S.O.B. championship: Day 1

Rush Creek performed as expected on Day 1 of the Southern Ohio Bassmasters championship Saturday. Members reported catching a lot of bass, but keepers (15 inches) were in short supply.
Out of 14 members fishing, seven weighed in a total of nine bass.
Alan Fulks is leading after the first day with two bass weighing 5 pounds, 9 ounces. His 3-pound, 11-ounce bass as the big fish of the day.
Mike Baughman is in second with two bass weighing 4 pounds, 4 ounces; I'm in third with 3-pound fish, Terry Ryan is in fourth with a 2-pound, 1.8-ounce fish and Ton Sprankel is third with a 1-pound, 14.2-ounce bass.
Also weighing in fish were Chris Lighthizer (1 pound, 14 ounces) and Eric Woodrow (1 pound, 11.8 ounces.
Alan clearly has an advantage going into day 2 at Piedmont Sunday, but it is close enough that the rest of us still have some hope of catching him.
Saturday was frustrating. I couldn't start where I wanted to because some duck hunters were set up right were I wanted to start fishing. So I fished some other areas while I waited for them to call it a day (there were almost no ducks around anyway).
When they finally gathered their decoys and got ready to leave, I worked my way into the coves. Ironically, as I did so a duck flew in behind the hunters and landed in the bak of the cove. I don't think they saw it.
My first hit was the 3-pounder, about 10 or 10:30 a.m., so naturally I expected more. It was caught on one of Bob Mathie's hand-poured Senkos in black/blue flake. I pent the next hour or two hitting every stump and laydown in the cove with that lure, other colors of hand-poured Senkos, a black/blue tail hand-poured beaver, spinnerbaits, Flukes, swimbaits and buzzbaits. The result was two misses (one took me under a log) and one 13 1/2-incher on the beaver.
I finally headed for other spots and wound up catching seven more bass -- one on a Senko, two on the beaver and four on a white spinnerbait. At least five of them were in the 13- to 14-inch range.
That would have been great if we had been on a lake with a 12-inch limit.
All my fish came on shallow, visible cover. I never had a hit on a crankbait; other reported catching most of their fish on cranks, often in deeper water.
Piedmont should be interesting. I haven't been there since our spring tournament and the few reports I've heard recently have not been good.
We'll see.