2008 Bass Cat Invitational Tournament (Tournament Results)

By Cory Hart

Every year bass anglers from across the country come to fish the Bass Cat Invitational tournament on Lake Norfork in Mountain Home Arkansas in hopes of taking home that grand prize.  With gas prices sky rocketing and the recent floods the attendance was a little down. I have seen it when there has been over 700 teams and this year there was 566 teams which is still a great turn out and a lot of tough competition.

I went down to pre fish about a week before the tournament. When I arrived at the lake it was up about 20 feet higher than past years and a chocolate milk colored water. Lake Norfork is usually crystal clear, So I knew it was going to be tough. I fished for 5 days and only caught 3 fish. Things were not looking good. I called local fishing guide Bink of Binks Guide Service to see if he had any tips. I got the same answer I had been getting from all the other locals, nobody was catching anything.

Now with the tournament starting the next morning I had to do something different. I had caught one fish on a white spinner bait and two fish on a chartreuse spinner bait but that was not enough to win a tournament with. That night I had dumped out all my spinner baits and started taking them apart. I went to a 3/8 oz. spinner bait with a chartreuse and white skirt with a #2 white painted willow leaf blade in the front and a #5 chartreuse painted willow leaf blade in the rear. Then I added a Zoom white split tailed trailer to the spinner bait for a little more action.

We were in the first flight of boats to go out and scheduled to go out at 6:45 am. My partner Kevin Covington and I had made a decision to go to the area we had caught the few fish during our pre fishing days. We pulled up to the area where we pre fished and every thing was in our favor. We had a warm wind blowing out of the south right into our area giving the water a nice chop with waves crashing into the banks there. These are perfect conditions for using a spinner bait. On my 3rd cast I hooked a 2 pound Smallmouth Bass. Now I thought was this just a fluke or was this new spinner bait contraption that I had put together the night before really working. Then about 20 yards down the bank Bam!! Another one hooked, a 2 pound Largemouth Bass. Now I looked at Kevin in the front of the boat that was hesitant at the color of spinner bait that I had chose. He was now wishing he had one because the one he was using was not working. We went another 30 yards around the bank and Bam another one hooked! This time it is only a pound and a half Smallmouth Bass and right at 15 inches which is the smallest fish you can keep. It is still a keeper and every ounce helps.

I told Kevin to take my rod and reel and use it while I made him the same spinner bait I was using. After about 3 cast he set the hook into a three pound Largemouth bass. That’s 4 fish in the live well in about 11/2 hours and all we need is 1 more for a limit. The wind calmed down and there was not much ripple on the water. It was 30 minutes before we got our fifth fish in the live well. We had a full limit but then we needed to catch some heavier fish and replace our smaller ones, but that never happened all we caught after that point was shorts less than 15 inches.

We headed into the weigh in which was about a 15 min boat ride. I grabbed a fish bag and loaded our fish into it and made my way up to the scales. At this time we were the only team to weigh in a full 5 fish limit which put us in 4th place. There was still over 2 hours left of the weigh in. After the end of the first day we were in the top 10 which is excellent and right where we wanted to be. We did not want to be in first place, because in the 22 year history of this tournament the first place team on the first day has never won the tournament. Even though I would love to break that curse.