Last Stop on the 2019 Hot Rod Baits Bass Series: Pool 9

The Optimum Baits Furbit Frog
buried in the mouth of our biggest bass.

Today marked the last tournament of the 3-event series in the Hot Rod Baits Bass Series.  The first two events were on Lake Sugema and Brushy Creek Lake, the last being on Pool 9 of the Mississippi River.  Brian Bowles and I decided to spend two days looking around the immense pool for just the right location to get us into the top 5, a goal that we always make for ourselves.  In those two days the QuantumPT rods and reels along with the trolling motor got quite a workout.  We spent nearly 20 hours in the two days covering as much water as we could.  We found several areas where fish were feeding, but mostly on the small side.  We figured that 12# would be a good target to hit our "top 5" goal.
Tournament day was upon us and off to our first spot in the southern part of Pool 9  We caught a couple dozen of bass in this spot,  but only 3 keepers and they weren't very big.  Off to the next 2 areas that were similar to the first one; rocky structure near the main channel current.  These areas did not put any more keepers in the boat.  Off to our 4th area, the area that I had the most hope for.  This was a shallow weedy area off a side slough that had a lot of current flowing.  What made this area good was the fresh green weeds that were growing.  Coontail, eel grass, lilypads, wild rice, and duckwork.  It was full of green weeds and plenty of bait too.  We quickly put the Optimum Baits Furbit Frog to work using 65# braided line on a Quantum SmokePT Freak reel and Quantum Smoke 7'0" Medium Heavy rod.  This setup is idea for fishing a frog bait, it casts the baits very well, and has the backbone to yank any fish out of the heaviest cover.  We ended up pulling four quality bass from this grassy area to boost our limit near that 12 pound target weight.  We tried a few other areas as we made our way back north to the weigh-in but we couldn't get rid of our two smallest bass.  In the end this held us out of the top 5, finishing in 7th our of 17 teams.  We had 11.89#, with 5th place weighing in 12.39.  It was a great day of fishing for Brian and I, but the lack of bringing in 6 quality bass compared to the 4 that we had just didn't get us towards the top enough.  This was a disappointment as we won at this particular venue last year, but as we all should know, "You never step in the same river twice." ~Mark Twain