The this was my club's (North Alabama Tournament Anglers) first tournament of the year.

It was a 2-day event held on Lake Eufaula, Alabama 2/17-2/18. My partner and I won the event with a total weight of23.48 lbs. We were expecting to take second since the first day the leaders weighed in 22.16lbs. We were in 4th place with 9.62lbs going into day 2.

I weighed in two fish at 6.52lbs and my partner 3.1lbs. The weather played an important factor in this tournament. In practice it was a warm 75 degrees with a warm wind out of the south. We had an ok practice but didn't have a strong pattern, just one place where we knew fish were holding pretty good. Day 1, we only weighed in 3 fish and the weather had changed a bit to 70 degrees and a north wind.

On day two it started out cloudy, cool and rain was in the forecast. The morning bite wasn't there and we struggled to get a keeper in the
boat. We boated two fish as soon as the sun peeked out for about 10 mins. Around 1:50 we still had two fish and decided to run back to our primary area before weigh-in at 2:30. The rain had started and the temperature barely got up to 50 degrees.

As soon as the rain got a little heavier a switch went off and turn the fish on. I caught a 3 and 5 pounder on back to back cast. I lost another fish that broke me off. Before we were using a smorgasboard of baits to catch them such as spinnerabaits, zoom flukes, senkos, jigs, and lipless cranks. We finally dialed in on them with the lipless cranks and spinnerbaits. The fish were holding in a pocket in a 1ft-2ft of water around old lilly pads and grass. Some of the fish were on beds. I caught my fish on a Kinami Rattle flash series rad shad and rattler. Even though I fish with Rat-L-Traps I love the Kinami lures as the hook-up percentage is better than the rattle traps. Those fish were caught in the last 30mins of fishing. I weighed in three fish at 10.84 lbs and my partner had 1 fish at 3.02lbs. We thought we had second place as hardly anyone weighed in any fish.To our surprise the day 1 leaders had boat trouble and got a 14lb penalty. So, we edged by them by 1.32lbs and I had big fish weighing 5.34 lbs. It was indeed a tough tournament as three people only weighed in limits but we had the bigger fish! This is my first win of any tournament and I thank god for my first win and many to come. I couldn't of asked for a better partner as he let me call most of the shots.

Kelvin fishes local, club, and ABA tournaments, and hopes to move up to the next level soon.