Round lake was shaping up to be an interesting event. It is a very small lake, only 330 acres. This year it looked like we would have close to 20 anglers so we were going to be packed into that little lake like sardines.

My alarm went off and I made my first cast. It only took a few minutes and I was hooked up. A nice 16.25-inch largemouth and I was on the board at 7:06! This was shaping up just how I expected.

I competed at the Lake Erie Open in 2018 and had finished well. I had found some main lake smallmouth, but did most of my fishing in the bay. This year I felt I really needed to stick to the main lake and get on those giant smallmouth. This thinking would soon come back to haunt me.

It had been a long week without any fishing. It was now Friday afternoon, just after 3:30 and I had enough. I shut down my work station and took off for Lake George.

It was poised to be an exciting 11 days of fishing in the Adirondack and Catskill parks. The Adirondack KBF Blue Line Brawl had kicked off and the fish were starting to pop up on the leaderboard.

Going into this event, I had a very weird feeling about it. I prefished the weekend before and found my fish where I usually find them. But with the water levels high, the structure that was in 4 feet was now in 10 feet of water and I needed an entirely different approach.

The pattern was a numbers game. I was catching tons of fish, and it would just take time to get enough bigger ones to make a decent bag.

This year, Adirondack KBF went back to Lake Champlain and I was determined to do better. I watched every episode of FLW or BASS that had a tournament on Champlain. I poured over navionics maps. I studied aerial images, and tried to figure out just what I wanted to do.