Donald and I are back ... donald called me at 6pm and said he'd made it home ... he spent what was left of the night here at the house and was gone when I got up this morning.

We got down there and waited on our room to get available for us to put our stuff in before we headed to the river ... I was dog tired as I'd imagine Donald was even worse off than I was as he drove 7 hours to get to my house and then rode another 12 hours with me to Henderson KY. then we're checked into our room somewhere around 10 or 11 am and we go out and burn up a tank of gas looking for bait on the Ohio river and that took all day but was a bust ... threw the net at a few small schools of shad but never got a one. then the second day we was talking to a feller at the hotel and he allowed as how folks were running down to Kentucky lake to get shad and skipjack so this is where we needed to git to we figured ... we also found out some info about where to launch to get to the dam as Donald talked to someone and got directions so when we left the pre-tournament meeting the evening before we went ahead and followed the directions down to the ramp donald found out about so we're a little hopeful that things are going to turn out alright.

morning of the tournament we are boat number 60 so most everyone was allowed to leave before us ... I think only bout 10 or 20 boats left after us but this turned out to be a big disadvantage on the second day as we found a little spot where fish were holding on the first day just shortly after we arrived at the dam. one team seen us catching fish and started trying to push us outta there even though there was a 50 yd buffer they was supposed to give us ... they seen us reeling decent sized fish in and anchored all around us trying to capitalize on our success but they never caught anything ... several boats seen us catching fish there and we had 67 lbs of fish in the boat by 10:30 am ... we never improved on that ... the bite slowed pretty badly as the current changed on us but we were afraid to move in the event that the current swapped back so we pretty much waisted the rest of the time right there ... tried to jocky around and find the sweet spot a couple of times but never could because there were several boats all around us so we couldn't move far. also didn't want to get robbed of our spot but in hindsight we shoulda went ahead and relocated the fish because they didn't come back.

anyhow with us being boat number 60 ... we had plenty of folks that robbed us of our spot already out there the next morning ... even the ole boys that tried to push us out of there was sitting there the next morning and the current eddy was totally locked up with about 5 or 6 boats about 50 yds apart ... we didn't catch a fish all day long ... all we found was suspended fish for the most part and we didn't have any fresh bait other than the few bluegill we had left so we were re-running our baits at several stops ... only got a few bites ... I think 3 bites total but never got them. one boat got in the exact spot we was on all day and never moved an inch but they never caught anything ...

when we weighed in we were in 5th right then but after everyone got weighed in for the first day we was in 13th place with 67 lbs.

ole Donald was reeling in about the 4th fish and allowed how he's going to hug my neck for bringing him along as he was in a battle with an 18 to 20 lb flathead that was putting up a good fight in that current ... I said well you can if ya get this fish in the boat ... hahaha or something like that ... anyhow we landed the fish and got the rods casted back out and he came back there and gave me a big ole bear hug as we was having a great time.

at the pre-tournament meeting they called several folks up there to speak and they gave a big ole nice speech about one feller ... really building him up and saying how great of a feller he was and all this stuff and then they said his name ... Paul looserback ... come on up here .... me and donald bout got sick ... donald looked back at me as he was sittin just in front of me and said ... "they don't know him like we do, do they!" I said no ... they sure don't hahaha.
 

This is a picture of the bridge going over the river at Lake Barklay or Kentucky Lake

Same River .. not sure which it was

My Partner Donald Jones with one of the 16+ fish he'd caught at Newburg Dam

Another that was right at 12 lbs

Then another about 16 lbs

These are the fellers that tried to encroach upon us when they seen us reel in a few nice fish
Very unsportsmanlike behavior, you'd think people would have a little more pride
than to try to do this to someone but these guys had no problem with trying to push us out of our spot.
They were also some of the people that was in our spot we'd found the next morning of the tournament

This is a pic of the smaller of the two flathead we'd caught. I guess we didn't get one of the big one as it was almost 20 lbs
this one was about 10 or 11 lbs

pic of the boat ramp when we were loading up to head home

Some mexican feller what was waving at me
hahaha

Close-up of Donald in his sombrero

pic of tiny fixin to load the boat on the trailer

Tiny and Donald, day two of the Cabela's King Kat Classic. We didn't go to weigh-in as we decided to get an early start home