Greetings fellow fishermen and welcome to the 2013 edition of the Skeeter XFL Tournament Circuit. If you are like me you are anxious to get on the water and do some serious fishing. The winter tackle and boat show blitz is over, the BassMaster Classic just finished and all this talk about fishing has really got me excited about fishing. Unfortunately for me, I was not able to attend any of the BassMaster Classic festivities because Murphy’s Law hit me in the form of an awful upper respiratory infection. However, I was able to keep up with the action through the power of the internet. Watching the events unfold on Grand and the drama of the weigh-in was exciting but did nothing to alleviate my misery and made my cabin fever even worse. Hopefully, modern medicine will work it’s magic and I can return to the living soon. Until then I am relegated to staying home, resting, watching fishing shows on TV and doing my part to increase the share price of Kleenex. Enough of my whining, lets take a look at the year to come on the Skeeter XFL Tournament Circuit.
The season kicks off at Grand Lake on March 10th out of Wolf Creek. After all these years we finally get a first class facility to hold a tournament. Plenty of parking, no muddy parking lots, great ramps and courtesy docks will greatly add to the tournament experience and make things much, much better. With winter deciding to arrive here at the end of February, Grand water temps will likely be cold which means fishing slow with jerkbaits, jigs, crankbaits, shakey heads and the A-Rig will be the ticket to success. The one wildcard will be water clarity. If the rain and snow that is forecast materializes and muddies up the lake fishing could get really tough. The Classic fishermen did a good job of catching quality stringers in the cold water but the water was clear. A word of caution about Grand. There is a “new sheriff” on the GRDA Lake Patrol and he has indicated they will be enforcing all No Wake Zones and speed limits. This means you need to be off pad and idling at least 150 ft. before and after Sailboat Bridge and any other bridge on the lake. Also, you need to be mindful of the speed limit in Duck Creek.
The second event is April 7th on Eufaula out of Eufaula Cove. This year the weigh-ins will be held at Peters Point. This is the ramp that is directly across the cove from the Eufaula City Ramp. The fish should be on a solid pre-spawn pattern by then so any number of patterns may work. The lake is currently 5 ft below normal. Unless we get some rain soon, the lake will likely be at that level come tournament time. Caution should be exercised when running Eufaula at this level. There are many old trees sticking up where there usually are not.
The third event is May 5th on Grand. This event should prove interesting because the annual Grand Challenge Tournament is the day before. The lake will receive a tremendous amount of fishing pressure and the team that can figure out how to catch pressured fish should do well. Early May usually means the spawn on Grand. Sight fishing could play a factor but that all depends on water clarity and fishing pressure.
The fourth event is on June 2nd at Eufaula. June is typically a pretty tough time on Eufaula. It’s post-spawn on this lake and the bass are sometimes a bit scattered because they haven’t migrated to their summer haunts just yet. A lot will depend on the water conditions. If the lake is above normal, the shallow bite could be good. If its below normal, then offshore or deep structure may be the key to a big paycheck.
The Championship will be held October 12 & 13 on Grand. October is typically a transition period and fish can be caught in any number of ways from the river to the dam. There hasn’t really been any one pattern that has dominated this time of year. What I have noticed over the years is that the teams that duplicate or improve on their Day 1 weights usually end up getting a good check. It’s all about consistency and fishing clean.
This year, tournament director Tim Reed did a great job of lining up an impressive list of sponsors. There are several incentive programs that everyone should take advantage of. Check out the main page for all the incentive programs. The one incentive program that bears mentioning here is the Customer Appreciation money kicked in by the participating dealers Brads Boat Sales, H&H Marine and Nichols Marine of McAlester. This year’s dealer money is $5,000 to the highest placing team in each event that fished out of a Skeeter boat that was purchased from one of the participating dealers. This is a great program and one that every team should try to take advantage of. I can personally vouch for this program because I have won 3 of these in the past 2 years. Win enough of these and a guy can go a long way towards paying off a boat or the purchase of a new one.
On behalf of the XFL staff and all the sponsors I thank you for your support and wish all of you a successful tournament season.
Capt. Rob