Gene Larew Salty blog – Catch Up with Bobby Myers

Man, this has been a not so swift year. I have had some tremendous practices and I am not making the adjustments for when the fish are in transition. We have fished a lot of transition stuff all year long in the southern and in the centrals; cold fronts killed it – it’s just kind of been a rough go this season and unfortunately, due to money constraints and me not getting it done like I should have gotten it done, I am not going to be able to fish in Northern Opens.

Table Rock Lake was a pretty decent event; I finished 37th; still not happy with that. This is a sport where the only place that counts is first. I mean, let’s be real about this – second’s not any good, third’s – not any good. It’s about winning events.

Table Rock – I had really good practice; I was doing real similar to what the winner was doing. He was deep crankin’ – he was throwing 6XD; I was throwing a DD22. I was beating it in around transition banks; I was literally casting into two to three feet of water and bringing it out into sixteen to eighteen foot and also targeting trees off those banks that were sitting in anywhere from twelve to thirty feet of water. You know, the fish live in those trees at Table Rock.

Most of the time, when they are not feeding they will pull out into those trees and then transition from those trees to the bank. And, I targeted those trees as well, trying to beat my crank bait off those to create a reaction strike
I did awesome during practice – I caught several seven pounders and several five pounders and also had a squarebill bite going on that slowly tailed off because the lake was dirty the week prior; and every day it just continued to get cleaner and cleaner, so those fish just went deeper and deeper and deeper.

So, the one thing that I could do, that I probably should have done more of at Table Rock was I was using the Gene Larew Hardhead and a Biffle Bug – the smallmouth were tearing that thing up at the Rock.

If you can get around a school of smallmouth with that Hardhead – a good friend of mine, Brian Potter, finished fourth at Table Rock, did really well on the Hardhead and the Biffle Bug.

I figured it would take eighteen to twenty pounds a day at the Rock – and it didn’t happen.

And that is part of the reason that I didn’t do as well as I did – I overshot the weight based on what I had been catching the week prior and the official practice days.

But that Hardhead; if you can get that thing around some smallmouth at Table Rock, on those pea gravel banks just reeling it nice and slow – they will eat it really good! Had a lot of success with that.

So, anyway, the next next event in the Opens will be Fort Gibson Lake and I am looking forward to that – and I will keep you guys up to speed on that. But, actually, the next stop for me is Atchafalaya Basin for the Federation Regional and I will get you guys up on that as soon as I get back.