LOZ Stren Series 2008 - Part 1
I haven’t done a throwback story on here in quite a while. This took place before the blogging days in 2008 so I don’t think this story has ever been written down. Trevor just had a college tournament on Lake of the Ozarks so it kind of jogged my memory about my experience down there at a Stren Series event with FLW.
The Stren Series is the equivalent to the Toyota Series of MLF. I always call them AAA events because they are a step below a full time touring pro series. Anyway winning one of those was/is a big deal and at that time in my life I had big dreams of pursuing a career in fishing. I’d saved up some money and I was going to pull my 18 foot Skeeter (I found an old pic of that boat) down to Lake of The Ozarks to test the waters in this Stren Event. I don’t remember how much the entry fee was at the time but it was a lot of money to me.
Why Lake of the Ozarks in October? I don’t really remember other than it was at the end of our season and I’m sure I’d made some money that summer. I also had been catching them pretty good on docks all year around the house and knew LOZ was a good dock lake. I’d never fished a dock that was deep enough that a bass could suspend on it so that would be a shock to my system, but I knew I would at least have something to throw at. I didn’t have a section of the lake to go on or really much else other than what the Hot Spots paper map suggested. A buddy reached out to someone he knew down that way and suggested deep points would be the deal that time of year. That ended up being a prime example of when information will lead you astray. I wasted a bunch of time on that stuff and never caught a bass. When instead I could have been expanding on what I had found on my own.
I’d really never done anything like this on my own before. I didn’t have a co angler to practice with, I didn’t know anyone who was at the tournament, and I’d never driven to Missouri before by myself. I was 22 at the time so all this was really new to me. The drive went smoothly and I was pumped to get on the water. I’d be camping the whole time and had booked a campground with a ramp in one of the areas I wanted to check out. I checked in and went to use the bathroom before I set my tent up and got on the water. I walked into that bathroom and there were so many spiders, they might as well be tarantulas they were so big. I’ve never been the biggest fan of spiders to start with but this was too much for me. I got my money back and went on down the road looking for another campground. I don’t even know how I found the next one. Maybe I made a call home to see if my parents could find one, maybe I asked a local, maybe I had brought a list of campgrounds just in case. But I certainly couldn’t just pull it up and search it on my phone at that time. I did have a Garmin GPS so maybe I was able to search it on there. We were at least past the old days of printing out MapQuest directions to get around. Anyway I found a nice campground without tarantulas and got settled in.
I was in a whole new world, I tried catching them on docks in the very backs of creeks that were shallow. I looked around trying to find stuff I was comfortable with but it never worked. It was so strange to me to catch a bass off a dock that was in 30 feet of water. Everything about it was just different. Instead of pitching a jig I was hitting the prime angles with jerkbaits, tubes, crankbaits, and I don’t remember what else. I do know by the end of practice I had the most confidence in a jerkbait and a tube. I also had a section of the lake where I wanted to spend most of my time. I’d have been much better off just saving my money to fish a natural lake out in NY or something the next year. But on the other hand I felt pretty confident I could catch at least 10-12 pounds a day and things would be just fine. I certainly wasn’t going to threaten a win but I was at least going to hold my own.
One thing I’ll always remember from that trip was after the pre tournament meeting. I treated myself to Applebee’s for dinner. I didn’t have anyone to go with and it felt so strange to sit there and eat a meal by myself. However I had eaten so cheaply and poorly all week that a real meal was awesome and it tasted probably a lot better than Applebee’s should have. I drew a local as a co angler and we had about an 18 mile ride to where we were going to fish. This was way before I was using SI and DI units and all that fun stuff. I looked back on my waypoints from that lake and I only had 2. One of where the ramp was and one of the general area of the creeks I was planning on fishing. I did have GPS units so I had tracks of where I’d been but it is just funny to think about how different that would have all looked on my graphs in todays world.