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36
May 2004
Tournament Lessons from Newton Lake By Kevin Patton With two full days to practice for our mid-March tournament, my partner and I were confident that we could figure out a successful game plan. After all, we not only had many years of experience fishing on Newton Lake, but also had finished in the money at several previous tournaments. Newton is a “hot water” lake, heated by a coal-fired power plant. The warmer water temperatures make it an early season destination for Illinois anglers. The 1750-acre lake is v-shaped, with the warm water entering the West arm at the north end of the lake. There are a few areas of isolated rip rap, mostly near the upper end of the hot arm, but the primary cover is wood in the form of stumps, fallen trees, and planted brush piles. There is some scattered shoreline grass, but no weed beds, docks or bridges. A legal keeper bass at Newton must measure 18 inches. Tournament morning was windy with bright skies. A spring cold front had blown through Illinois on Wednesday night so the weather was no surprise. We expected the fishing to be tough during the two practice days, but hopefully improving by Saturday. We decided to divide the lake in half, fishing the hot water arm on Thursday and the cold arm on Friday. We figured that the first day after the cold front would be better spent in the dirtier, warmer water in the hot arm. Friday we would fish the cold arm, compare the results from both practice days, and make a decision about where to begin the tournament based on the results. After two days of practice, one in each arm, we had boated a total of only five fish. We had caught three in the hot arm and two in the cold arm, but one of those two was a nice 4-pound, 5-ounce keeper. We obviously had no clue where to locate feeding fish, but we felt that crankbaits were a key, since all five of the
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Kevin Patton with his biggest bass. It was an 8 pound 6 ounce fish caught at Newton Lake several years ago. fish were caught with them. We had limited our search for bass to concentrated wood cover in ten feet of water or less, but had fished a wide variety of main lake points and pockets, as well as secondary points and pockets in coves and the backs of coves. We didn’t know much, but we did know that our fish had come from the main lake areas on crankbaits. It wasn’t as though we had not tried a wide variety of baits. We came up empty on jigs, spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, topwater, and others. I’ve always prided myself on making a game plan for fishing based on what I know, not what I don’t know. We decided to start the tournament in the cold arm at the spot where we caught the keeper, with lots of crankbaits tied on our lines. Tournament morning saw a major weather change on the way. After two post-
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