This was round two for my guys; part of the Cooper High School team, and they had a blast. We got drowned a couple of times but it was all good. They really learned a lot from the Fork tournament last month and applied it to this one, yesterday taught them even more and they are absorbing it like a sponge. Boat positioning, trolling motor and power pole usage, lure selection, sonar usage, and casting techniques without back lashing so much. They boated seven fish and had two keepers for 3.77 at the scales. When you get to see two young men grow in this sport, it's just one of the most awesome feelings in the world! These two didn't know much more than just basic casting and how to tie on a lure before the Fork tournament.

Good deal. That’s what it is all about.

Good deal!
We started like the house was on fire but our bite just quit. They still caught fish through out the day but keepers just couldn't be found.

Thing that has me scratching my head was the amount of boats just running free all over the lake... if you can't see it, it ain't there mentality was in full use. I kept waiting ro hear someone lose a l/u or worse.

We missed the first 2 1/2 hours sitting on a bridge on I30 because of an accident at the exit before ours, just 14 miles from Titus ramp. Finally got on the water and struggled. Caught 1 keeper 2.40. Only got cut off by one Jack Wagon and had to stop working the bank long enough to watch them catch a keeper right in front of us. What happened to common courtesy? I had my boys zig zag and weave around boats on the way into the pocket as we were fishing west bank in and they were fishing out, so we did not obstruct anyone. Then were less than a hundred feet from back of a tight pocket and they come screaming in on the other bank, the trolling motor on high just to get around us turn boat around and anchor up. I know it is not against the rules as they kept the minimum distance going in barely, but again what happened to common courtesy. Just made a frustrating day worse. Then right after the big motor quit on us going to second spot in the middle of the main lake we had to troll to the next spot, and we had to stay in there rest of the day. We did have a little luck, as that is where we boated our only keeper and we got to be the lucky boat to be towed in in the heavy rain. All in all still beats a day at work and I know these are the things that my son and I will look back on and laugh about someday. Just not anytime soon.

I fish Bob Sandlin as my primary recreational lake and I've put together a pattern I think we will run with next year and something that that I've picked up on after fishing it the past two years and it all clicked after my guys weighed in. If you beat the banks except during the spawn expect to catch nothing but 12 inchers. Move out to 8 feet and deeper and you start catching 14 inch and bigger fish. Our two weigh in fish came out of 8 feet of water fishing a shallow crankbait that was running about 4 to 5 feet deep. Every trip I've made to Sandlin; if I fished shallow; beat the banks, I caught some good numbers but nothing that would be legal to weigh in. All of the larger fish I've boated were always on secondary points or flats near deep water with an average depth of around 8 feet. I think the guys that weighed in the heavier stringers were probably fishing a lot deeper than that.