 Yo what's poppin' people, welcome back to another episode of Kicking Their Bass TV. If you guys are new to the channel, hit that subscribe button, hit the notification bell, also hit the like button if you guys have been enjoying the content. If you could share this video with a friend or share my channel with a friend, get somebody new and efficient, I'd really appreciate it. So today's video is a little bit different, something that I usually don't post on the channel but I was like I think this is a good topic, I think people will get a lot of value out of this and I think you guys are going to enjoy it. So one of the last episodes that we filmed was actually on the river and we're fishing Clint's Benefits Tournament. If you haven't seen it, check it out down below, I'll drop the link down there. But yeah, so we ended up fishing out there and I was like you know what we should do today is kind of talk about one, talk about the tournament, what we did and what was our mindset when going into that. Two, what baits did we throw? And three, how could we improve to win that? We didn't end up winning the tournament. I'm not going to tell you guys what we ended up getting but we did have five fish, we had a five bass limit and we still weighed in five at the end of the day. But you guys need to go check that out and see the outcome in the video. So I'm going to start off talking about what baits we threw, you know why I was throwing these baits and talk about you know where we started in the tournament and where I think we should have gone instead and in the spots that I think we should have hit instead of the spots that we ended up doing going to. Because the biggest thing with this was I just don't think we were in the right area. I going into this tournament, one thing that I think is a good thing to talk about, I actually hadn't been on this river in three and a half, four months. We've been fishing the Ogichi a lot so the Savannah River was something that was fresh. I didn't do any practicing at all. This is like one of those tournaments I didn't practice at all for. I'm just going to go out there and have fun and try to catch the fish in the moment. So you know we really didn't have a game plan in mind rather than just really going with our gut. So I got a few rods that I'm going to talk about right here. Talk about when I was throwing these, why I was throwing these. So during the tournament I had about eight rods on deck. I usually don't do that. I usually run with about four or five rods but with me not being out here in a while I was like you know what I want to have as many baits as we can on the rods. Pick up, try a bunch of different baits and see what those fish are biting since we weren't really on a pattern going into the day. So the primary baits that we used in this video was a buzz bait right here. We actually started off in the morning the top order bite. So this is actually just a black strike king buzz bait on a Mach 2 combo. By the way if you guys want to check out any of the baits or rods that I'm using I'll have the links and discount codes in the description box down below. The next bait which I thought was going to be the money maker and I actually ended up catching it catching our biggest fish in the tournament so that was awesome was a chatter donkey. Chatter donkey is an awesome bait catches a lot of big fish. This is one bait that like I have so much confidence in and I just know that if I get this in front of a big bass he's going to eat it. So this is actually a black and blue chatter bait and this is on a seven foot medium heavy. I was throwing it on my kick and combo but I left that at home today. But yeah seven foot medium heavy fast action 17 pound fluorocarbon. Our next bait was a DT6. So usually I've been using some of the KVD crank baits but I didn't have the color that I wanted and this is actually one of my confidence baits out here on the river. I've caught a lot of big fish on a DT6. This is actually in demon color so it's got like a pinkish red body with a purple glow on top. This is a killer little crank bait. This is actually on a Mach smash and I'm running this crank bait on 15 pound fluoro. So the last bait that we're going to talk about is one that we have every single time we go out on the river. I mean you have to have a Texas rig. If you're going to fish through a Gichi Savannah river I mean half the time when you're out here you're going to be flipping some cover. You're going to need a Texas rig. So we just had a three odd extra wide gap hook. One fourth ounce of bullet weight and then we have a rage call on here. This is a seven foot medium heavy fast action 17 pound fluorocarbon Mach crush with a custom pro. So with that being said those were the baits that were kind of the the key baits that I was throwing around. You know I have some more in the back here. I got like a spinner bait, jerk bait, a fluke and then a little tiny trick worm on. We didn't throw those as much but these were the primary rods that we were using. So when we started off on this tournament I wasn't going to go down river which right now where we're at today is down river on the Savannah river. This is tidal water. We ended up going up river and I had a few lakes up there that I just would have thought held some really big fish. So there are first spot that we pulled up to. We ended up pulling into this lake. I tossed a buzz bait around a good bit, picked up that chatter dunk. I was throwing it a lot. You know I had Katie in the back of the boat and the majority of the time she's throwing a Texas rig. So when she's doing that I like to pick up a moving bait, toss it around a lot and see if we can catch a big one. So we ended up working all the way back in this lake, start casting around. Really didn't have any bites. I think I had one nibble on a crawl that I picked up for maybe two or three casts and that was about it. We ended up seeing another boat come in and he ended up fishing the bank that I really wanted to hit. So I was like, you know what? Let's just hit the other side of the bank. There's this big cypress tree that has held some big fish in the past. So I get up there, you know, I'm throwing this black and blue chatter dunk right here and the key thing with this bait, especially that day, was the reel that thing really slow. So I was skipping this thing all up in this cover, skipping it up on these cypress trees and when I was retrieving it back to me was just these slow cranks. I wasn't speeding it up. I was just slowing it down and every once in a while I'd give it a pop. That would create that reaction by the fish would eat it. So we pulled up to this big cypress tree, end up skipping my bait up there. I'm slowly reeling it back and this fish eats it, I'd say about five, ten foot from the boat, way off the bank and it's about a two, two and a quarter pounder. So that was one of our good fish that day and that was right there on the chatter dunk. After that, we ended up fishing in that cut a little bit longer and we just did not have any more bites. So that told me one thing, usually in the summer on the Savannah River, these fish tend to get out on the main river. They tend to get out in that current where it's raging out there and we ended up fishing that lake. So what that told me, you know, we fished this whole lake. We had one bite. The other boat that was in there with us didn't even have a bite as well. So what that told us was, hey, we need to go try the main river. So we went out on the main river for a little bit. We hit a few spots here and there, had a few bites, but nothing that would really commit to the bait and actually eat it. So then we went back to fishing some more of those cuts. We ended up fishing two or three cuts. We had some bites. I think we ended up putting three fish in the box and but we just weren't getting bites how we should. Like those fish were clearly not in those lakes. There was still some fish in there. There's always going to be fish in those lakes, but they weren't packed in there how we wanted them to where we could go easily pull up to a cut and catch a limit. So that was one of the big mistakes that we made during the tournament was just going in those lakes. I don't think we should have spent as much time as we did in those lakes. I'd say 70% of the day was spent in the back of these coves in the back of these lakes. When in reality, I think at least 50% of the day should have been spent on the main river. I think if we would have started the day out there on the main river, chucking a buzzbait, chucking a chatterbait, putting that Texas rig in those little current breaks, I think we won would have caught a lot bigger fish and two, we would have stacked up on a good limit. And I think that was something I wanted to talk about today. I was like, you know, by the end of the tournament, I was like, shoot, we should have fished the main river a lot more than we did. I know the guys that ended up winning it with they had to have been fishing the main river. I didn't talk to them. I know the guys that got third place were fishing the main river. But that's where those bigger fish were. That's where those bigger bites were coming from. They were deep in that current. And that's something that we didn't do. So next time, you know, going into one of these tournaments, especially in the summertime, you know, we got to keep that in mind. It's like, instead of going in those lakes where we usually do and catch those bass, you know, here in the summertime, it's super hot. This fish are going to be in that current, they're going to be out there on the main river. And that's where you're going to get those bigger bites. So that's one thing that we learned from that. And I really think we could have improved on. I think if we spent more time on that main river, we would have put in a good sack and potentially won the tournament. So with all that being said, one, I want you guys to comment down below. Let me know if you guys like these recaps. I kind of like going over, you know, previous tournaments and previous days of fishing, because this is the thing when you go out and you want to learn something, you go do it. And, you know, we learned from that tournament, we should have been out on that main river. We shouldn't have spent as much time in these pockets. And, you know, we suffered the consequences. We ended up not winning the tournament. Well, like I said, go check it out. It's still a really fun video to watch and it's still a great video. And we ended up catching some fish. So it's not like we didn't catch them. We just didn't have the big bag to win the tournament. So what we're going to do today is I had these same baits tied on and I'm actually putting in in tidal water today. So if you guys don't know much about me over the last four years, I've fished this river. This isn't my home, Lake Home River. I actually grew up fishing for spotted bass, but I moved out to Savannah, Georgia, started fishing in the Savannah River about four years ago. For the first couple of years, I ended up fishing tidal water. So that's where we're at today. And I also think if we would have came down here during the tournament that we could have had won a lot more bites and possibly caught some bigger fish. This is the thing, when you go up river, I feel like you have more of an opportunity to get those bigger bites. But when you come down here, especially right now, I just think you're going to have a lot more bites, a lot more opportunity. And that's what we didn't have during the tournament. So what we're going to do is go out here for one hour today. We only have one hour on the clock and see if we can go catch some fish. We're mainly going to go fish the main river stuff the whole time and just see if we can catch some fish in this heavy current and just have some fun out here in tidal water. But like I said, we're on a time crunch. So we got an hour on the clock. So we're going to go ahead and dunk this boat in, get to fishing and see if we can catch a few today. So let's get it. What in the world? Dude, I skipped it right up on that bank and you just already had it. That was cool. That was so cool right there. That's not a big fish by any means, but that was crazy. I skipped this crawl right up on that bank where that current's whipping by and literally the fish had it instantly. I thought I was stuck on something. It was just a bass eating it. Well, there we go. That's our first one today. Pretty one right here on the main river. A lot of current going by. That's a good way to start it. Yeah, eat it like a top water. No, I didn't stick them, but I need a crawl. A little squirt. Snatched it right away there around the corner of those rocks right where this little canal goes in right here. Little tiny creek. So they're right there on the edge in that little current break. Right about where he should be. It's only about 12 inches, but something. A little guy. That's fish. You know, they'll sit. You pay attention to little tiny spots. You can tell where a bass would be. You tell about these little current breaks. There's these little spots where on the backside of these lay downs that those fish would get. You know, it's pretty obvious when you find it. Then you have this little corner right here with this rock and it's a perfect little corner. There's a little bend right here where a bass would be sitting up on it. Oh my puppy. Well, she ain't even a big one and you expect to catch one of them big ones out here on this river. Maybe they're staying those lakes. There he is. That's a pretty decent one. Look at that, baby. Find harder than this current. Look at that. It's a pretty bass. Nothing big. She's a pretty one right there. She hammered that thing too. Let's do that crawl. Got all this current ripping by. It's letting that crawl go down on those rocks. You know, more than just moving the bait, we're kind of letting that current take it naturally. I think it gives more of a natural presentation of that bass when that crawl is just banging off them rocks going down current. I had that sucker good too. Look at the pliers. There he is. Not a big one. What a pretty bass. All right, so we just got off the water today. We had a good time. Like I said, we're only out here for like an hour. So I mean to be out here for just a little bit of time and have the bites that we did. That was fun. Wish we could have caught some better ones. I wish we could have gotten to a few two and three pounders, maybe even a five pounder, but we still had fun. Fished that main river, had a good bit of bites and caught some fish. So if you guys enjoyed this video, please hit the like button. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already and hit the notification bell right next to it. If you guys want to see some more content like this and recap videos, let us know down below. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate you all. I'll catch you in the next video.