TAzGa, Chick - Ratman's tourney, Bass, 05/15/2006, Kaizer0306

We fished the Rainman&#39;s tourney Friday evening. We swam with our boat out to the cover of the bridge at WT with all of the other anglers and awaited the blast off emoRain <br />I think it was supposed to have been a single file start, but with the rain and confusion, apparently everyone was just turned loose to get going… lol … I dunno, I couldn&#39;t hear a thing and just sat back waiting on everyone to get out of the way then moved up to the river side of the bridges… man, it was raining… I didn&#39;t want to go when they called my number anyway emoRolleyes <br />We ventured out, with vinyl raincoat on and headed upstream some, trying to stay out of the rain. We fished in a cove and caught several fish on carolina rigs, and spinner baits in a cove at around 5 ft… nothing big. Saw the rainbow over WT and the dark clouds behind it and was thankful I was west of that creek emoSmile <br />Headed on out as the rain slowed and hit another flat with some current… picked up a keeper soon on plastic (2.11 LB) … caught a few shorts, and then hooked a decent fish (3.5LB) on a crank bait… removing the hooks on this fish made it bleed like I&#39;ve never seen one bleed emoEek … the whole left side was covered in blood… decide it wouldn&#39;t survive the stress of staying in the livewell, so we turned it loose, hoping it will fare well on it&#39;s own. Fished there some more with spinner baits, plastics, and cranks… caught a few small ones, including a short smallie emoSmile . Hooked a good fish, ripping drag and pulling away… I turned it, and he got all arobatic on me emoCrazy jumped a couple of times and sent my lure back to me emoBang emoBang Looked like it was a good 5 LB fish… as it became dark we moved closer to WT (in case we caught something to weigh..lol) and caught a few shorts, and lost a good keeper on rattle trap that looked around 2.5 to 3 when it decided to let go of the hooks. We decided to just turn the 1 we had in the well loose, load the boat and hit the road. <br />We put in over at HBSP for the tourney… I with they would consider moving the tourney over to HBSP… with 42 boats at the WT ramp, along with any other casual boaters… it&#39;s extremely crowded over there… just my 2 cents :)<br />This is the 3rd or 4th tourney I&#39;ve fished that they run, and it&#39;s really run well … the work those folks are putting into it is really appreciated… great bunch of guys emoTongue