Todd Auten knew the first half of the 2013 tour schedule was going to be tough. He just didn’t think it would be as tough as it was.

He figured he would do much better in the last half of the season, and he did, fishing a long way up out of the basement and climbed up the standings – just not far enough to qualify for the FLW Championship on the Red River at Shreveport, La., next month.

“Going into the season I knew Lewis Smith Lake and Beaver Lake are always tough for me, but I thought I would do better at Okeechobee in the season opener,” Auten said. “When it’s warmer I can do good on Smith Lake, but when it’s cold I am in trouble.”

Auten had one of the worst stretches in his pro career spanning those first three tournaments. He finished 152^nd at Okeechobee in early February, 148^th at Lewis Smith a month later, and 128^th at Beaver Lake the second week of April.

“Okeechobee was all about catching one big fish, getting one big bite, and I never got it,” Auten said. “At Smith Lake my practice did not go too bad. I caught quite a few fish on a little crankbait, but come tournament time I could not catch keepers. The first day I caught one fish. It seemed like nothing would fall into place. The second day I fished totally different and caught a few fish, but I was so far down I could not get back.”

At Beaver Lake, Auten said he had “a halfway okay practice,” but never found anything solid to fish for the tournament.

“It seemed like it was tougher for me and easier for everybody else. Everybody was throwing the Alabama Rig, but I could not catch them on it. I tried to go back on some old history and fished stuff I’d done in the past, but nothing seemed to work.”

Auten said he knew going into the season that the second and third tournaments would definitely be tough, but he figured the next three would be more suitable to his style of fishing.

“I knew the weather would be warmer, there would be a little stained water, and I’d have a chance to fish shallow,” he said.

He started to come back at Lake Eufaula in mid-May, finishing 30^th and earning his first check of the season on the FLW Majors Tour. He was much better at Grand Lake in early June, finishing 12^th and cashing a second check for the year.

His best finish was last weekend at Lake Chickamauga, where he finished 10^th and earned another good check. He planned to fish shallow, but searched in practice for a go-to deep spot as a back-up.

“I finally found one place where my practice partner and I got a couple of good bites. I checked it the last day of practice and caught a couple more.”

The first day of the tournament he fished shallow, catching three bass on a buzzbait, several more on a Zoom Horney Toad and one or two on a Chatterbait, weighing in a limit at 17 pounds, 9 ounces.

The second day the tournament was delayed an hour and a half by a heavy fog bank. By the time he got to his shallow spot the bite was over, so he moved to the deep back-up hole. Throwing a one-ounce Yank’em rubber football jig brown with a green pumpkin Zoom Super Speed Craw, he caught his heaviest limit of the tournament at 18 pounds, 2 ounces.

“Jim Moynagh had seen me on this place and he asked if I planned to fish there. He said he had been saving the spot to fish if he made the cut. I told him I was going to fish there and I went straight to it instead of fishing shallow early. By 9:30 I had caught all my weight for the day.”

He moved shallow and culled a couple of fish on a Zoom Honey Toad , fishing over shallow grass. That third day Auten weighed in 17 pounds, 8 ounces.

By the morning of the fourth day the water had begun to rise and the fish had moved off the deep spot. Auten spent a couple of hours there and caught one spotted bass about 13 inches long.

“I knew that place was petty much done until possibly later in the day, so I moved shallow and caught three fish pretty quick on the frog. It took a while after that to get to five fish and then I could not get another bite.”

He headed back to the deep spot to give it one more shot, but Moynagh was fishing it so he went back and fished the shallow grass, but never got anything going again there. His five fish were the lowest weight he had for the tournament at 12 pounds, 12 ounces.

Auten finished the FLW season ranked 82^nd, out of qualifying for his fifth Forrest Wood Cup in 10 years, but he is not done for the year.

“I’ve got two more PAA’s, Table Rock and Grand Lake. I have an uphill battle in the Professional Anglers Association, but I could still qualify for the Texas Toyota Bass Classic if I do good in those two tournaments,” he said.

Heading to the third tournament of the season at Table Rock in Missouri Sept. 5-7, Auten is 29^th in the PAA standings. To reach the TTBC this fall, he has to move up to the top 15.

“If it happens, it happens,” he said.