the lake. You really couldn't try to go fish a new pattern because there were boats sitting on everything. We hit our smallmouth spots HARD, hoping for one or two big bites, but it just never happened. I did a good bit of flipping too, but everything I caught was tiny. I finally got rid of our small largemouth in the last 15 minutes with a largemouth that was a little bit bigger.
We had 14lbs, 9oz on the final day. I figured we would get bumped down several places, but the conditions were tough on everyone. The guys higher up the leaderboard had a tough time, but the guys lower in the standings almost all had a great day, one of them bringing in 21-11! I would bet money that the guys in the top had fish leaving them, and the other guys had fish come to them, no idea what the circumstances were but it was easy to see that the fishing had drastically changed compared to the first two days.
We finished in 2nd place, brought home some hardware, new rods, some money, and some good publicity for the team and our sponsors. I am extremely blessed to get to do this, and it really is the coolest thing in the world to me. Thanks to everyone on BR for the support and just paying attention, there aren't a lot of people who understand what any of this stuff is, so I gotta talk to you guys about it!
Congrats! Nice job.
RichF reply :
Killer tournament man! So cool to weigh in fine specimens of each species. Awesome job!
Fairtax4me reply :
Awesome job man! Big congrats to you and your buddy on a HUGE tourney finish! Keep wreckin 'em!
deep reply :
Well done. Congrats!
Yeajray231 reply :
Killin it ! Sounds like too much fun.
@Fuzz you can simply use the @ symbol and the person's user name to get their attention , instead of quoting their huge post and clogging up the thread. Not pickin on ya just a FYI.
RHuff reply :
Proud of you guys representing our state and our flagship school so well. Now go win the whole darn thing in July and make HISTORY.
A-Jay reply :
And here's the "Official" version
Nice Job again ~ @everythingthatswims
LORENCE, Ala. — Adrian College’s Nick Marsh and Jarrod Layton rode a wave of shallow largemouth to victory at Pickwick Lake in the Carhartt Bassmaster College Series Southern Tour presented by Bass Pro Shops with a three-day total of 58 pounds, 11 ounces.
After catching over 20 pounds on both Thursday and Friday, the duo from Michigan managed 17-8 during Saturday’s final round to notch the victory by a 5-6 margin over West Virginia University’s Nolan Minor and Casey Lanier.
https://www.bassmaster.com/news/college-adrian-college-wins
A-Jay
BassNJake reply :
Congrats to you and your partner!!
Thank you for taking us on this journey with you as always and excellent write up!!
Steveo-1969 reply :
Congratulations on finishing so well and thank you for the excellent descriptive write-up. You are making WV proud in more ways than one!!
Sam reply :
Congrats!
Just get your degree so you can support your fishing and when you get married. 
roadwarrior reply :
CONGRATULATIONS!
everythingthatswims reply :
On 4/29/2018 at 4:21 PM, Sam said:Congrats!
Just get your degree so you can support your fishing and when you get married.
What if I can support my fishing with my fishing? 
@A-Jay
(still pursuing the degree FYI)
A-Jay reply :
On 5/1/2018 at 4:50 AM, everythingthatswims said:What if I can support my fishing with my fishing?
(still pursuing the degree FYI)
Seems to be working for the reining AOY Champ.
The most recent prodigy btw.
A-Jay
Sam reply :
If you can win enough tournaments to support your professional fishing dreams then by all means please do so.
But as you know, fishing is an unforgiving sport. Top of the world today and in the outhouse tomorrow.
We have seen posts on this Forum outlining the costs involved in professional fishing. You have the skills to win or do very well in tournaments that you can save money to continue your fishing career.
We would love to see you in the Elites and then fish the Classic. We all on this Forum would be going wild for you to do well.
So keep your dreams alive, always. Sometimes life gets in the way so have fun while you can.
We are all pulling for you to do well. 
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