Last August the Kansas Bass Nation put on a Conservation Big Bass tournament at Melvern lake. A friend and asked if he could fish with one of the twins and other could fish with me. It sounded like fun, and I have always wanted to fish a tournament with my boys.
The Conservation event is for a great cause to help put structure in the lake so the fish can have some cover. One problem with Kansas lakes, they are getting older and we are losing a lot of cover for our small fish to hide from predators. How it works is the entry fee is a fish structure to put in a designated area. You can only bring one big fish in to weigh in and it has to be over 18 inches.
So, Nick teamed up with me and Kyle teamed up with my friend. I knew the dam was where Nick and I would start. We started catching fish right away along the dam on Topwater and Tubes. After catching multiple fish between 12-15 inches, we decided to move on up the lake to try our luck. We tried points, flats and bluffs and would only catch 2 fish in 2 hours of fishing. Nick looked at me and said “Dad can we just go back to the dam to catch fish.” So we went back to the dam. I was thinking lets just see how many fish we can catch. After returning to the dam, I hooked up with a really good fish on topwater. I thought maybe we had a keeper but it would only measure 17 3/4 inches. We caught two more fish in the 17 inch range. I was like well maybe we’ll catch a keeper. About that time my cell phone rung, it was my friend fishing with Kyle. He was having trolling motor problems and wondering if Kyle could jump in the boat with us. We ran back to the takeoff area and picked up Kyle, and ran right back to the dam and started catching fish but the size was smaller. I missed a fish on topwater, and I told Kyle to throw at the spot. He hooked up right away, but it was just a small fish. He unhooked the fish and threw his bait in the water. He was going to measure the fish, and just then his rod started to bounce. He had another fish on has bait that he laid over the side. He was so excited to catch that fish. One thing about smallmouth, they are very competive fish, and when you have one hooked a lot of times another one will try to take the bait from them. They often will follow the other one to the boat. A lot of times, the other people in the boat can cast behind the hooked fish around the boat and get hooked up too. We never caught a fish to weigh-in, but the twins and I had a blast catching 80 fish. Thanks Kansas Bass Nation for putting on a great event.