Chautauqua Lake Open

Chautauqua Lake SMALLIES

THe smallies were hitting nice saturday.
Fish with Randy in the Chaut. Open.
WE were the Boat that fished near Ted and Ron. The bite was slow. after catching a few in the shallows we also moved out into 7-9 ft of water a couple hundred yards up the lake. where we stuck 3- 5+pounders with 4 casts. then nothign for about an hour. Leaving this area and running up the lake to a small point. Found a couple of fisherman from KY there. Throwing large white leadhead jigs and white twisters. We pulled in behing them and gave it a shot.. WOuldnt you have known that They catch one.
a Beautiful smallie hit ther twister, It appeared to be i nthe 4-5lb class. Right into the livewell to the dinner table.. leaving there went back down south to try again. This time the wind had pcked up and it was hard to hold the boat. We headed north For the remaining 2 hrs of the tourn. working a small underwater point that breaks from 25 Ft to about 10ft in a bout 50yrs distance. with weeds right out to 10ft. On the first drift landed a nice 4.5lb smallie that threw the hook jsut as it was netted... we culled out a 3.5 that we had. One more little 3.5 left to cull. ( who would of thought of culling 3.5 lbers in a tourn. Usuall trying to catch 3.5 fish to replace smaller fish.) As the day would have it we were unable to cull out the small one. AT the scales we weighed in 24.5 lbs. Finally after fishing tourn since 1990 We were able to Take FIRST PLACE(finished second place several times) and BIG BAsS with a 5.77 lb smallie. Most of the fish were caught on tubes, a few were caught slow rolling spinner baits. Just hope the weather holds so we can continue to enjoy these fish..
see YA on the W A T E R!
Ryan