Tri-County Bass Club event at Pool 9

This past weekend I was able to participate in a club event at my favorite water, Pool 9 of the Mississippi River.  These club tournaments are some of my favorites to fish because all the competitors are my friends.  Fishing against one another is one thing, but the hanging out after the tournaments chit chatting about various things really makes the trip more enjoyable.
This particular bass club has a random draw for partners.  There is no such thing as a bad draw in our club, but I was fortunate to draw Don Henry, we fish together quite often throughout the year and we both were looking forward to the journey north.  Don and I left Thursday evening so we would have the complete day on Friday to practice and look around the pool.  Tournament day were Saturday and Sunday, so using our time wisely was key for us finding different areas.
SATURDAY:
We had decided to start in some backwater areas of Pool 9, however with the water above 10.0 feet current seemed to be flowing almost everywhere.  We located some clean water and had some keeper bites (14-inches on the Mississippi River) on Friday so we thought we could get a few to start the day.  We sure did, slinging swimjigs with a Quantum EXO combo is one of my favorite things to do at the river, and the bass were hitting them hard this day in the shallow weeds.  We were having fun and even took a few seconds to snap a "double keeper" selfie!  These two fish were caught with the Minn Kota TALONS down so we could make long casts in the clear waters.  While we started the day with swimjig, my saving grace for the weekend was the Optimum Baits FURBIT frog.  This caught me my largest fish on Saturday and numerous other key fish over the weekend.  This frog has so many great things about it that help anglers catch more fish in the weeds than any other frog out there.  To name just a few, it has 6/O hooks, the weight in under the hook, giving it a huge hook-up ratio and the life like legs are second to none.  These frogs have been a key for me in so many tournaments throughout the years that most of my competition and friends just have to buy them too!  I finished the first day with a 5  bass limit and Don had 2 keepers.  This put me in the lead after day one, and Don was still in the hunt.
SUNDAY:

Quantum high speed Smoke Reels with 7 foot medium/heavy Quantum Rods, 50-pound braided line and Optimum Baits Furbit Frogs

Day two of the event started with rain, wind and cooler temperatures as well as the river continued to drop about 3-4 inches a day.  All these factors were making the fishing tough, and limits at a premium.  Mine was the only one of the first day.  We decided to start in the same areas as we did on Saturday.  Things were much slower, but the swimjig and Optimum frog once again got me 3 keepers in the boat in the first few hours.  Don was sitting with only one, and it was time to make a big change in our strategy.  Either the fish we were catching in the weeds were gone due to the dropping water, the weather changes or fishing pressure we knew we had to forget about them.  We moved on to some main river current where we found some fish on Friday.  It is a stretch of main channel that I visit often while on Pool 9.  It has heavy current and normally has baitfish present.  It was a risk that I was willing to take and it paid off.  We immediately started to catch fish on spinnerbaits fishing the main channel.  I was able to fill my limit pretty quickly and then Don took over the boat.  Once again the TALONS were anchored down several times in the main channel current.  Each and every time I use the shallow water anchoring system I am impressed.  The heavy current was no match for the TALONS on this day and allowed us to stay where we wanted and not waste time going backwards in the strong current.  With just a few minutes left of the tournament Don connected on his fifth keeper of the day too, a joyous moment no doubt.  The weigh-in concluded and left me with in first place as I was the angler to have 10 keepers over the 2-day event, and Don finished with 7 keepers and in second place by over 4 pounds.  It was a frustrating but rewarding weekend for me.  I was unable to find fish over the 2-pound mark, however when keepers were as rare as gold nuggets catching 10 of them was the rewarding part.