Slow Tappan Tournament

[Jason Short]

A guy from church (Larry) invited me to fish a Tappan Tuesday Night Tournament with him yesterday and we left as soon as I got home from school. We got there in plenty of time and got everything set up. These tournaments go from 5:00 PM to 9:30 PM (ending time adjusts as fall rolls along). Water temp was 79* with 2 feet of visiblity. Partly cloudy with a storm missing us by a little bit. Wind blowing out of the southwest. We started fishing close to the dam by a few docks and laydowns. The docks were in 6 ft. of water and the laydowns were in 3 ft. or less. No hits there so we moved down the dam and fished a brushpile in 18 ft. for a few minutes with nothing. At the end of the dam there was a slight drop off, from 16 ft. to 20 ft., with a bunch of fish stacked on it. We fished that for a while and I got one hit but didn't hook up. After getting no fish we ran to the other end of the lake and fished a nice looking point, but once again, no fish. It was about 8:00 by now and just starting to get dark. As we went down the shore fishing some bushes, in 1 ft. of water with deep water nearby, I got a little 10 incher on an Assassinator Clacker Buzzbait, chartruese and white color. About 15 minutes later I got a keeper on the same buzzbait. Larry stopped fishing and let me parrallel all the bushes with my buzzbait. I got 2 more hits on the buzzbait but didn't hook up. We had to go back to weigh in and decided to weigh in our one fish. It weighed 1 pound 10 ounces and that seemed to be what almost everybody was weighing. It was a really tough tournament. There were 44 boats fishing and only 48 keepers caught. Only one boat had a limit, and 8lbs won. Normally it takes about 12 pounds to win there this time of the year. I was talking to a few other guys and they had caught their fish in the same type of cover as me, up tight right in the bushes.