2024 BFL Regional

 This year, the regional championship for the Mississippi division of the BFL’s was held on Wright Patman Lake near Texarkana, TX. I had a really rough season in the Mississippi division so I wasn’t planning to make the championship but as it turned out, I ended up ranked number 43 and the top 45 anglers from each division go to the championship. I had no experience on the lake and outside of YouTube videos from NPFL anglers who had fished there several times, there wasn’t a lot of information available online. My plan was to treat it like any lake in the fall and just go fishing.

My first day of practice was decent enough. I caught a few fish, but nothing of any real size. It was typical fall junk fishing and there was no consistent depth or pattern to where I was catching fish. This is more or less what I expected so I went into day, two of practice, hoping to expand and find some new areas to fish About 8:30 on day two I hit a stump with the lower unit of my outboard. I initially thought everything was OK, but as the morning went on, I began to have problems running the motor. I ended up taking the boat out and finding a Bass Cat/Yamaha dealer to take a look at my motor and see what was going on. As it turned out I had a smashed intake screen and bent prop shaft. They replaced the screen to get me back on the water and advised to have the prop shaft fixed when I got back home. 

This took up the majority of the day, so I only ended up with a couple hours left in the afternoon to finish out my practice day. I caught one good fish on a spinnerbait on an isolated stump on a secondary point, and even though I hadn’t spent a ton of time on day two, I felt like there were enough fish around that if I caught what was there I would end up with a decent back

On day, one of the tournament, I spent the morning trying to force the reaction bite. I threw Buzzbaits and spinnerbaits most of the morning, as did my co-angler, but we couldn’t generate a quality bite. As the day went on, I finally slowed down and started fishing some slow-moving baits and finally connected with a decent keeper. I went back over some of the same areas I had already fished that morning, working a shaky head a little bit slower and a little bit deeper than I had previously that morning. About 1:30 I caught a four pounder and thought I had finally figured out how to catch ‘em. Unfortunately, that was the last keeper I caught for the day and I ended up with 11 lbs. 12 oz.

I went into day two with a plan to fish the way I did the second half of day one but it seemed the fishing had changed again and I wasn’t getting any bites at all. I didn’t catch my first keeper until about 1:30 it ended up being another four pounder on the same point I caught the one the previous day. I went and checked some new water, but ended up coming back to that same point hoping it would produce another four pounder or at least a few good keepers but that ended up being the only keeper I caught that day.

I ended the tournament in 91st place, which certainly isn’t where I wanted to be, but I was still proud of the two solid fish I caught. I’m looking forward to the next season of BFL‘s and trying to make the regional championship on Kentucky Lake in 2025.