Guest Post: Because I Cant Catch a Fish

 BY Collin Oliver - 3/5/2015

 Fishing in cold water is brutal, luckily this weekend the Mid Atlantic Kayak Bass Fishing tournament was on Cozy Lake Anna, even better tournament participants had access to the even cozier 60 degree warm side of the lake.  That doesn't mean my butt wasn't freezing off and every droplet of water on my boat wasn't frozen instantly by the insane 13 degree air.  We launched at 7:00 AM and blindly fished for hours not knowing where to go or what to do.

We fished everywhere

After almost 3 hours my brother Jeffery decided he wanted to fish the rocks that separated the warm side from the cold side and end up at the discharge of the nuclear power station, I concluded that we should split up so I headed toward the south shore of area while he headed in the direction of the rocks.  I made it to a point that was surrounded by a hard bottomed 2-5 foot deep flat that dropped off into a 4-8 foot deep cove.  Upon arriving at this point I decided to stop experimenting and go to my happy place which is a winding bayou through the Louisiana marsh this may sound crazy but I took everything I ever learned about fishing and I combined it into one 15.75 in largemouth bass.  I grabbed my favorite chartreuse willow blade spinner bait for fall smallmouth in Goose Creek, slid my Blue Moon Deadly Dudley Bay Chovey my favorite color and lure for Lake Pontchartrain Speckled trout, and chunked my pieced together lure parallel to the bank and rolled it back to me making sure no inch of bank was left unfished otherwise known as beating the bank which is the best technique for bringing in redfish in the marsh.  Much to my surprise the third cast of my Frankenstein lure yielded my first fish of the day, the 7^th biggest bass Lake Anna had to offer to us kayaks that day.  I was ecstatic being that it was first time in my tournament fishing career I knew I was not going to be in last place.  

7th biggest fish in the tournament

After I measured the fish and took a picture me and my brother reunited and started fishing all the points, coves, and flats we could find in the area.  We remembered a large cove that we sped past earlier that morning on the other side of the lake so we headed over there.  Still Equipped with my Frankenlure I confidently returned to my marsh hallucination and beat the bank for another 15 minutes without fish until I felt something at the end of my line no not my second fish but a small log that that stole my spinner bait and along with my confidence and hallucination.  I decided not to tie on spinner bait on but to try something very different.  I was sitting on the bank at the mouth of very small 6 inch to 4 foot deep cove so I decided to rig Reaction Innovations Smallie Beaver (another Goose Creek favorite) on a 3/16 ounce VMC Dominator jig head and fish in around my boat in a circle.  The 5^th cast revealed a school of 8 to 12 inch bass that I could see vividly with my cheap sunglasses on.  After casting 2 or 3 times at the school I convinced a little 9.5 inch fish to take my beaver tail. 

Everybody likes babies right?

 Sadly this was the last fish of the day for me and I couldn't connect with anything else after reassessing every spot that I perceived as a viable.  All in all I felt pretty good about myself because I ended up in 12^th place out of 44 contestants and in the words of the tournament director put a whoopin’ on my big brother.