July 4th Weekend

Man I could not wait to get home. take a break from my summer job, and FISH! Joe had previously asked me if I wanted to fish the Friday night Lake Catoma tournament and I couldn't turn that down. I need every penny I can get. lol

Dad had been looking for another rig for the family since Jordan would be taking the Z20 that we had to school with him to fish for the Auburn Bass Club. We found the perfect boat!! 2007 Ranger Z20. My new baby!! Words can't describe how excited I am about the boat! I cannot wait to put some miles on her in the fall!!!! (Pictures will be up shortly)

Anyways, back to the fishing. We went out in the new rig on friday to Guntersville. We didn't get up too early since I got back late Thursday. We faced high skies and of course a TON of boat traffic. That didn't stop us from catching fish! We boated a few good keepers before the afternooon arrived and at one point doubled on a couple of 5lbers! Only of the fish was a channel cat. lol

We had to head back in early in order for us to get our stuff together for the night tournament. We were really excited to fish another tournament together and I couldn't wait to get on the water again. A lot of our good buddies got to fish the tournament too that night which always makes for an enjoyable time. We ended up weighing in almost 15lbs and took home second place. This is one of the good fish Jordan caught on a small finese jig.

We caught all of our fish on a Strike King Series 5 crankbait in ghost shad color and a brown 3/8oz finesse jig. We had an awesome time on the water and, like always, really enjoyed each others company.

Summer Interning

So I've found out a lot about life and the real world so far this summer. I have spent my time crammed up in an office at NASA Langley for a month now. I cannot wait to get out of here and get back on the lake! Being away from fishing so far this summer has helped me realize just how much I love it! Nothing makes me happier than being on the water and I can't wait to stay on the lake this fall!! Hope all is well!!

Matt

Holly Pond Tournament

May 23, 2008

Fished the Holly Pond tournament today with my brother Jordan ( who by the way is in FIRST place in the AOY Standings for the Alabama North series of the weekend series! Go Get Em JOE!! ) . We knew we were on some fish for this tournament and should have had over 25lbs easy. Of course it is always the "should have" and "what if." Well.. we started off at our first spot where we thought we would just wack 'em. The fish had started to spread out with TVA not pulling as much current and so the day proved to be a little tougher than expected. We ended up with just under 18lbs and had a 4+lb fish hit the boat and come off and I lost a 6+lb fish on a custom painted D22 from EliteBass.com. It would have been real nice to weigh in those two fish especially after it only took 19.89 to win it. Third place was ok for the kind of luck we had. Looking to improve on the next trip.

Auburn Guntersville Tournament

While I am in the process of creating a club here at school I still plan to compete in some college tournaments. I invited one of my good buddies, Will Foster, who has never been bass fishing before, to join me for the tournament. Auburn's Tournament trail is a series of three tournaments followed by a championship, all of which take place in Alabama. I wasn't able to attend the first tournament because of the BBQ trip. I made it to the Guntersville tournament, but I just missed the third tournament at Wheeler because the boat was getting worked on. Each tourament they put on is a friday/saturday tournament with practice on Thursday. It's really hard for me to miss that much school. It's amazing how the Auburn guys, for instance, get to travel and fish almost every weekend. With the academic rigor of Birmingham-Southern that would almost be impossible for me!!

Anyways about the tournament. Practice went pretty well with me catching a couple of four pounders in two spots where I thought fish should be holding. Day one would prove to be different as I scrambled around on the Northern part of Guntersville and only managed to catch four all day. I weighed in almost 9lbs. It was okay for me pretty much fishing solo but I expected more.



Day 2 would prove to be even tougher. With wind gusts touching 25mph and keeping steady 15mph all day, my spots were ruined to say the least. I only had one fish and only one cast left on the day. I had made a run back to a small pocket shielded by the wind. When I arrived I found myself sharing the 50 yard stretch of rip-rap with about 12 boats. All of them were fishing right up against the bridge so I decided to move back off a little, upsize from my Xr50 to the Xr75 lipless crankbait, and try my luck in about 7-8ft of water. On the very last cast I ripped the bait free of the grass and hooked into a toad. She felt like a rock pulling her into the Ranger.

I got her inside the boat and went nuts. What a way to end the weekend. I am glad Will had a good time. He only caught three shorts, but he still really enjoyed the lake. We ended up 13th out of 51 teams, which is not to shabby for my partner having never been before. Check out the story at the story, pictures, and results on the Auburn Website.


God Bless,

Matt

Matthew 4:18

January

As you might already know I attend Birmingham-Southern. It's a small liberal arts school in Alabama. We have a 4-1-4 semester system which allows students to take the full month of January to take a single class, travel abroad, or contract their own course. Well, me and three of my buddies decided that we should study BBQ in the South. You might be wondering how in the world this could be academic... It was going to be a writing intensive course and my main job would be to design the website. We took off on our trip and made it to 19 restaurants in 17 days, traveling to five states, and over 3500 miles. It was awesome. Little did we know how much media attention we would receive... We have had the pleasure of being on Good Day Alabama, Fox 5 Atlanta, and even Fox and Friends in NEW YORK!!! We have also been in over 200 newspapers worldwide... Crazy.. I know right. Just a few days after getting back to Birmingham, school started again. On top of that I have been working on a final barbecue paper, trying to balance a budget as Treasurer of my fraternity, and trying to start a fishing club. And on top of that, trying to find some free time to fish, update my website, and keep up with my blog.

I apologize for me neglecting the blog. Totally my fault! I'll do a much better job from now on.


You can check out me and the boys' BBQ adventure on our website!

What a great day for fishing

One of the coaches at Cullman High, Matt Hopper, sent my brother a picture of a 5lb + fish he caught over at Lake Ingrams in Cullman so I had to go check it out for myself.

Well I got frustrated after about five hours of fishing and only dinks to account for. I fished one stretch of the lake that always seems to produce and had a 3+ lb bass shake the hooks of my crankbait out of his mouth at the boat. I was pissed to say the least but I kept chunking the crainkbait. Not even ten minutes later I caught this little slaunch that went almost 5lbs. I was pumped to catch a pretty decent fish.



I can only pre-fish Guntersville for the tournament there on the 20th and 21st on the weekends and the Thursday before the tournament so I'm back at school for a couple of days. I'm gonna fish G'ville hard this weekend with my brother. I'll keep ya updated on how it goes. Maybe not too much detail but I doubt any of my competition reads this blog. ha

Catching hawgs errday,

Matt Lee

Lake Ingrams

Got to head out to Lake Ingrams for a couple of hours again yesterday. The bite on Tuesday was pretty good so I thought it would only get better as the wind picked up a little and I was right. I couldn't fish a lot of my areas from the day before really thoroughly because of the gusts but I was able to find one bank that was absolutely stacked. Big fish of the day was 3lbs 6oz and ended up having a five fish limit that went 13 1/2 lbs. So I was fairly happy with that. Not bad for a couple of hours of fishing. I caught my fish on an Lucky Craft RC 2.5 from EliteBass.com. All of the bass are just holding in 2 to 4 feet of water on that lake. It's a great time to go fishing out there. Looking at heading out to Smith Lake tomorrow so look for an update.

God Bless,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Lake Ingrams

Got to go fishing this afternoon for a little while and the fish were biting. I probably caught a total of twenty fish but couldn't really find any size, which is funny considering that the lake is known not for numbers, but size. I caught half of my fish on a Lucky Craft RC 2.5 in Threadfin Shad color from EliteBass.com and the rest of my fish on a white and chartreuse 1/2 oz chatterbait. I had fun on the water today and can't wait to get back out there. Hope everyone has a great and safe new years !

God Bless,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Pond Fishing

Joe and I headed to a local pond that we know has at least a couple of fish around 15lbs in it. The same people who helped to make a couple of Ray Scott's ponds, designed this one. Jordan has gone twice before and on one trip caught an 11lb 14oz slaunch and on the second caught an 8 and a 9. OF COURSE the one time we go together we only catch three fish. All of them were over 4 1/2 lbs, but no toads.. oh well, we'll have to wait until next time.
Joe and I are starting to notice that every time we get some warmer weather the fish don't bite as well. I guess because they are stunned just as much as we are that it is 75 degrees at Christmas. We caught our fish on an XR75 and a 10 1/2" Tequila Sunrise colored Zoom worm.








Peace


Matt

Matt. 4:18

Tuesday December, 23rd

Joe and I headed out to Guntersville today hoping to catch some bigger fish. I only got to fish for a couple of hours because I had an orthodontist appointment in Cullman around noon. The wind was brutal. The weather lately has been really unsteady and unpredictable. One day its clear skies and ten degrees and the next its 70 degrees outside but its so foggy you cant see the end of your rod. Anyway... Again I pulled the short end of the stick and Joe caught the toad. It weighed in at 5lbs 4oz. He caught it on a chatterbait in about 5 feet of water. We have one stretch of bank that we have caught over 75lbs of bass off of in about 6 trips in the last month. It's just sick. Joe's toad is pictured below...




Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Saturday December 20th

Sorry I've put off updating the blog. Last Saturday Joe and I fished the Catoma tournament here locally. There was scattered rain in the forecast for the whole tournament and the high was around 55. We got to our first spot of the morning at around 7 and we found hybrids, spotted bass, and a few largemouth schooling back in a cove. We caught our limit in 15 minutes, but no fish over a couple of pounds. We couldn't believe we were catching schooling fish in the middle of December. It was unreal. We saw some bigger fish come up and boil but we couldn't get them to bite. We spent the next five hours searching for a bigger bite on the rest of the lake and caught nothing to help. The only fish that might have helped, Joe broke off on in a treetop. We spent the last two hours of the tournament fishing the cove we started off in thoroughly. I had probably a three or four pound bass on in the back of a run in but he shook the treble hooks on my crainkbait. Joe decided to head back into the very back of that cove where the current really picked up. He had a five pound bass miss his chatterbait, then lost a fish that he hooked over a laydown. It was just not our day... We ended up with about ten pounds of fish and the winner(Bryan and Adam) had 19.90. We weren't even close...
Tough Day

Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Rough

Got out to Lake Catoma at around 7. Fished til noon. Only one bite. It was awful. Something happened to that lake since the hard rain we had. Maybe the fish are just dispersed all over the place. The only activity I saw was just random blowups over 40 feet of water... What a draining day. Joe wants to fish the tournament out there tomorrow so I guess we'll see how that goes. I'll keep ya updated.




Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Dad's Day To Shine

My dad took off of work today and decided to go fish at Guntersville with me. This is really special for me because he works all the time and I go to school in Birmingham so we hardly ever have time to spend together between just the two of us. It was raining fairly hard this morning at around six and I wanted dad to get a little rest on his day off so we ended up leaving around 7:15. We got to Waterfront at around 8:00. The fog was UNREAL! The visibility on the road was probably 1/8 mile and half of that on the water. We made our way up to our first spot traveling at a blistering speed of 15mph. Not that the fog wasn't bad enough, but we had to constantly dodge floating timber in the middle of the lake. When I say timber I don't mean a stick, but rather a full sized pine tree. With the water being at or a little above full pool, all of the wood and trash from bank moves into the lake. After these hard rains the TVA will open up all of the flood gates which will give Guntersville as much of a current as it will ever have. This is what pulls all of this floating trash to the main channel and down the lake. We finally got to our first spot and began chunking our lipless crankbaits. I caught a small 13" bass to start the morning off as we moved down the bank. A few minutes later dad hooked into his first fish of the morning(2lbs 8oz). Only about ten casts later he caught a 4lb 10oz fish. He was fired up saying that this was probably the biggest fish he's hooked in a while. We fished on down the rest of the bank and I caught one more under. We went through a lull without a bite for about an hour. A duck boat had driven right over the spot where dad caught his fish but I still told dad that I wouldn't be surprised if we caught more fish off of that same spot because the bass out there are so stacked right now. Of course, as soon as we got back to that area dad hooked into a 5lb 12oz hog. I was so pumped that dad had so much fun out there today. I almost felt like I caught all of those fish. Can't wait to hit the water again tomorrow!




Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Lake Catoma

Got to go out to a small local lake this morning. I got on the water at around 6:30am and fished until 10:30am. This lake is the drinking source for Cullman. A week ago the lake levels were almost 10-15ft below full pool. This morning the lake was almost a foot over full pool. I thought that the lake levels rising this drastically had to pull some fish up shallow. I had also heard of other people catching bass shallow, so what did I do... Pound the banks. This really paid off.. NOT I ended up catching one fish and missing one. The fish I caught I caught on a Zappu Jighead Inch Wacky from EliteBass.com. The fish I missed was suspended in a treetop sitting in about 10 feet of water. Maybe the bass are still deep.. who knows. We have a tournament out there Saturday so I guess we'll see how that turns out.

I'm making a prediction that soon we will see jigheads like the Zappu Jighead Inch Wacky will almost replace the much used shaky head. To me I believe this wacky rigged worm just entices the bass into striking a little more than the typical weedless rig of the shaky head.

Check out these tungsten jigheads at EliteBass.com. At first glance you might think that the price of these are rather high but all of the purchases contain multiple packs and you will not find these tungsten jigheads for a better price.

Heading out to Guntersville tomorrow with my dad. Not expecting to catch many, but maybe I'll get a bear-man-pig.

Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

B.I.T.E. Tournament 2

8th Place - $260





A dense fog set in the morning of the tournament which postponed the launch until about 8:30. With a sweet spot in mind that we caught a 7 1/2 off of yesterday, we went into the day knowing we were gonna fish this spot as hard as we could. We got to the spot and Jordan hooked into a 4 1/2 lb bass. We fished pass the spot then immediately came right back to it-another big bass ( 5.90 lbs ). We kept fishing down the 100 yard stretch of bank then turned around to head back toward our 10 yard long honey hole. I hooked into 3 1/2 pounder right when our arrow on the GPS hit the marked spot. We ended up letting the spot rest for about an hour. Without any luck anywhere else we came back to the spot. Jordan caught two 2 1/2 pounders back-to-back to give us somewhere around 18lbs. As the day pushed farther along, the fish size began to decrease. We caught a few more but no big ones. Weigh-in was pushed back to 4:00pm and it was now about 2:30. We decided to go fish fairly close to the place we had launched out of at Goose Pond. Because of the hard rains the days before and the amount of current that the TVA was pulling out the water was really muddy. Visibility was probably under a foot. This didn't help matters. We ended up not catching any more keepers and headed into the weigh-in with a decent bag of fish. When we checked in 20lbs was leading at 17 1/2 was in second. We were in the last flight to weigh-in but the first in our flight. We weighed in with 18.27, holding down second place. After the rest of the flight finished up weighing in we depressingly got pushed down to eighth-last spot in the money. We won $260 so overall we called it a successful day.



We caught our fish on a XCalibur XR50 Sexy Shad Lipless Crankbait. We never set this lure down all day making thousands of casts. It will take a toll on you throwing this in the grass at Guntersville, but with the fish you catch it is very rewarding.




Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18


Check out my Home Page

Pre-Fishing for B.I.T.E. Tournament

"COLD!!"
Today was unbelievably cold on the water. With the high being around 40 and 10 mph winds, the wind chill ended up at around 30. If you live up North maybe that is not too harsh, but I'm from Alabama!

Ok .. enough with the weather. After we got to our first spot my brother starting chunking his XCalibur Lipless Crankbait. About twenty minutes into our day he hooked into a toad of a largemouth which is pictured at the bottom of the page. It ended up weighing 7lbs 5oz. What a fish! We left that area soon after because we wanted to save it for the tournament tomorrow. About two more hours into our day we moved out to a creek channel. We started throwing 1oz football jigs at a ledge which went from 5 to 25 feet. All of the sudden we had a double hook up. Joe almost broke his rod reeling in this 10 lb drum. HA. Turns out my fish was a drum too, just not as big. We ended up catching three more fish, including two keepers before noon.



We caught our fish on a XCalibur Crankbait and a small wacky rigged tungsten worm - complements of EliteBass.com

Cross your fingers for the Tournament tomorrow!!!

Tight Lines,

Matt

Matt. 4:18

Catoma Tournament

Jordan and I fished together this morning in a Tournament at our local Lake Catoma. Launch was at 7:00am and weigh-in at 1:30. The morning started off slow, but its was almost 50* which made it really nice out on the water. The fog was awful until about 9:30. Joe caught probably 4 fish in ten minutes sometime around nine on a fat free shad fingerling. I caught a 4lber on a baby bass colored Bomber Fingerling at around 11. The bite today was fairly slow and we ended up weighing in with 11.40. I'm trying to make a trip to Lake Kent tomorrow. This private lake probably averages 6 or 7 lbers. It's gonna be insane.

Tight Lines,

Matt

Matthew 4:18

Happy Thanksgiving!

My family and I had thanksgiving dinner for lunch today since my brother has a basketball game later tonight. We went out to Lake Catoma-a local lake and the source of Cullman's drinking water- for a little while before sunset. We got in the water at around 1:30. As soon as I picked Jordan up from the bank I made an identical cast to one I had made just a couple of days before. Soon enough I hooked into a 3 pounder out horsed her into the boat. Joe and I continued to fish for a couple of hours but only caught one more. She was a spot at about 1#. It was about 70* out today and it felt awesome. I think joe and I are gonna fish the Catoma tournament in the morning . I'll write an updated post tomorrow night.

Tight Lines,

Matt

Matthew 4:18

November 26, 2008

My brother and I got to go to Guntersville today during my first day of Thanksgiving break. We loaded in at around 9:45 at Seabold. We fished a few humps in and around that slough before heading to some bluffs. At the bluffs we caught almost 50 bass in about 10 to 15 feet. The baitfish were holding at that depth and the bass were roaming all around them. We caught most of our fish on a Jackall Flick Shake before moving to some flats to look for bigger fish. We ended up catching just a couple more that were around 4#s before the sun began to set. All in all we had a great day and enjoyed catching so many fish.

Tight Lines,

Matt


--Matthew 4:18

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