HomeblogsMorgenthaler: A Good Start The First tournament of the year is behind me and I am pretty happy with what turned out to be not a bad start to the season. It’s always good to get started in the right way and I studied hard and researched a lot for Okeechobee. I had it narrowed down to four areas that I was going to look to start with and I started my practice by checking those areas. All four of them had things that I thought would be possibilities so I set up a milk run in my head that started at the furthest point from the take off. When I got there the first morning of the tournament the first spot was a pretty big area and while there were other people around they weren’t doing what I was doing. I was fishing deeper spawning bass and throwing a swimbait on the outside of the spawning areas. The reason I was fishing the deeper spawning beds is that I believe the fish have adapted because of heavy fishing pressure. So I had my area mainly to myself even though I had company. I used primarily two lures and I had a lot of confidence in them. I used a one-ounce Lunker Lure jig in June bug with a sapphire blue trailer as my primary bait. The jig didn’t get me a ton of bites but it really helped me get the quality bites. The other lure that I used was a Gambler Big EZ swimbait, and I threw both them on 50 lb braided on an 8 ft extra heavy Carrot Stix rod so I could jack ’em. I didn’t expect the weights at Okeechobee to be that high, I figured if I was in the 15 to 18 lb range I’d be solid and it turned out to be a true big weight tournament. Okeechobee certainly showed its potential, everything lined up with the weather and the moon phase which made the fishing was unbelievable. I went through seven to eight limits and caught some really good fish. I had one opportunity that could have put me in the final cut and I didn’t capitalize. But overall it’s a good start to the year and I’m looking forward to building on the momentum. It’s off to Beaver Lake next, talk to you soon.
