Lake O.H. Ivie Fishing Report - October 28, 2011

My partner, Tom Martens and I had our FAN Championship on O.H. Ivie Friday and Saturday. I was able to prefish a bit the day before on official practice day and found some nice bass shallow. I had 2 overs and plenty unders just hoping we could find more overs during the tournament. The lake has a slot at 18" which you can have only 2 unders and as many as 5 overs.

We headed to my main spot on the first day and thankfully had it to ourselves. After fishing for just a bit, we caught a few unders and then Tom hooks into a nice one. It turns out to be his personal best at 9.77 lbs. Awesome bass! The next cast, I hooked into a nice smallmouth bass over 3 lbs at least but it quickly jumped and spit the hook. After working over the area for a while, we just ran around and hit a bunch more of my areas only to keep catching unders. After weighing in though, we were sitting in 2nd place, just .4 lbs out of 1st place and we had big bass so it was looking pretty good.

The next day we headed back to my big bass spot only to come up empty on anything big. We then headed to the number 2 spot and wore them out on shallow cranks but again, no overs. We came in to weigh-in thinking we would be out of the checks but to our surprise, we only dropped 1 place to 3rd. 3rd place from day 1, Jeff Pitrucha and Ronnie Trower came in with 4 overs to leap over 1st and 2nd for the win and we took home plaques for 3rd place and big bass overall.

Congrats to my fishing partner, Tom Martens, on his personal best bass at 9.77 lbs!