My first time ever fishing in New York was during a NYKBF event that they were hosting on Conesus Lake. I have never been to this lake before this tournament, and had never had the opportunity to pre-fish it. I went into this tournament not knowing what to expect, but I knew that I wanted some more experience fishing tournaments.
Lines were in at 6:30 a.m and I was feeling good about where I launched, which was down on the south end of the lake. I always try to go to a launch where there isn’t many people launching from, and there were only a few people that launched down on the south end. I feel like this way of thinking means it's either going to be a blessing or a very long paddle. This day, it turned into a very long paddle.
It was mid-summer and there was lots of vegetation and cover down on the south end of the lake, which was why I was thinking that it was going to be a successful part of the lake.However, I tried and tried the cover, and the docks and they just weren’t working for me. I ended up paddling the whole way up to the middle of the lake to try different techniques and hope I could find a pattern of some sort. Needless to say, I didn’t find a pattern.
At this point I was very upset with how things were going. So I paddle out to the middle of the lake to just relax and take in everything that was around me. Once I got calmed down a little, I just started looking around to see what really caught my eye. I found a row of docks, so I paddled up to them. On my way to the docks I was thinking “okay, what am I going to toss this time? You know what, I am just going to go with what I know and nothing fancy”.
As soon as I made this decision, I started finding some small mouth bass tucked up under some docks. This was way later in the afternoon, and quite a few people had their limit. Luckily, I came in with a late but a decent limit and ended up in 8th place.
I was very pleased with the 8th place finish - especially since my day started out the way it did.
This tournament taught me how to mentally fish and also to never give up and just keep on casting and trying everything you got.