By Brandon CardAt the recent Sacramento River Elite Series event, I learned some valuable lessons about making a tournament strategy and listening to other competitors. I should have known better, but I allowed "dock talk" to altered my game plan which turned out to really mess up my entire tournament.
During practice I had two solid patterns going where I knew I could catch fish at both the high and low tide periods on the California Delta. During the high tide, I was able to flip and pitch the tules in the Franks Tract area and knew that I could catch a solid limit before the tide switched at midday. At low tide, I found bass that were guarding fry in Italian Slough that I could catch with a frog. Going into the event, I felt decent about the two patterns that I had established for both tide phases.
The night before the first day of competition, I had a conversation with Kelly Jordon. He is a great guy and I know I can always trust him. He was confident about his practice and was smiling ear to ear so asked him about what he found. He told me about his pattern in a backwater area that was similar to my area in Italian Slough and how he could smoke them during the high tide. He said there were small gaps between the grass and riprap banks where he could catch them on a ChatterBait. This got me thinking. My idea was I could fish Kelly's high tide pattern in Italian Slough at high tide and then back out to where I was catching them during the low tide once the tide dropped. I thought could stay in Italian Slough all day and not waste time running from spot to spot.
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