Clark's Pond/Rainbow Lake 7/16

[AJFISH13]

We hit Clark's Pond this morning. We got on the water around 4:45 am. We started out thrwing topwaters. We caught a few fish until the worst possible thing happened. A tournament started taking place. Not the size of lake a tournament should even take place on. So we got off the lake at 6:15 am. We had 4 pickeral and bass. Big fish was a 2lb. pickeral. So we headed off to Rainbow hoping to catch the end of the topwater bite.

When we got to Rainbow, we realized something. We had made the wrong move. Another tournament was taking place. I thought to myself "This is just ridiculous". We started fishing around 7:00 am. I threw topwater and the old man threw a Mr. Twister. He caught a few fish so I switched over. However, it quickly slowed down. We caught 8 sunfish,white perch,and pickeral before we left at 9:45 am. Even with the tough conditions, I think the lake has really slowed down. Suprised we couldn't find any crappies.

Overall a tough day. 12 mixed fish in 4 hours on 2 different lakes. Now, I had no problem with the tournament anglers themselves. They were courteous and didn't do anything spiteful. However, I think lakes as small as Rainbow and Clark's shouldn't have tournaments IMO. Please don't give me any of that "You gotta take the pressure and outfish them" bullcrap. I like freshwater fishing especially because Im not dealing with people all day and the peace that comes from it. When a tournament comes to town, I lose that sense of peace.