This was my first experience fishing a tournament on Toledo Bend Lake located on the Louisiana/Texas border. Just before the event and practice started, that region of the country got pounded with rain. This caused the lake to come up over two feet and stained water in much of the lake. My plan was to fish grass in the lower end of the lake on the Texas side. The water in this portion of the lake seemed to stay somewhat clean and fishable. Water temperatures were in the mid 50’s for much of the event. With the rain and the cooler temperatures from the past week the shallow grass bite was very difficult. There was some bait shallow, but the majority was still main creek channels and main lake. This kept the fish in a wintertime pattern still. I still thought my best opportunity would be to target the shallower fish. In those areas I was throwing a vibrating jig and mixing in a crankbait in areas with sparser grass. I was only catching a few fish each day of practice so I knew it was going to be a tough event for me. During the tournament I was only able to catch one scoreable bass each day. This placed me in 74th place for the event. The majority of the anglers that did well were concentrating on suspended fish in creek channels chasing bait. They would target these fish with their electronics and catch them on a jighead minnow of some type.