Fished my first TBF tournament ever on Sunday. The goal for the day was just to go out, get the hang of how these tournaments work and learn from my boater. I ended up drawing Danny Poluso as my boater. Older guy (60's) but had a ton of knowledge so I was pretty happy with that.
We blasted off in the morning and started out fishing the walls of the berry creek arm. Neither of us caught a fish until we hit the very back of the arm where the waterfall was coming in. I caught one keeper that was barely legal and one Decent one out of it on the shakey head and my boater caught 3 solid ones. We decided to let the spot reload and fished our way out of the arm where I picked up one more solid keeper. We then got on the big motor and made a short run to another area with a creek running in and a lot of bait. I caught another keeper real quick as well as two short fish. We were working away from the creek this time and never fished inside of it like where we got them at Berry creek. I suggested to my boater that we should try fishing toward the creek and thats when we put the pattern together.
The majority of the fish were shallower than we were fishing them. We started getting bit almost every cast throwing parallel to shore. Also, the fish that i caught in that spot spit up a few pond smelt. I picked up the 2.8 keitech and started nailing them. Quickly finished off my limit by 10:30 but i still had 2 rats to cull out. Continued throwing the keitech for more rats. We took a quick lunch break and while my boater was still eating i picked up a drop shot for the hell of it, casted it on shore in just a few feet pf water and immediately my line starts swimming out. I set the hook and the fish jumps right away and i yell "Danny, its a f@$kin 5 pounder!"... The fish jumps 2 more times and I thought for sure i was going to lose the fish but it stayed pinned and as soon as we got it in the net the hook popped out. She was a major upgrade for one of the rats but i still had one to get rid of. So after a quick celebration i got back to fishing.
Couldnt get another bite on the drop shot so i picked the keitech back up and started nailing them again. I culled out just about every fish from the start of the morning but still mostly oroville cookie cutters.
Its about 1 oclock now so we decide to run back to our berry creek spot and this time start right in the back. Threw my keitech in the running water and hooked a nice 1.5lber to cull out the last rat. We finished off the day in the area I caught the 5lber before we made our run in to weigh ins. I ended up winning 1st place with 11.88 lbs and big fish for 5.15lbs. I believe 2nd place was around 10.75. It was a successful first tournament and i couldnt have been happier with the finish.

Good job Tyler! Nice report