Last week's event on Long Lake was the last scheduled league for this fall, but since the weather has been so warm we decided to extend the schedule with a winner's choice format. Last weeks winners chose to fish again on Nest Lake. This was fine by my dad and I since the last time on Nest a few weeks ago we were able to win with about 18 1/2 lbs. This time the fishing was much more difficult though. We were still able to take 1st place with 15.24 lbs for our 5 fish while 2nd place weighed in 13.61 lbs. My dad weighed the big bass of the day at 4.44 lbs.
Like I said earlier the fishing was much more difficult than it was a few weeks ago on Nest. When we won then we caught close to 30 bass in the 5 hours but this week we caught a total of 6 keepers. It just worked out for us that we got the right bites for the day. We started on the same place as last time which is a big flat with clumps of milfoil on it in 3-6 feet of water. Within 10 minutes of fishing it I could tell there wouldn't be a repeat of the last time. The first fish I caught came on a Strike King Red Eye Shad and was a short fish. Shortly after that my dad popped our big fish of the day on a watermelon jig but the bite was still much slower than before. We stuck around for awhile more and I ended up catching a solid keeper on a jig but after over an hour we only had 2 fish in the livewell.
After that we moved to another bank where we have caught fish in the past. The weeds were not nearly as nice but they were still pretty thick and green. I wanted to cover some water so I was throwing the Red Eye Shad and mananged to pick up 3 more keepers between 2 1/2 and 3 lbs on 2 passes through the area. Now we had a solid limit of 5 in the first 2 hours of fishing. After that things really slowed down. We bounced around the lake the rest of the time but were never able to catch anything. Finally we went back to the area where we finished our limit but only caught a small keeper that didn't help. So overall it was a very slow day but the fish we did boat ended up being enough to win on a very tough day of fishing.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Kandi Lakes Fall Bass League - Long Lake
We had another windy day for this past Saturday's event on Long Lake. In fact it was even windier than last weekend on Diamond, but at least it wasn't too cold out so it was ok to fish in. The fish didn't want to cooperate though. Out of the 5 teams who fished, no limits where weighed in and 2 teams zeroed. 1st place came in with 4 fish for 16.36 lbs and 2nd was my dad and I with 2 fish for 8.46 lbs. I had the big bass for the day at 5.41 lbs.
The fishing was extremely tough and the wind did not help at all. The water temp was below 50 degrees so fishing very slow was a key but the wind blowing the boat around made that very difficult to do. The 2 fish we caught were both on reed points that were in proximity to a little bit deeper water. Both bites came on a black/blue jig with a Strike King Denny Brauer Chunk.
The fishing was extremely tough and the wind did not help at all. The water temp was below 50 degrees so fishing very slow was a key but the wind blowing the boat around made that very difficult to do. The 2 fish we caught were both on reed points that were in proximity to a little bit deeper water. Both bites came on a black/blue jig with a Strike King Denny Brauer Chunk.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Kandi Lakes Fall Bass League - Diamond Lake
Diamond Lake has a reputation for big bass but also a reputation for being very tough at times. Last Saturday the tough side of the lake showed itself. The conditions were not ideal either with strong winds from the south making much of the lake unfishable. There were 7 teams who fished and only two 5 fish limits were weighed in. My dad and I were one of the teams with a limit and we took first place with 14.65 lbs. 2nd place weighed only 3 fish for 10.88 lbs. The big bass for the day was a 4.81 pounder.
There really isn't a lot to say about our fishing on the day. We tried a few different areas but ended up spending at least 4 of the 5 hours in one section of reeds. We must have worked every key spot in those reeds at least 3 times throughout the day. There were a few fish in there but they just weren't very easy to catch so we just had to grind it out slowly. We ended up catching 6 keepers on the day with 5 of them coming on green pumpkin Strike King Flippin Tubes. Our big fish of the day, which was close to 4 lbs, came on a black/blue jig with a Strike King Denny Brauer chunk but that was the only bite we had on a jig. It certainly wasn't an exciting day of fishing but it ended up being good enough to win by almost 4 lbs.
There really isn't a lot to say about our fishing on the day. We tried a few different areas but ended up spending at least 4 of the 5 hours in one section of reeds. We must have worked every key spot in those reeds at least 3 times throughout the day. There were a few fish in there but they just weren't very easy to catch so we just had to grind it out slowly. We ended up catching 6 keepers on the day with 5 of them coming on green pumpkin Strike King Flippin Tubes. Our big fish of the day, which was close to 4 lbs, came on a black/blue jig with a Strike King Denny Brauer chunk but that was the only bite we had on a jig. It certainly wasn't an exciting day of fishing but it ended up being good enough to win by almost 4 lbs.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Kandi Lakes Fall Bass League - Nest Lake
This week was the first week of switching to a 12:00 pm start time instead of an 8:00 am start time. We still fish for 5 hours for our best 5 fish but since it is getting later in the year everyone felt like the afternoons would be the best time to fish. After the results on Nest Lake it would be hard to disagree. There were several very good bags weighed in out of the 7 teams who competed. My dad and I ended up taking first place with 18.48 lbs for our 5 and 2nd place had 17.58 lbs. Since there were 7 teams only 2 spots were paid. 3rd place still had 16.45 lbs and 4th had 14.44 lbs, so overall the fishing was very good. My dad and I also had big bass for the day at 4.77 lbs.
Nest Lake is one of my favorite lakes in Kandiyohi County but I really was not looking forward to this event. The reason was that we would not be allowed to weigh in any smallmouths. It is catch and release only for smallmouths at this time of year and that is primarily what we target on the lake. We do know how to catch largemouths out there but a couple weeks ago we looked for some and only managed 2 small keepers so we went in knowing we would just have to figure something out as the day went along.
We started on the area were we actually ended up catching all of our weigh fish but we struck out on the first pass through. Then we headed to a few reed areas and caught several small keepers. After fishing the reeds thoroughly we pulled out to the weedbeds in 3-5 feet of water and filled out our limit. All of those fish came on a variety of lures including tubes, buzzin frogs and Red Eye Shads. It felt good to have a limit so quickly but since it only weighed about 8 lbs we knew we had to upgrade. We ended up trying several more spots with no success. Finally I said we have to go back where we started and figure those fish out. It is a large flat in 3-7 feet of water with thick clumps of milfoil. It looked so good I knew fish had to be there and they were. Almost imediately after returning I caught one close to 4 lbs on a jig flipped in the milfoil and then less than 5 minutes later my dad put one in the boat that was about the same size. Now things were starting to happen and with 2 hours left in the day there was plenty of time to catch 3 more good ones. We just kept working that same general area the rest of the day and ended up catching probably 15-20 keepers to get to our 18.48 lbs. All of those fish came on a 1/2 oz. watermelon jig with a watermelon Lake Fork Pig Claw trailer. Most of the fish came on the outside edges of the milfoil but the biggest fish of the day came from a small hole right inside one of the larger patches.
Nest Lake is one of my favorite lakes in Kandiyohi County but I really was not looking forward to this event. The reason was that we would not be allowed to weigh in any smallmouths. It is catch and release only for smallmouths at this time of year and that is primarily what we target on the lake. We do know how to catch largemouths out there but a couple weeks ago we looked for some and only managed 2 small keepers so we went in knowing we would just have to figure something out as the day went along.
We started on the area were we actually ended up catching all of our weigh fish but we struck out on the first pass through. Then we headed to a few reed areas and caught several small keepers. After fishing the reeds thoroughly we pulled out to the weedbeds in 3-5 feet of water and filled out our limit. All of those fish came on a variety of lures including tubes, buzzin frogs and Red Eye Shads. It felt good to have a limit so quickly but since it only weighed about 8 lbs we knew we had to upgrade. We ended up trying several more spots with no success. Finally I said we have to go back where we started and figure those fish out. It is a large flat in 3-7 feet of water with thick clumps of milfoil. It looked so good I knew fish had to be there and they were. Almost imediately after returning I caught one close to 4 lbs on a jig flipped in the milfoil and then less than 5 minutes later my dad put one in the boat that was about the same size. Now things were starting to happen and with 2 hours left in the day there was plenty of time to catch 3 more good ones. We just kept working that same general area the rest of the day and ended up catching probably 15-20 keepers to get to our 18.48 lbs. All of those fish came on a 1/2 oz. watermelon jig with a watermelon Lake Fork Pig Claw trailer. Most of the fish came on the outside edges of the milfoil but the biggest fish of the day came from a small hole right inside one of the larger patches.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Kandi Lakes Fall Bass League - Sauk Lake
This week's league was a little different than our previous fall leagues. Since Sauk Lake is not one of our normal league lakes we decided to make it a little bigger tournament. Instead of a $20 entry we made it $50 and instead of fishing until 1:00 pm we fished until 3:00 pm. All the other league rules remained in place. Despite the higher entry fee we still had a good turnout with 10 teams showing up to fish. 7 of the 10 teams were able to weigh in their limit but 1 team pretty much crushed the rest of us. 1st place weighed in 5 fish for 23.15 lbs, 2nd place had 16.88 lbs and 3rd weighed 15.54 lbs. My dad and I were first out of the money in 4th place with 13.03 lbs. The big bass for the day was 5.07 lbs.
The fishing for us was extremely tough. We started off ok with 4 keepers in the boat by about 10:30 in the morning but after that we didn't manage to catch our 5th keeper until almost 2:3o in the afternoon. So we had a really long dry spell in the middle of the day. None of are fish were anything special either. They all weighed between 2 1/2 and 3 lbs. They all came from overhanging trees in really shallow water. The best bait for us seemed to be a Strike King KVD tube in either black/blue or a green pumkin with red tails. My dad did pick up one of our keepers on a black/blue jig flipped into a tree.
The fishing for us was extremely tough. We started off ok with 4 keepers in the boat by about 10:30 in the morning but after that we didn't manage to catch our 5th keeper until almost 2:3o in the afternoon. So we had a really long dry spell in the middle of the day. None of are fish were anything special either. They all weighed between 2 1/2 and 3 lbs. They all came from overhanging trees in really shallow water. The best bait for us seemed to be a Strike King KVD tube in either black/blue or a green pumkin with red tails. My dad did pick up one of our keepers on a black/blue jig flipped into a tree.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Kandi Lakes Fall Bass League - Norway Lake
Sorry for the delay on this one. I completely forgot about writing it. I thought I had but tonight my dad told me it wasn't up so here it is now. We had 9 boats again last Saturday for Norway Lake which has been our usually turnout it seems this fall. There were a few good bags once again as well but overall the fishing was tough. 1st place weighed 5 for 15.87 lbs, 2nd had 14.78 lbs and 3rd was my dad and I with 12.26 lbs. The big fish for the day was a nice 5.52 lb beauty.
I'm not going to get real detailed on this one. We struggled big time for the day but were able to scratch out just enough to get into the money. Everyone knows that we would prefer to go over to Games Lake to fish but unfortunately for us the water is too low to get through the channel. We thought about borrowing a smaller boat but decided to just make due on Norway. For about the first 2 hours we just couldn't get anything going. I finally caught one that barely went 12 inches off a reed point. Since the wind was really blowing good in the right direction for a spot we have fished in the past we went there and they were stacked up. We caught 4 more there in about half an hour to fill our limit and we were feeling good just to do that. Then we bounce around in West Norway for awhile and I picked up our big fish of the day that went about 3 lbs on a jig flipped in the reeds. After awhile we went back to the spot we caught the 4 keepers and caught 5 more really quick but none of them helped us at all. My dad did pick up a nice 6 lb walleye on a jig but that didn't work for us. So overall the day was extremely slow with just one short flurry to get us up to our weight.
I'm not going to get real detailed on this one. We struggled big time for the day but were able to scratch out just enough to get into the money. Everyone knows that we would prefer to go over to Games Lake to fish but unfortunately for us the water is too low to get through the channel. We thought about borrowing a smaller boat but decided to just make due on Norway. For about the first 2 hours we just couldn't get anything going. I finally caught one that barely went 12 inches off a reed point. Since the wind was really blowing good in the right direction for a spot we have fished in the past we went there and they were stacked up. We caught 4 more there in about half an hour to fill our limit and we were feeling good just to do that. Then we bounce around in West Norway for awhile and I picked up our big fish of the day that went about 3 lbs on a jig flipped in the reeds. After awhile we went back to the spot we caught the 4 keepers and caught 5 more really quick but none of them helped us at all. My dad did pick up a nice 6 lb walleye on a jig but that didn't work for us. So overall the day was extremely slow with just one short flurry to get us up to our weight.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Kandi Lakes Fall Bass League - Lake Johanna
We had another good turnout for the fall bass league with 11 teams showing up to compete on Lake Johanna. The weather was very nice with mild temperatures and just a little wind. Lake Johanna has been off the past couple years in my opinion and last Saturday was no different. Overall the fishing was pretty tough and while there were a few decent bags it was nothing like it had been in the past. 1st place had 5 fish for 16.69 lbs, 2nd was my dad and I with 14.94 lbs and 3rd had 13.73 lbs. The big fish for the day was 4.23 lbs.
My dad and I started in our usually spot which is a bay lined with reeds. We flipped jigs and tubes in the reeds and our fishing started off really well. We had 2 of our weigh fish in the boat within about 10 minutes. We filled out our 5 fish bag after about an hour just staying in the same area. After that though the fishing got a lot tougher. We ran around the lake hitting a few more areas we like but weren't able to find any other fish. Eventually we went back to where we started and just ground it out the rest of the day pretty much. We ended up catching 5 more keepers the rest of the day with all of those fish coming on a Strike King Flippin Tube in green pumpkin. The real key for us was fishing the areas in the reeds where there were matted up reeds or eelgrass laying next to the standing reeds. It was a sunny day and it seemed like the fish wanted to get underneath that horizontal cover. The fish weren't everywhere on that stuff but when you saw something that really looked right you could pretty much call it and the fish would be there.
My dad and I started in our usually spot which is a bay lined with reeds. We flipped jigs and tubes in the reeds and our fishing started off really well. We had 2 of our weigh fish in the boat within about 10 minutes. We filled out our 5 fish bag after about an hour just staying in the same area. After that though the fishing got a lot tougher. We ran around the lake hitting a few more areas we like but weren't able to find any other fish. Eventually we went back to where we started and just ground it out the rest of the day pretty much. We ended up catching 5 more keepers the rest of the day with all of those fish coming on a Strike King Flippin Tube in green pumpkin. The real key for us was fishing the areas in the reeds where there were matted up reeds or eelgrass laying next to the standing reeds. It was a sunny day and it seemed like the fish wanted to get underneath that horizontal cover. The fish weren't everywhere on that stuff but when you saw something that really looked right you could pretty much call it and the fish would be there.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Kandi Lakes Fall Bass League - Lake Andrew
Despite the terrible conditions we had 9 boats show up to fish Lake Andrew on Saturday morning. The day started off misty for a couple hours and then for about the last 3 hours of the day it rained non stop. At least it wasn't too cold to make it really miserable. Even though the conditions weren't great for the anglers they should have been perfect for the fish, but unfortunately they were not very cooperative. Most everyone said the fishing was pretty tough except for the winning team. 1st place weighed 5 fish for just over 15 lbs. 2nd was my dad and myself with just over 12 lbs for 5 and 3rd place had just over 11 lbs. Pretty much the weights to expect on Lake Andrew although usually my dad and I could come up with more than 12 lbs for 5 fish but like i said it was pretty tough out there.
We started fishing our traditional deep weedline areas with jigs and worms but just couldn't get anything going on that. My dad started throwing a spinnerbait up on top of the flat and finally picked up a small keeper. The next couple stops didn't produce anything at all. Our 4th stop was another deep weedline where I threw a jig and my dad threw the spinnerbait. I didn't get any bites but he found another keeper up on top of the flat. It was starting to dawn on us that the fish just weren't out there. Or maybe they were but just not on the bottom so we started running around covering the flats with spinnerbaits and Strike King Red Eye Shads. I keept the boat in 10-12 feet of water and we just cruised around throwing up on top and eventually started putting some fish in the boat. Nothing was huge but we were able to put our limit together after about 3 1/2 hours of fishing. With about an hour to go we went back to one of our weedlines we had check twice already and for whatever reason they wanted the jig this time. My dad put 3 nice keepers in the boat in about 15 minutes including our big fish of the day which weighed in at 3.60 lbs. We stuck around that area the rest of the day but besides that quick flurry we didn't manage to upgrade again in the last 45 minutes.
I'm not sure why the fishin was so tough out there on Saturday. For one thing the lake has just been kind of off all year. It's not a great lake to begin with but you can catch a lot of fish if you do the right thing but this year it just wasn't like that. I also think the turnover was happening as we were fishing. I'm not exactly sure how to tell but it seemed like there were a lot of decaying particles floating around in the water. When the water mixes it stirs up the bottom and I'm pretty sure that's what was happening. Needless to say we all know the turnover isn't a great time to fish but when theres a tournament you just deal with the conditions you have at the time.
We started fishing our traditional deep weedline areas with jigs and worms but just couldn't get anything going on that. My dad started throwing a spinnerbait up on top of the flat and finally picked up a small keeper. The next couple stops didn't produce anything at all. Our 4th stop was another deep weedline where I threw a jig and my dad threw the spinnerbait. I didn't get any bites but he found another keeper up on top of the flat. It was starting to dawn on us that the fish just weren't out there. Or maybe they were but just not on the bottom so we started running around covering the flats with spinnerbaits and Strike King Red Eye Shads. I keept the boat in 10-12 feet of water and we just cruised around throwing up on top and eventually started putting some fish in the boat. Nothing was huge but we were able to put our limit together after about 3 1/2 hours of fishing. With about an hour to go we went back to one of our weedlines we had check twice already and for whatever reason they wanted the jig this time. My dad put 3 nice keepers in the boat in about 15 minutes including our big fish of the day which weighed in at 3.60 lbs. We stuck around that area the rest of the day but besides that quick flurry we didn't manage to upgrade again in the last 45 minutes.
I'm not sure why the fishin was so tough out there on Saturday. For one thing the lake has just been kind of off all year. It's not a great lake to begin with but you can catch a lot of fish if you do the right thing but this year it just wasn't like that. I also think the turnover was happening as we were fishing. I'm not exactly sure how to tell but it seemed like there were a lot of decaying particles floating around in the water. When the water mixes it stirs up the bottom and I'm pretty sure that's what was happening. Needless to say we all know the turnover isn't a great time to fish but when theres a tournament you just deal with the conditions you have at the time.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Big Bass Bonanza - Mille Lacs
Mille Lacs marked the last tournament on the Big Bass Bonanza circuit for 2008 and our last tournament of the year besides the fall bass league. It had been a few weeks since we were up there for some practice fishing and the conditions had changed a little bit. By now the days are getting cooler so we weren't sure exactly what to expect. The weather was also suppose to get pretty nasty during the day and it did.
We launched out of Cove Bay on the south side of the lake and our starting area was actually a long stretch of reeds right in Cove. The lake is huge so it felt kind of weird to travel less than half a mile to get to where we wanted to go. Within the first 5 minutes I caught a keeper fish that was about 13 inches long. Mille Lacs has a no cull rule though so just like down on the Mississippi if you put a fish in the livewell you must keep it and weigh it in. I know theres bigger fish so I decided to throw that 13 incher back. A short while later I caught one that was about 4 lbs. Now things were looking up, but then we went almost an hour without catching another fish. We did lose 2 during that time but weren't able to put any in the box. I started working the boat up shallower inside the reeds trying to get to the thickest stuff I could find and in one little area I had a nice 20 minute flurry of action. I boated another fish that was about 4 lbs and then our big fish of the day that went 5.22 lbs. A short while later I put a 2 1/2 pounder in the livewell. Now we had 4 really good fish and it wasn't even 9:00 am. All of those fish came on a black/blue Strike King Flippin Tube. After that the bite just died. We finally decided to make a move and head over to Wahkon Bay. The ride over wasn't too bad but as soon as we got there the winds started getting really strong from the northwest. We fished around in Wahkon for awhile but weren't able to catch anything so we headed back to Cove Bay. By this time the winds were really howling and it was some of the nastiest waves I've ever been in. It felt like the boat was going to tip over backwards going over some of those waves. I just took it easy though and went slow and we were able to make it back safely. The boat wasn't in as good of shape though. The head of the trolling motor had busted completly apart and later on we realized out onboard battery charger also got beat up pretty good. Once we were safely back in Cove Bay we still couldn't catch anything. Finally with about 10 minutes to go I picked up one more small one on a Strike King spinnerbait in the exact same spot that I caught our first keeper of the day.
We headed back to the weigh in with only 5 fish out of a possible 8 we can weigh in. The 5 we had were good ones though and ended up weighing 17.57 lbs. This was good enough for 12th place out of the 49 teams competing. We actually had the heaviest bag of any of the teams who didn't weigh in a limit. I really hate not coming in with a limit but the fishing was so tough only 11 teams managed to catch one so I guess I don't feel too bad.
With finishes of 13th, 23rd, 5th, 19th, and 12th through the five events on the circuit my dad and I were able to take the 6th place spot on the team of the year leaderboard. We didn't really have any great tournaments throughout the year but we also didn't have any really bad ones. Consistancy is the name of the game when it comes to point standings like that. Having said that though I had gotten used to having several higher finishes the past couple seasons so it was disappointing not to come away with a win or several more cashes at least.
We launched out of Cove Bay on the south side of the lake and our starting area was actually a long stretch of reeds right in Cove. The lake is huge so it felt kind of weird to travel less than half a mile to get to where we wanted to go. Within the first 5 minutes I caught a keeper fish that was about 13 inches long. Mille Lacs has a no cull rule though so just like down on the Mississippi if you put a fish in the livewell you must keep it and weigh it in. I know theres bigger fish so I decided to throw that 13 incher back. A short while later I caught one that was about 4 lbs. Now things were looking up, but then we went almost an hour without catching another fish. We did lose 2 during that time but weren't able to put any in the box. I started working the boat up shallower inside the reeds trying to get to the thickest stuff I could find and in one little area I had a nice 20 minute flurry of action. I boated another fish that was about 4 lbs and then our big fish of the day that went 5.22 lbs. A short while later I put a 2 1/2 pounder in the livewell. Now we had 4 really good fish and it wasn't even 9:00 am. All of those fish came on a black/blue Strike King Flippin Tube. After that the bite just died. We finally decided to make a move and head over to Wahkon Bay. The ride over wasn't too bad but as soon as we got there the winds started getting really strong from the northwest. We fished around in Wahkon for awhile but weren't able to catch anything so we headed back to Cove Bay. By this time the winds were really howling and it was some of the nastiest waves I've ever been in. It felt like the boat was going to tip over backwards going over some of those waves. I just took it easy though and went slow and we were able to make it back safely. The boat wasn't in as good of shape though. The head of the trolling motor had busted completly apart and later on we realized out onboard battery charger also got beat up pretty good. Once we were safely back in Cove Bay we still couldn't catch anything. Finally with about 10 minutes to go I picked up one more small one on a Strike King spinnerbait in the exact same spot that I caught our first keeper of the day.
We headed back to the weigh in with only 5 fish out of a possible 8 we can weigh in. The 5 we had were good ones though and ended up weighing 17.57 lbs. This was good enough for 12th place out of the 49 teams competing. We actually had the heaviest bag of any of the teams who didn't weigh in a limit. I really hate not coming in with a limit but the fishing was so tough only 11 teams managed to catch one so I guess I don't feel too bad.
With finishes of 13th, 23rd, 5th, 19th, and 12th through the five events on the circuit my dad and I were able to take the 6th place spot on the team of the year leaderboard. We didn't really have any great tournaments throughout the year but we also didn't have any really bad ones. Consistancy is the name of the game when it comes to point standings like that. Having said that though I had gotten used to having several higher finishes the past couple seasons so it was disappointing not to come away with a win or several more cashes at least.
Kandi Lakes Fall Bass League - Green Lake
Last year some of the guys who fish the Wednesday and Thursday night leagues during the summer decided us non-hunters needed something to do during the fall so we came up with the Kandi Lakes Fall Bass League. The nights are too short by this time of year so we hold the fall league on Saturdays for 5 hours and weigh in our best 5 fish. The first event was held last Saturday September 6th on Green Lake. My dad and I were unable to fish because we got home late from the State Tournament and had another tournament to go to the next day. The turnout was pretty good though with 9 teams showing up. 1st place had 17.01 lbs for their 5 fish, 2nd had 16.48 lbs, and third had 15.75 lbs. The big bass for the day was actually a largemouth that weighed in at 4.26 lbs. We will be holding these leagues every Saturday throughout September and October and my dad and I plan to fish all the rest of them.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Minnesota B.A.S.S. Federation Tournament of Champions - Mississippi River Pools 4 & 5 - Day 2
When we woke up on the morning of day 2 there was heavy fog. I knew right away there would be some kind of fog delay but little did I know how long it was really going to be. Since I was in the 4th flight on day 1 I was in the 1st flight on day 2. This meant I would blast off sooner but I would also have to be back to the weigh in at 3:00 pm. We got the boat launched a little after 6:00 am and waited for the fog to lift. We kept waiting and waiting and waiting some more. This was getting a little bit nerve wracking for me. I had almost 9 hours to fish the previous day and it took me all day just to get 5 keepers. Now with this delay I didn't know what I was going to do. I was already going to have a shorter day and it kept getting shorter and shorter with the fog. The fog delay actually ended up being 3 1/2 hours before they started blasting boats off. With the running time I figured there was pretty much no way I could go back to my fish in pool 5, and even if I did get back to pool 5 would I even have enough time to catch them down there. When we got down to the lock there was a barge sitting there again so now I knew I was stuck in pool 4 the rest of the day. I was just going to have to make due with the little bit I had and just forget about my fish in pool 5. Fortunately for me I again drew a partner who had not practiced at all so he gave control of the boat to me for the whole day, or what little of the day was left anyway.
I decided to start near the marina where I had caught my 5th keeper the previous day. It is a pretty large area and I thought if I stuck around in there for the 5 hours I had to fish there was a chance I could scrape out my 4 keepers. I went right to where I caught my keeper the previous day but didn't get anything to come up on the frog. Then I noticed a log out in the middle that I somehow didn't see before. I trolled over to it and pitched a Strike King Rage Tail Craw to the wood and caught my first keeper. It was barely over 14 inches, which was the minimum size, but what a relief that fish was. Then I moved to another corner of the area and picked up a good solid keeper in the duckweed on a frog. Now I was feeling really good. I was halfway there and we had only been fishing 45 minutes. Then for the next 2 hours there was nothing. We each caught a couple short fish but the action really died. Again I knew I had to do something but I really didn't have anything else to go to in pool 4.
I did decide to make a move to a spot I didn't really think looked very good but where we had caught a few small fish in practice. That didn't produce a thing so I just started fishing new water. I eventually came across just what I was looking for. There was a point of an island with duckweed and those big giant pads. The water depth seemed about right and there were minnows swimming around. Everything looked just right and sure enough I caught my biggest fish of the day on the frog way up in those giant pads. It was probably close to 3 lbs but it was just awesome catching that fish from a spot I had never even seen before. After fishing around there a little more with no more action there was about 45 minutes of fishing time left to get my last keeper.
I went back to my starting area and worked all the way around it again. This time there were tons of baitfish in there and fish blowing up on the surface and chasing those minnows. The problem was they wouldn't bite our lures. I did have a couple blowups on the frog but they were like a foot away from the bait. The fish weren't even close to it. Now the pressure was really ratcheting up. I knew I was so close if I could just get 1 more fished to actually connect with my frog. I started telling my partner about how my dad had caught 3 fish this year on the very last casts of tournaments and how I needed his luck to rub off on me a little bit. I told him if I did catch one in the last 20 minutes it would be my last cast and we would play it safe and get back to the weigh in early. With about 10 minutes left to fish I saw one bust on some bait near a small duckweed patch out away from the bigger mats. It was too far to cast to so I trolled over to it and fired my frog next to the mat. I twitched it along there and nothing happened until right when I got almost past the mat. That fish just hammered my frog and I yelled "I GOT HIM!!!" My partner netted him for me and it was probably the most pumped up I've ever been in a tournament. I didn't go all Ike but there were plenty of high fives and my heart was racing like crazy. I thought about fishing for a few more minutes, and I could have, but I played it safe like I said and made that fish my last cast of the day.
We got back to the check in boat with about 15 minutes to spare but I knew I had a solid 4 fish limit. Now it was just time to find out if it would be enough. I was actually the 2nd angler to weigh in for the day and my 4 fish limit weighed in at 9.38 lbs to give me a 2 day total of 20.53 lbs. I knew going into the tournament 20 lbs over 2 days would be a good weight but now I just had to wait and see if it would be good enough. As it turns out the fishing was much tougher on day 2. It almost always is but with the fog delay almost cutting the day in half it really made it tough for most of the field. There were very few limits coming in and I noticed most of the guys ahead of me had much worse days and ended up falling behind me. About 3/4 of the way through the weigh in it wasn't just if I would be in the top 12 but whether or not I would actually win the tournament. Finally with about 10 anglers left to weigh in the winner was able to overtake me for the top spot. I really wasn't disappointed at all though because my only real goal was just to be in the top 12. Actually I did better than that even because the top 6 will be boaters at the B.A.S.S. Northern Divisional tournament next summer at the Detroit River in Michigan. That should be my kind of fishing so being able to use my boat out there will really be a big plus. Our West Central Bassmasters team also had another good day to end up with about 67 lbs total for the 2 days. We ended up in 1st place for the team competition by about 9 lbs. John Zvorak from our club finished in 6th place so he will also be a boater at the divisional. Paul Shimek just missed the top 12 by finishing in 15th place.
Well there it is. What an exciting week of fishing down on the river. I've been down there before a few times and really haven't done well at all. Actually I think my fishing was probably slower than most but I got fortunate with that one big bite and I was able to stay in it mentally when I knew I wasn't going to catch a lot of fish. I think what really helped me and our club was the lack of current on the river. Basically there was almost no current at all so it fished much more like a lake which I am much more familiar with. The other big key was staying in the game mentally when I knew I couldn't get back to my water from day 1 and just being able to fish water I had never seen before to catch my biggest fish of day 2.
I decided to start near the marina where I had caught my 5th keeper the previous day. It is a pretty large area and I thought if I stuck around in there for the 5 hours I had to fish there was a chance I could scrape out my 4 keepers. I went right to where I caught my keeper the previous day but didn't get anything to come up on the frog. Then I noticed a log out in the middle that I somehow didn't see before. I trolled over to it and pitched a Strike King Rage Tail Craw to the wood and caught my first keeper. It was barely over 14 inches, which was the minimum size, but what a relief that fish was. Then I moved to another corner of the area and picked up a good solid keeper in the duckweed on a frog. Now I was feeling really good. I was halfway there and we had only been fishing 45 minutes. Then for the next 2 hours there was nothing. We each caught a couple short fish but the action really died. Again I knew I had to do something but I really didn't have anything else to go to in pool 4.
I did decide to make a move to a spot I didn't really think looked very good but where we had caught a few small fish in practice. That didn't produce a thing so I just started fishing new water. I eventually came across just what I was looking for. There was a point of an island with duckweed and those big giant pads. The water depth seemed about right and there were minnows swimming around. Everything looked just right and sure enough I caught my biggest fish of the day on the frog way up in those giant pads. It was probably close to 3 lbs but it was just awesome catching that fish from a spot I had never even seen before. After fishing around there a little more with no more action there was about 45 minutes of fishing time left to get my last keeper.
I went back to my starting area and worked all the way around it again. This time there were tons of baitfish in there and fish blowing up on the surface and chasing those minnows. The problem was they wouldn't bite our lures. I did have a couple blowups on the frog but they were like a foot away from the bait. The fish weren't even close to it. Now the pressure was really ratcheting up. I knew I was so close if I could just get 1 more fished to actually connect with my frog. I started telling my partner about how my dad had caught 3 fish this year on the very last casts of tournaments and how I needed his luck to rub off on me a little bit. I told him if I did catch one in the last 20 minutes it would be my last cast and we would play it safe and get back to the weigh in early. With about 10 minutes left to fish I saw one bust on some bait near a small duckweed patch out away from the bigger mats. It was too far to cast to so I trolled over to it and fired my frog next to the mat. I twitched it along there and nothing happened until right when I got almost past the mat. That fish just hammered my frog and I yelled "I GOT HIM!!!" My partner netted him for me and it was probably the most pumped up I've ever been in a tournament. I didn't go all Ike but there were plenty of high fives and my heart was racing like crazy. I thought about fishing for a few more minutes, and I could have, but I played it safe like I said and made that fish my last cast of the day.
We got back to the check in boat with about 15 minutes to spare but I knew I had a solid 4 fish limit. Now it was just time to find out if it would be enough. I was actually the 2nd angler to weigh in for the day and my 4 fish limit weighed in at 9.38 lbs to give me a 2 day total of 20.53 lbs. I knew going into the tournament 20 lbs over 2 days would be a good weight but now I just had to wait and see if it would be good enough. As it turns out the fishing was much tougher on day 2. It almost always is but with the fog delay almost cutting the day in half it really made it tough for most of the field. There were very few limits coming in and I noticed most of the guys ahead of me had much worse days and ended up falling behind me. About 3/4 of the way through the weigh in it wasn't just if I would be in the top 12 but whether or not I would actually win the tournament. Finally with about 10 anglers left to weigh in the winner was able to overtake me for the top spot. I really wasn't disappointed at all though because my only real goal was just to be in the top 12. Actually I did better than that even because the top 6 will be boaters at the B.A.S.S. Northern Divisional tournament next summer at the Detroit River in Michigan. That should be my kind of fishing so being able to use my boat out there will really be a big plus. Our West Central Bassmasters team also had another good day to end up with about 67 lbs total for the 2 days. We ended up in 1st place for the team competition by about 9 lbs. John Zvorak from our club finished in 6th place so he will also be a boater at the divisional. Paul Shimek just missed the top 12 by finishing in 15th place.
Well there it is. What an exciting week of fishing down on the river. I've been down there before a few times and really haven't done well at all. Actually I think my fishing was probably slower than most but I got fortunate with that one big bite and I was able to stay in it mentally when I knew I wasn't going to catch a lot of fish. I think what really helped me and our club was the lack of current on the river. Basically there was almost no current at all so it fished much more like a lake which I am much more familiar with. The other big key was staying in the game mentally when I knew I couldn't get back to my water from day 1 and just being able to fish water I had never seen before to catch my biggest fish of day 2.
Minnesota B.A.S.S. Federation Tournament of Champions - Mississippi River Pools 4 & 5 - Day 1
Sorry for the delay in updates but its been a busy couple of weeks with very limited internet access. I've been home for a few days now relaxing so I hope to get everything updated by tomorrow at the latest.
As many who read this blog probably already know I finished 2nd out of 149 anglers in the Minnesota B.A.S.S. Federation Tournament of Champions. I've fished these events for a lot of years now and had been right on the doorstep many times but just could not close the deal. This year I was finally able to break through into the top 12 and almost took 1st place in the process. The TOC is a 2 day format where you are paired with another competitor each day. You are allow to weigh in 4 fish each of the 2 days and no culling is allowed. I was able to weigh in 4 fish each day giving me 8 fish for 20.53 lbs. First place was less than a pound ahead of me with 8 fish weighing 21.17 lbs. I also had 2nd big bass of the tournament with a 4.54 lb beauty. Here's how I did it.
On day 1 I was paired with another angler who had only gotten a day of practice fishing in so he was willing to let me go to my water for pretty much the whole day. My best fishing in practice was in pool 5 so I decided to lock down there first thing in the morning. Locking through the dams is an interesting process. It generally takes about half an hour but barge traffic gets priority over any other watercraft. I ran from takeoff about 10 miles down to the lock and sure enough a barge is sitting right there. I figured that it would take about an hour for the barge to get through so instead of just waiting I pulled over to an island to fish while we waited. The bank was mostly rocky but there was a little opening with slop on one part of the bank. Right when we got to that area my partner caught a short fish in the slop so I slowed down and really worked that area thoroughly. A little while later a good keeper blew up on my frog and I had it halfway to the boat before it just fell off. I don't know how it came off like that but it was not the start I wanted. After fishing for about an hour in that spot my partner says to me the boat is filling up with water. I look back and sure enough the floor of the cockpit was covered in water. I could also see the barge was done and they were ready to let the other boats through the lock. I didn't know what to do now. I got the bilge pumps running and we pumped all the water out pretty quick but I thought the plug might be out of the boat. If the plug was out I didn't know if I wanted to lock through but on the other hand I didn't want to waste time running all the way back to the launch to put the plug back in. I decided to lock through anyway and keep the bilge pumps running much of the day if I had to. When we got in the lock I realized it wasn't the plug but the overflow valves on the livewell were all plugged up with weeds. When I left the fill pump on there was nowhere for the water to go but into the boat. Once I figured that out it calmed me down a bunch and I knew I could just fill the livewells and then turn the pumps to recirculate only and we would be fine.
After getting through the lock I ran another 6-7 miles to my starting area. It was a series of channels inside an island. Most of the water was really shallow but the best area had a 25 foot deep hole in it. The cover was coontail and duckweed mats with giant lily pads mixed in. I pulled in to the channel, turned the corner and was happy to see we were alone in there. On my partners very first cast he had a good blowup but missed it. Less than 5 minutes later I had my first blowup and connected with that 4.54 lb bass. What a way to start the day!!! After that fast action to start I figured it was on in there and we would clean up and go back to the ramp early. Unfortunately it was the exact opposite. After catching that big one it just slowed down. It wasn't completely dead because we were getting blowups on our frogs but nothing would connect. I'm sure most of the fish hitting were pike but I know some of the were bass too but they just wouldn't eat it. After fishing a couple hundred yards my partner finally put his first keeper in the boat. Then I moved to the other side of the channel and we didn't catch a thing. Next I fished some of the adjoining channels and still wasn't able to get anything. I then worked back over the stretch where I caught the big one and my partner was able to get his 2nd keeper but I was still stuck with only 1 fish after almost half the day was gone. I knew I had to do something different so we picked up and moved.
The next stop was the east side of the island that we had been fishing inside of. The cover was a lot different with much less slop and more trees and eel grass. The first tree we got to I pitched my Strike King Flippin Tube in there and caught a small keeper. Then a little while later I caught a solid keeper pitching the tube in a little line of eel grass. Now things were starting to come together since I only needed one more fish and there was plenty of time to go. A few hundred yards down the bank it got a lot more sloppy and I started throwing the frog again and soon had another quality keeper in the boat to fill my limit. We are allowed to catch five bass and weigh in the four best ones but I was just happy to have four so I told my partner he could have the front of the boat the rest of the day. We kept fishing the same general area but he wasn't able to come up with anything so I told him theres one other spot I wanted to fish and he'd be in front with a good chance to catch one. When I went to start the motor the electronics shut off and the motor barely cranked but it did finally start. This is not good I'm thinking to myself but at least it was running so I told him I didn't want to risk the motor not starting so we would have to head back to the lock. When we were running back there was a barge going the same direction as us so maybe it was a good thing we headed back when we did. The lock was actually open and ready to go when we got there so I went right in and just left the motor running because I didn't want to be stuck in the lock with a dead battery trying to scramble around to get out of there. I guess that half hour of idling recharged the battery pretty well because we never had another problem the rest of the day.
After getting back through the lock there was still about 2 hours of fishing time left. That is the great part of being in the 4th flight. We didn't have to weigh in until 4:30 pm and first flight had to weigh in at 3:00 pm. The problem was like I said earlier I didn't have very good fishing in pool 4 and thats where we would be for the next 2 hours. There was one area near a marina where my dad had caught one over 3 lbs in practice so thats where we went. It was more of the same with duckweed and those big giant pads. Again I let my partner run the trolling motor and we fished pretty slowly and thoroughly in the area but just weren't getting any bites at all. We had fished almost all of it when he got a blowup and missed it and then a little while later I caught my 5th keeper of the day on the frog. After I put 5 fish in the livewell it meant I could no longer make a cast so I sat down and took a little break for the last half hour of the day. I can't say I've ever done that in a tournament before! Unfortuantely for him he was unable to catch anything else in that time and it was time to head back to the weigh in.
When we got to the weigh in I chose the biggest 4 of my 5 fish in the livewell and brought them to the weigh in stage. When I pulled the big one out I was pleseantly surprised to see that it was even bigger than I thought it was when I caught it. That's always a bonus because they usually seem to shrink on you. My 4 fish for day 1 ended up weighing 11.15 lbs which put me in 7th place after everyone had weighed in. That was solidly inside the top 12 cut but there were a lot of good weights and almost anyone within the top 50 had a legitimate chance to move up on the 2nd day. There is also a team competition and our 4 man West Central Bassmasters team held the lead for the day with about 37 lbs.
As many who read this blog probably already know I finished 2nd out of 149 anglers in the Minnesota B.A.S.S. Federation Tournament of Champions. I've fished these events for a lot of years now and had been right on the doorstep many times but just could not close the deal. This year I was finally able to break through into the top 12 and almost took 1st place in the process. The TOC is a 2 day format where you are paired with another competitor each day. You are allow to weigh in 4 fish each of the 2 days and no culling is allowed. I was able to weigh in 4 fish each day giving me 8 fish for 20.53 lbs. First place was less than a pound ahead of me with 8 fish weighing 21.17 lbs. I also had 2nd big bass of the tournament with a 4.54 lb beauty. Here's how I did it.
On day 1 I was paired with another angler who had only gotten a day of practice fishing in so he was willing to let me go to my water for pretty much the whole day. My best fishing in practice was in pool 5 so I decided to lock down there first thing in the morning. Locking through the dams is an interesting process. It generally takes about half an hour but barge traffic gets priority over any other watercraft. I ran from takeoff about 10 miles down to the lock and sure enough a barge is sitting right there. I figured that it would take about an hour for the barge to get through so instead of just waiting I pulled over to an island to fish while we waited. The bank was mostly rocky but there was a little opening with slop on one part of the bank. Right when we got to that area my partner caught a short fish in the slop so I slowed down and really worked that area thoroughly. A little while later a good keeper blew up on my frog and I had it halfway to the boat before it just fell off. I don't know how it came off like that but it was not the start I wanted. After fishing for about an hour in that spot my partner says to me the boat is filling up with water. I look back and sure enough the floor of the cockpit was covered in water. I could also see the barge was done and they were ready to let the other boats through the lock. I didn't know what to do now. I got the bilge pumps running and we pumped all the water out pretty quick but I thought the plug might be out of the boat. If the plug was out I didn't know if I wanted to lock through but on the other hand I didn't want to waste time running all the way back to the launch to put the plug back in. I decided to lock through anyway and keep the bilge pumps running much of the day if I had to. When we got in the lock I realized it wasn't the plug but the overflow valves on the livewell were all plugged up with weeds. When I left the fill pump on there was nowhere for the water to go but into the boat. Once I figured that out it calmed me down a bunch and I knew I could just fill the livewells and then turn the pumps to recirculate only and we would be fine.
After getting through the lock I ran another 6-7 miles to my starting area. It was a series of channels inside an island. Most of the water was really shallow but the best area had a 25 foot deep hole in it. The cover was coontail and duckweed mats with giant lily pads mixed in. I pulled in to the channel, turned the corner and was happy to see we were alone in there. On my partners very first cast he had a good blowup but missed it. Less than 5 minutes later I had my first blowup and connected with that 4.54 lb bass. What a way to start the day!!! After that fast action to start I figured it was on in there and we would clean up and go back to the ramp early. Unfortunately it was the exact opposite. After catching that big one it just slowed down. It wasn't completely dead because we were getting blowups on our frogs but nothing would connect. I'm sure most of the fish hitting were pike but I know some of the were bass too but they just wouldn't eat it. After fishing a couple hundred yards my partner finally put his first keeper in the boat. Then I moved to the other side of the channel and we didn't catch a thing. Next I fished some of the adjoining channels and still wasn't able to get anything. I then worked back over the stretch where I caught the big one and my partner was able to get his 2nd keeper but I was still stuck with only 1 fish after almost half the day was gone. I knew I had to do something different so we picked up and moved.
The next stop was the east side of the island that we had been fishing inside of. The cover was a lot different with much less slop and more trees and eel grass. The first tree we got to I pitched my Strike King Flippin Tube in there and caught a small keeper. Then a little while later I caught a solid keeper pitching the tube in a little line of eel grass. Now things were starting to come together since I only needed one more fish and there was plenty of time to go. A few hundred yards down the bank it got a lot more sloppy and I started throwing the frog again and soon had another quality keeper in the boat to fill my limit. We are allowed to catch five bass and weigh in the four best ones but I was just happy to have four so I told my partner he could have the front of the boat the rest of the day. We kept fishing the same general area but he wasn't able to come up with anything so I told him theres one other spot I wanted to fish and he'd be in front with a good chance to catch one. When I went to start the motor the electronics shut off and the motor barely cranked but it did finally start. This is not good I'm thinking to myself but at least it was running so I told him I didn't want to risk the motor not starting so we would have to head back to the lock. When we were running back there was a barge going the same direction as us so maybe it was a good thing we headed back when we did. The lock was actually open and ready to go when we got there so I went right in and just left the motor running because I didn't want to be stuck in the lock with a dead battery trying to scramble around to get out of there. I guess that half hour of idling recharged the battery pretty well because we never had another problem the rest of the day.
After getting back through the lock there was still about 2 hours of fishing time left. That is the great part of being in the 4th flight. We didn't have to weigh in until 4:30 pm and first flight had to weigh in at 3:00 pm. The problem was like I said earlier I didn't have very good fishing in pool 4 and thats where we would be for the next 2 hours. There was one area near a marina where my dad had caught one over 3 lbs in practice so thats where we went. It was more of the same with duckweed and those big giant pads. Again I let my partner run the trolling motor and we fished pretty slowly and thoroughly in the area but just weren't getting any bites at all. We had fished almost all of it when he got a blowup and missed it and then a little while later I caught my 5th keeper of the day on the frog. After I put 5 fish in the livewell it meant I could no longer make a cast so I sat down and took a little break for the last half hour of the day. I can't say I've ever done that in a tournament before! Unfortuantely for him he was unable to catch anything else in that time and it was time to head back to the weigh in.
When we got to the weigh in I chose the biggest 4 of my 5 fish in the livewell and brought them to the weigh in stage. When I pulled the big one out I was pleseantly surprised to see that it was even bigger than I thought it was when I caught it. That's always a bonus because they usually seem to shrink on you. My 4 fish for day 1 ended up weighing 11.15 lbs which put me in 7th place after everyone had weighed in. That was solidly inside the top 12 cut but there were a lot of good weights and almost anyone within the top 50 had a legitimate chance to move up on the 2nd day. There is also a team competition and our 4 man West Central Bassmasters team held the lead for the day with about 37 lbs.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
KLBL - Long Lake
Thursday night marked the end of another year of the Kandi Lakes Bass League. The final Thursday was originally going to be a championship but since we only had 8 boats fish the standings we decided to invite everyone to fish this final night. The team of the year, which was determined last week was allowed to choose the lake they wanted to fish, and the pick was Long. They had done well out there all year and most of the other teams really struggled so it was a good choice for them at the time. Unfortunately for them it didn't work out so well but a couple other teams did very well. My dad and I were one of those teams. We ended up winning the night with 3 fish weighing 16.34 lbs. That's right 16.34 lbs for 3 fish!!! That is a huge weight. There have been higher weights in the past, but as far as I know that was the 3rd heaviest weight ever weighed in league. 2nd place also had a huge bag with 3 fish weighing in at 14.50 lbs. To anchor our bag my dad caught the biggest fish of the year on Thursday nights with a bass weighing in at 6.44 lbs. I believe this is in the top 5 biggest fish ever weighed on a league night, and league has been run for 20 years if not more.
It was certainly an amazing night for us but it sure didn't start that way. We went the first 2 hours of the night without even a bite. I've talked about Long Lake on this blog in the past and we did the same things we usually do which is flipping reeds and fishing on the rocks. For the first 2 hours none of that panned out. I guess in the last hour we were in the right place at the right time and the fish just turned on. We ended up catching 7 fish in that hour by flipping tubes and jigs into the reeds. The first fish was way back inside and ended up weighing about 4 lbs. The next fish i caught weighed 5.68 lbs and was also way up inside the reeds. We then filled out our limit with a small fish as well as catching several more smaller fish. That 6.44 my dad caught came on the very last cast of the night when it was almost pitch dark outside. After catching that fish I knew we had done good but I didn't know just how good. In my mind we had two 5 pounders and a 3 pounder but when they hit the scales our jaws just dropped along with everyone elses. Long has been fished pretty hard the last few years and no one really thought that kind of weight was possible out there but I guess it was. Hopefully we can do it again next year.
After a mediocre year of leauge it was really nice to go out on a high note like that. We won the night and had big fish for the night as well as big fish for the year and caught one of the heaviest weights ever and one of the biggest bass ever. Theres not much more you can do than that. Hopefully we can do something similar down here on the Mississippi River during the state tournament.
Like I said in the previous post we don't have good internet access down here. I had planned on updating during practice and the tournament but that won't be possible. I will write up a full report of the tournament when I get back.
It was certainly an amazing night for us but it sure didn't start that way. We went the first 2 hours of the night without even a bite. I've talked about Long Lake on this blog in the past and we did the same things we usually do which is flipping reeds and fishing on the rocks. For the first 2 hours none of that panned out. I guess in the last hour we were in the right place at the right time and the fish just turned on. We ended up catching 7 fish in that hour by flipping tubes and jigs into the reeds. The first fish was way back inside and ended up weighing about 4 lbs. The next fish i caught weighed 5.68 lbs and was also way up inside the reeds. We then filled out our limit with a small fish as well as catching several more smaller fish. That 6.44 my dad caught came on the very last cast of the night when it was almost pitch dark outside. After catching that fish I knew we had done good but I didn't know just how good. In my mind we had two 5 pounders and a 3 pounder but when they hit the scales our jaws just dropped along with everyone elses. Long has been fished pretty hard the last few years and no one really thought that kind of weight was possible out there but I guess it was. Hopefully we can do it again next year.
After a mediocre year of leauge it was really nice to go out on a high note like that. We won the night and had big fish for the night as well as big fish for the year and caught one of the heaviest weights ever and one of the biggest bass ever. Theres not much more you can do than that. Hopefully we can do something similar down here on the Mississippi River during the state tournament.
Like I said in the previous post we don't have good internet access down here. I had planned on updating during practice and the tournament but that won't be possible. I will write up a full report of the tournament when I get back.
KLBL - Foot Lake
Sorry for the delay in posting the last couple nights of league but I've been down in Wabasha for the MN Federation State Tournament and we don't have good internet access down here.
Foot Lake right outside of Willmar is a brand new lake for the bass league. Even though it is close no one in our area really fishes it at all. When my dad and I took over the bass league I decided to put it in the mix for the last Wednesday night of the year. I knew there were bass in there but all summer long we heard a lot of grumbling about the choice. Nobody thought there was a catchable population of bass. While the fishing wasn’t great, I think many people were surprised at the fish brought in. I know I sure was. 1st place weighed in about 9.3 lbs, 2nd had about 8.3 lbs and 3rd had about 5.7 lbs. The big bass for the night was 3.44 lbs. Out of the 13 boats there were quite a few zeros but the majority of the boats at least caught 1 fish. Most people thought that everyone would zero for the night. Unfortunately my dad and I were one of the boats who caught no fish. We just were not able to figure anything out on the night. I have only fished the lake a couple times and we hit all the spots I’ve caught fish before but nothing worked for us. I know we were in the right areas though because we saw people catching fish.
This was the last Wednesday night of bass league for 2008. Catching no fish is not the ideal way to end the season but that’s how it goes sometimes. There is still one more night though on Thursday and I know it was good so check the next post to see the results of the final Thursday night league of 2008.
Foot Lake right outside of Willmar is a brand new lake for the bass league. Even though it is close no one in our area really fishes it at all. When my dad and I took over the bass league I decided to put it in the mix for the last Wednesday night of the year. I knew there were bass in there but all summer long we heard a lot of grumbling about the choice. Nobody thought there was a catchable population of bass. While the fishing wasn’t great, I think many people were surprised at the fish brought in. I know I sure was. 1st place weighed in about 9.3 lbs, 2nd had about 8.3 lbs and 3rd had about 5.7 lbs. The big bass for the night was 3.44 lbs. Out of the 13 boats there were quite a few zeros but the majority of the boats at least caught 1 fish. Most people thought that everyone would zero for the night. Unfortunately my dad and I were one of the boats who caught no fish. We just were not able to figure anything out on the night. I have only fished the lake a couple times and we hit all the spots I’ve caught fish before but nothing worked for us. I know we were in the right areas though because we saw people catching fish.
This was the last Wednesday night of bass league for 2008. Catching no fish is not the ideal way to end the season but that’s how it goes sometimes. There is still one more night though on Thursday and I know it was good so check the next post to see the results of the final Thursday night league of 2008.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Quick Update
Just had a few items to discuss since the last post.
After the last Big Bass Bonanza tournament on the Horseshoe Chain I posted that we finished in 19th place and probably dropped out of the top 10 in the standings. Those were unofficial. The official results are now in and we did indeed take 19th place but instead of dropping in the standings we actually moved up. Instead of being in 9th place we are now tied for 7th place with 1 event to go.
The final event on the BBB trail is on Mille Lacs. My dad and I just got back from fishing 2 days up there and while the fishing wasn't spectacular it was solid. We have our plan for now and hopefully we will be able to stay in the top 10. The tournament is still 2 weeks away though so a lot can change. We won't be able to get anymore practice in though because we will be heading down to Wabasha for the Minnesota State Bass Federation tournament on the Mississippi River all next week.
The highlight of the 2 days on Mille Lacs was actually an unexpected fish. Since the tournament only allows one smallmouth over 21 inches to be weighed in we fished exclusively for largemouths. I did run into one smallie though and it was the biggest smallie of my life. I caught it flipping a tube in the reeds. It went 20 3/4 inches. We put it on the scale and it bounced around between 5.98 - 6.00 lbs so I'm going to call it 6 lbs even. Man what a fish! I've never seen a smallmouth bass like that and it beat my previous best by over a pound.
After the last Big Bass Bonanza tournament on the Horseshoe Chain I posted that we finished in 19th place and probably dropped out of the top 10 in the standings. Those were unofficial. The official results are now in and we did indeed take 19th place but instead of dropping in the standings we actually moved up. Instead of being in 9th place we are now tied for 7th place with 1 event to go.
The final event on the BBB trail is on Mille Lacs. My dad and I just got back from fishing 2 days up there and while the fishing wasn't spectacular it was solid. We have our plan for now and hopefully we will be able to stay in the top 10. The tournament is still 2 weeks away though so a lot can change. We won't be able to get anymore practice in though because we will be heading down to Wabasha for the Minnesota State Bass Federation tournament on the Mississippi River all next week.
The highlight of the 2 days on Mille Lacs was actually an unexpected fish. Since the tournament only allows one smallmouth over 21 inches to be weighed in we fished exclusively for largemouths. I did run into one smallie though and it was the biggest smallie of my life. I caught it flipping a tube in the reeds. It went 20 3/4 inches. We put it on the scale and it bounced around between 5.98 - 6.00 lbs so I'm going to call it 6 lbs even. Man what a fish! I've never seen a smallmouth bass like that and it beat my previous best by over a pound.
Friday, August 22, 2008
KLBL - Lake Calhoun
Well last night was the final night in determining the team of the year on Thursday nights. We have one more night to fish but that is the championship and no points are awarded. Going into the night my dad and I had a 1 point lead over 2nd place, however 2nd place had the tiebreaker so all they needed to do was finish 1 spot better than us to win team of the year. All we needed to do was beat them for the night to secure 1st place for the season. We knew what we needed to do but unfortunately we couldn't get it done. I think we made a bad decision about where to start but in the end it wouldn't have mattered. They smoked em by catching 3 fish weighing over 12 lbs to take first for the night and for the year. 2nd had 11.66 lbs and 3rd had almost 10 lbs so the fish were biting good for some people. My dad and I weighed in 8.23 lbs to take 4th place for the night and also 2nd place in the team of the year standings.
Our initial plan was to start in a matted up weedbed but at the last second we decided to hit docks first. We had our limit in 15 minutes with 1 fish close to 3 lbs. Then we moved to another stretch of docks and caught another fish in the 2 1/2 lb range. After that we moved near where we should have started and watched the guy sitting there catch bass after bass. I got pretty close and caught another solid 2 1/2 lb fish under a tree. That was it for our limit. We did eventually get in the good area but he had cleaned it out already and all that was left were small fish. He was the guy who finished third for the night so even if we had started there in the first place we would have been able to catch about 10 lbs which wouldn't have been enough to hold on to team of the year anyways.
It is really disappointing to finish 2nd on the year but I guess overall it was still pretty solid. After winning last year I really wanted to repeat though. Actually I want to win it every year. That's just my competitive nature when it comes to fishing. I don't feel like we fished very well on the year anyway so maybe we didn't deserve it. We made too many bad decisions and lost too many key fish. Salvaging a 2nd place for the year was probably the best we could have hoped for.
Our initial plan was to start in a matted up weedbed but at the last second we decided to hit docks first. We had our limit in 15 minutes with 1 fish close to 3 lbs. Then we moved to another stretch of docks and caught another fish in the 2 1/2 lb range. After that we moved near where we should have started and watched the guy sitting there catch bass after bass. I got pretty close and caught another solid 2 1/2 lb fish under a tree. That was it for our limit. We did eventually get in the good area but he had cleaned it out already and all that was left were small fish. He was the guy who finished third for the night so even if we had started there in the first place we would have been able to catch about 10 lbs which wouldn't have been enough to hold on to team of the year anyways.
It is really disappointing to finish 2nd on the year but I guess overall it was still pretty solid. After winning last year I really wanted to repeat though. Actually I want to win it every year. That's just my competitive nature when it comes to fishing. I don't feel like we fished very well on the year anyway so maybe we didn't deserve it. We made too many bad decisions and lost too many key fish. Salvaging a 2nd place for the year was probably the best we could have hoped for.
KLBL - Lake Johanna
There really isn't a whole lot to say about Wednesday nights league on Lake Johanna. My dad and I caught 3 fish in the first half hour and that was it for our night. I ended up catching all 3 on a black and blue jig with a black and blue Lake Fork Pig Claw trailer. Our fish came in one small area of reeds and thats all we fished all night but we just didn't get any other bites. Our fish weighed in at 7.87 lbs which was good for 5th place out of 11 teams. The winning weight was 9.10 lbs which is very small for Johanna. The big bass for the night was 3.70 lbs which is also very small for this lake. They just weren't biting good for anyone that night.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Big Bass Bonanza - Horseshoe Chain of Lakes
Sunday marked the 4th out of 5 tournaments on the Big Bass Bonanza schedule. Even though we haven't had what I would consider a good year we were still sitting in 9th place in the overall standings. We have only been in the money once but at least we have avoided major disasters. We have been in the top half of the field every time. Horseshoe was another example of this. We ended up in 19th place out of 49 teams. Our 8 fish weighed in at 13.82 lbs. The winning weight was almost 24 lbs for 8 fish. There were probably close to 20 teams that failed to weigh in a full 8 fish limit. Thats how tough the fishing was out there. After our horrible practice my dad and I were just looking to catch 8 fish and we managed to do that but it wasn't easy.
We started in one of the lakes on the chain that had a lot more vegetation than most of the lakes. There was a bunch of milfoil lining the lake and in places it was matted up pretty thick. It was a grind from the start. We didn't have a bite for over a half hour but I finally put a solid 2 pounder in the boat on a Spro Bronze Eye frog. After fishing another half hour I caught our biggest fish of the day on a tube next to some lily pads. That fish went almost 3 lbs. After that we didn't have any more bites so we ran to our next area.
The next spot we fished was kind of a bay formed by a few islands. There were docks, rocks, pads and a few logs in the water. When we pulled up another boat had already fished many of the docks we were hoping to get on. We started on the end dock and worked towards them. I caught 2 keepers off of the 3 docks we got to fish. Then we turned around and fished some nearby docks that didn't produce at all during practice but I managed to catch a 12 inch smallmouth from under a tree. Now we had 5 keepers in the boat at it was only 10 am. The day was going a lot better than expected even though most of our fish were small. Unfortunately it slowed way down for the rest of the day.
Our next stops were several slop areas that we really liked but they had already been fished by other boats. We went in there anyway but struck out on both. After that we decided to go back to our starting spot and my dad picked up a keeper on a white swim jig but that was the only fish we caught there so we headed back to our 2nd spot again. This time I managed 2 more keepers. One on a tube in some shoreline weeds and one on a jig flipped in the pads. We had managed to catch a limit. Even though it was pretty small we felt pretty good since it was only noon and we had 3 more hours to fish.
The afternoon was not kind to us. We ran around hitting different places we got bit on in practice and unfortunately were not able to fish some spots because of other boats but nothing worked. Finally with about 45 minutes to go I caught a 13 incher on a frog so we were able to cull out that tiny smallie. So not only did we catch a limit we even were able to cull once!
I'm not sure what place we are in the standings after this event. I know we have dropped out of the top 10 but hopefully not too far out. The last event is on Mille Lacs and we have very little experience there but I hope we can get on something good to at least bump ourselves back up into the top 10 at the end of the year.
We started in one of the lakes on the chain that had a lot more vegetation than most of the lakes. There was a bunch of milfoil lining the lake and in places it was matted up pretty thick. It was a grind from the start. We didn't have a bite for over a half hour but I finally put a solid 2 pounder in the boat on a Spro Bronze Eye frog. After fishing another half hour I caught our biggest fish of the day on a tube next to some lily pads. That fish went almost 3 lbs. After that we didn't have any more bites so we ran to our next area.
The next spot we fished was kind of a bay formed by a few islands. There were docks, rocks, pads and a few logs in the water. When we pulled up another boat had already fished many of the docks we were hoping to get on. We started on the end dock and worked towards them. I caught 2 keepers off of the 3 docks we got to fish. Then we turned around and fished some nearby docks that didn't produce at all during practice but I managed to catch a 12 inch smallmouth from under a tree. Now we had 5 keepers in the boat at it was only 10 am. The day was going a lot better than expected even though most of our fish were small. Unfortunately it slowed way down for the rest of the day.
Our next stops were several slop areas that we really liked but they had already been fished by other boats. We went in there anyway but struck out on both. After that we decided to go back to our starting spot and my dad picked up a keeper on a white swim jig but that was the only fish we caught there so we headed back to our 2nd spot again. This time I managed 2 more keepers. One on a tube in some shoreline weeds and one on a jig flipped in the pads. We had managed to catch a limit. Even though it was pretty small we felt pretty good since it was only noon and we had 3 more hours to fish.
The afternoon was not kind to us. We ran around hitting different places we got bit on in practice and unfortunately were not able to fish some spots because of other boats but nothing worked. Finally with about 45 minutes to go I caught a 13 incher on a frog so we were able to cull out that tiny smallie. So not only did we catch a limit we even were able to cull once!
I'm not sure what place we are in the standings after this event. I know we have dropped out of the top 10 but hopefully not too far out. The last event is on Mille Lacs and we have very little experience there but I hope we can get on something good to at least bump ourselves back up into the top 10 at the end of the year.
Friday, August 15, 2008
KLBL - Diamond Lake
With 2 nights left in the Standings League time was running out for my dad and I to catch up to the leaders. Going into the night we were 4 points behind first place so we really needed to kick it up a notch the last 2 nights of the season. Fortunately we were able to pull out a first place with 11.45 lbs. 2nd place had 8.43 lbs. We also had the big bass of the night at 3.85 lbs. With our first place finish and a little stumble from the previous standings leaders my dad and I were able to retake first in the standings with one night to go. We now have 69 points and 2nd place has 68 points. It's a lot tighter than I would like but at least we have the lead and know what we need to do on Calhoun next week.
We started our night on our usual Diamond Lake starting area which is a stretch of docks that has produced many big fish for us over the years. We ended up with a limit within 15 minutes. 1 of the fish was very small but the other 2 were both over 3 1/2 lbs so we were off to a great start. All of the dock fish came on a Strike King Bleeding Bait tube. After fishing a few more docks we went to the reeds. There were a couple other boats who had just fished the area we like but we have enough confidence in it that we went in there anyway and started catching fish. The first few were just little ones that didn't help us. Another boat went right along the edge we wanted to get to next so we just followed them even though they had just fished it. There were weeds all matted up next to the reeds and I saw a little pocket so I flipped my tube in there and caught another fish in that 3 1/2 lb class right in view of the other boat. They knew they had messed up that one. At that point we were feeling good with 3 quality fish in the boat. We ran around the rest of the night fishing more docks and a few more reed areas. I did upgrade once more off of a dock but it turned out we didn't need that fish after all. Our winning weight was over 3 lbs ahead of 2nd place.
It finally feels like we are getting on a little bit of a roll in league with 3 wins and a 2nd in the last 4 nights. Too bad the season is almost over. Hopefully we didn't wait too long to get hot and we can hang on to first place for the season next week. It's going to be really close I think.
We started our night on our usual Diamond Lake starting area which is a stretch of docks that has produced many big fish for us over the years. We ended up with a limit within 15 minutes. 1 of the fish was very small but the other 2 were both over 3 1/2 lbs so we were off to a great start. All of the dock fish came on a Strike King Bleeding Bait tube. After fishing a few more docks we went to the reeds. There were a couple other boats who had just fished the area we like but we have enough confidence in it that we went in there anyway and started catching fish. The first few were just little ones that didn't help us. Another boat went right along the edge we wanted to get to next so we just followed them even though they had just fished it. There were weeds all matted up next to the reeds and I saw a little pocket so I flipped my tube in there and caught another fish in that 3 1/2 lb class right in view of the other boat. They knew they had messed up that one. At that point we were feeling good with 3 quality fish in the boat. We ran around the rest of the night fishing more docks and a few more reed areas. I did upgrade once more off of a dock but it turned out we didn't need that fish after all. Our winning weight was over 3 lbs ahead of 2nd place.
It finally feels like we are getting on a little bit of a roll in league with 3 wins and a 2nd in the last 4 nights. Too bad the season is almost over. Hopefully we didn't wait too long to get hot and we can hang on to first place for the season next week. It's going to be really close I think.
KLBL - Lake Florida
We had 15 boats again on Wednesday night for another good turnout even though the weather to start with was kind of threatening. The weights were pretty typical for Florida although the top several bags were a little above average. My dad and I ended up in 1st place with 9.69 lbs, 2nd was 9.20 lbs, 3rd was about 8.50 lbs and 4th had 8.25 lbs. The big fish for the night was 4.29 lbs.
We started our night in a spot I don't remember ever starting on before. Generally we try to fish a bunch of docks early and try to get a big one before all the docks get beat up. The docks just really haven't been great the past few years though so we started out deep on one of the humps. It's a good thing we did too because right when we pulled up to our spot another boat tried to get right on it too but since we were there they were forced to leave. We threw watermelon Picasso jigs with Lake Fork Pig Claw trailers and had a limit weighing close to 9 lbs within 20 minutes. We kept fishing for awhile longer but instead of catching more 3 lb fish they had shrunk a little so we left to let it rest. As soon as we left another boat pulled up on it and then another one did the same. Those 2 boats sat on the general area the rest of the night. At this point we were kind of kicking ourselves for leaving but what can you do. We then fished about 10 docks with no luck and then tried a few more deep spots. They were unproductive until we got to the other hump on the lake. We found another little school in a clump of coontail and upgraded with a 3.3 lb bass as well as catching several other 3 lb fish that just didn't quite help us. We ended up catching probably 20 bass between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 lbs on the night but never were able to find a kicker. Luckily we didn't need it and ended up winning by a decent margin.
We started our night in a spot I don't remember ever starting on before. Generally we try to fish a bunch of docks early and try to get a big one before all the docks get beat up. The docks just really haven't been great the past few years though so we started out deep on one of the humps. It's a good thing we did too because right when we pulled up to our spot another boat tried to get right on it too but since we were there they were forced to leave. We threw watermelon Picasso jigs with Lake Fork Pig Claw trailers and had a limit weighing close to 9 lbs within 20 minutes. We kept fishing for awhile longer but instead of catching more 3 lb fish they had shrunk a little so we left to let it rest. As soon as we left another boat pulled up on it and then another one did the same. Those 2 boats sat on the general area the rest of the night. At this point we were kind of kicking ourselves for leaving but what can you do. We then fished about 10 docks with no luck and then tried a few more deep spots. They were unproductive until we got to the other hump on the lake. We found another little school in a clump of coontail and upgraded with a 3.3 lb bass as well as catching several other 3 lb fish that just didn't quite help us. We ended up catching probably 20 bass between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 lbs on the night but never were able to find a kicker. Luckily we didn't need it and ended up winning by a decent margin.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
West Central Bassmasters Summer Classic - Green Lake
After overnight rain showers the weather for tournament day was exactly what we were looking for. It was mostly sunny with just light winds which were the conditions we felt our fish would bite best under. The we on this day was not my dad and I like the rest of our tournaments. My dad was out of town for the weekend so I called on my old fishing buddy Lafe. We used to fish a lot together but we hadn't fished a tournament together for several years. It was actually a lot of fun being back in the boat with him on tournament day.
We started off fishing a cabbage bed in about 5-6 feet of water. On tuesday the week before I found a bunch of smallies using those weeds but tournament day they had all disappeared. Our next stop was a shallow rocky flat and that didn't produce at all either. By this time it was about 8:00 am and we had no fish but neither of us was too concerned since our primary pattern didn't really start working until after 8:00.
Our next stop was much more productive and we put 4 smallies in the boat in about half an hour throwing spinnerbaits on the edge of a flat in about 10-12 feet of water. This is actually what we did pretty much the rest of the day. We just ran around the lake hitting different flats in that same depth of water with the spinnerbait. We had our 5 fish limit pretty quickly afterwards and just continued to upgrade little by little throughout the day. We had probably close to 15 lbs when something crazy happened that I don't recall having happened before to me. I saw a giant smallie following my spinnerbait all the way to the boat. Once it got close it kind of started to slide back deeper but instead of just letting it go I stuck my rod in the water and did the figure eight move that musky fishermen use for following fish. That smallie actually came back up and got my spinnerbait with about a foot of line off the tip of the rod. I set the hook and the fish flew out of the water and came off. It was over before it even started. Lafe and I both got a real good look at it and both agree it was an easy 4 pounder. That one really hurt. You just don't get many chances at fish in that class on Green Lake anymore. On the other hand I probably should never have hooked it in the first place. Those fish just don't hit that close to the boat usually. After that we knew at least a few big fish were in our areas so we just kept chucking the spinnerbait. I'd say we spent at least 90% of the day doing that.
After noon the spinnerbait bite really seemed to be tailing off. That is a little strange because mid day is usually best for that bite but for whatever reason it just wasn't working for us. We kept at it a little too long probably but with 45 minutes left in the day we finally decided we had to change it up. We pulled out the drop shot rigs and headed to a hump that tops off about 20 feet deep. We fished around a little bit and got to the south side of it in 25 feet and started seeing fish all over on the graph. Almost immediately when we got into that school Lafe set the hook on what turned out to be our biggest fish of the day. It weighed in at 3.45 lbs. After sorting and culling our fish we got back on the school but time was running out. I was still seeing fish all over the screen but they just wouldn't bite and it was time to head in.
Our 5 smallies ended up weighing in at 15.40 lbs. Quite a bit less than we were expecting based on practice but still a nice weight. It ended up being good enough for 5th place out of the 23 teams. 5th was also the last spot to get a check so at least we made our money back. The winners had a very nice bag with their 5 fish going 17.82 lbs. They also had big fish for the day at 4.17 lbs.
We started off fishing a cabbage bed in about 5-6 feet of water. On tuesday the week before I found a bunch of smallies using those weeds but tournament day they had all disappeared. Our next stop was a shallow rocky flat and that didn't produce at all either. By this time it was about 8:00 am and we had no fish but neither of us was too concerned since our primary pattern didn't really start working until after 8:00.
Our next stop was much more productive and we put 4 smallies in the boat in about half an hour throwing spinnerbaits on the edge of a flat in about 10-12 feet of water. This is actually what we did pretty much the rest of the day. We just ran around the lake hitting different flats in that same depth of water with the spinnerbait. We had our 5 fish limit pretty quickly afterwards and just continued to upgrade little by little throughout the day. We had probably close to 15 lbs when something crazy happened that I don't recall having happened before to me. I saw a giant smallie following my spinnerbait all the way to the boat. Once it got close it kind of started to slide back deeper but instead of just letting it go I stuck my rod in the water and did the figure eight move that musky fishermen use for following fish. That smallie actually came back up and got my spinnerbait with about a foot of line off the tip of the rod. I set the hook and the fish flew out of the water and came off. It was over before it even started. Lafe and I both got a real good look at it and both agree it was an easy 4 pounder. That one really hurt. You just don't get many chances at fish in that class on Green Lake anymore. On the other hand I probably should never have hooked it in the first place. Those fish just don't hit that close to the boat usually. After that we knew at least a few big fish were in our areas so we just kept chucking the spinnerbait. I'd say we spent at least 90% of the day doing that.
After noon the spinnerbait bite really seemed to be tailing off. That is a little strange because mid day is usually best for that bite but for whatever reason it just wasn't working for us. We kept at it a little too long probably but with 45 minutes left in the day we finally decided we had to change it up. We pulled out the drop shot rigs and headed to a hump that tops off about 20 feet deep. We fished around a little bit and got to the south side of it in 25 feet and started seeing fish all over on the graph. Almost immediately when we got into that school Lafe set the hook on what turned out to be our biggest fish of the day. It weighed in at 3.45 lbs. After sorting and culling our fish we got back on the school but time was running out. I was still seeing fish all over the screen but they just wouldn't bite and it was time to head in.
Our 5 smallies ended up weighing in at 15.40 lbs. Quite a bit less than we were expecting based on practice but still a nice weight. It ended up being good enough for 5th place out of the 23 teams. 5th was also the last spot to get a check so at least we made our money back. The winners had a very nice bag with their 5 fish going 17.82 lbs. They also had big fish for the day at 4.17 lbs.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
KLBL - Eagle Lake
We only had 7 of the 8 teams fishing tonight but on Eagle Lake the fewer boats the better since everyone fishes the same way out there. Everyone knows all the same stretches of docks too so it is interesting fishing. Even with so few boats though the weights were not very good at all. 1st place was 9.30 lbs and 2nd place was my dad and I with 9.29 lbs. 1/100th difference!!!. That hundredth ended up costing us 2 points and is going to make it very difficult to regain the team of the year lead with only 2 night remaining. 1st place team of the year now has 63 points and my dad and I have 59 points. It's not impossible to come back but we will probably need to win the next 2 nights or have the first place team stumble badly which is very unlikely the way they have been fishing. Otherwise there just aren't enough total points per night to make up much ground.
As is always the case on Eagle theres no secret about what we did to catch our fish. We skipped our Strike King Bleeding Bait tubes up under docks and trees. The key is to just keep working hard and knowing that you can still get bit even if 2 other boats have fished the docks before you have. The night started off pretty bad for us once again and we didn't have a fish in the boat until our 3rd stop. That fish was about a 3 pounder though so it was a good start. Then we tried to pull into the most popular spot on the lake but got cut off so we turned back around and went the other direction. It turned out to be good for us though since we caught our biggest fish of the night on one of those docks. Then we went up and fished near where last weeks winners fished and I caught another one about 3 lbs off a dock that had just been fished by another team. That was about it for our fish catches. We had a few other small ones but we just didn't catch very many fish at all. One funny part of the night was when we went back to the most popular area on the lake there were 5 of the 7 teams all on that one stretch. You'd think we could figure something else out but I guess not!
As is always the case on Eagle theres no secret about what we did to catch our fish. We skipped our Strike King Bleeding Bait tubes up under docks and trees. The key is to just keep working hard and knowing that you can still get bit even if 2 other boats have fished the docks before you have. The night started off pretty bad for us once again and we didn't have a fish in the boat until our 3rd stop. That fish was about a 3 pounder though so it was a good start. Then we tried to pull into the most popular spot on the lake but got cut off so we turned back around and went the other direction. It turned out to be good for us though since we caught our biggest fish of the night on one of those docks. Then we went up and fished near where last weeks winners fished and I caught another one about 3 lbs off a dock that had just been fished by another team. That was about it for our fish catches. We had a few other small ones but we just didn't catch very many fish at all. One funny part of the night was when we went back to the most popular area on the lake there were 5 of the 7 teams all on that one stretch. You'd think we could figure something else out but I guess not!
KLBL - Nest Lake
We had another good turnout on Wednesday night with 15 boats showing up. The bite was off a little bit for Nest but there were still a few good bags brought in. 1st place was my dad and I with 10.21 lbs, 2nd was 9.66 lbs, 3rd had 9.34 lbs, and 4th was 8.61 lbs. The big bass for the night was a 4.58 lb largemouth.
Even though we ended up winning the night started off pretty poorly for us. The first problem was before we even started fishing. A guy we know who usually doesn't fish league showed up and I knew he would go to the spot we wanted to start on if he was ahead of us. Sure enough he drew boat 10 and we pulled number 13. He went straight to that spot so we had to change up and go to one of our deep largemouth holes. When we pulled up on our waypoint the fish were biting like crazy but the next problem was keeping them on the hook. In the first 15 minutes we probably had 8 bites but could only put 2 of them in the boat. I don't know what was wrong. You would set the hook and have the fish on for a split second and then they'd be gone. After that bite died we headed to a rocky area near one of the islands. Almost immediately I hooked a big smallmouth but it jumped and my hand slipped on the reel and it was gone too. Not the start we were looking for. After that we moved to a stretch of docks and rocks and finally settled down and started catching fish. We threw green pumpkin Strike King KVD tubes around the docks and rocks. On that spot we ended up catching 4 nice smallies with 2 of them being over 3 1/2 lbs to get us to our 10 lb weight. After that we bounced around hitting more smallmouth areas and caught a few more. We might have culled 1 more time to gain an ounce or so.
This was our first win on Wednesday nights so far this season and it was a long time coming. The fishing has been so tough for us this year I didn't know if we would end up with a win or not. It feels good to finally get that win and hopefully we can get some momentum going for the final part of the season.
Even though we ended up winning the night started off pretty poorly for us. The first problem was before we even started fishing. A guy we know who usually doesn't fish league showed up and I knew he would go to the spot we wanted to start on if he was ahead of us. Sure enough he drew boat 10 and we pulled number 13. He went straight to that spot so we had to change up and go to one of our deep largemouth holes. When we pulled up on our waypoint the fish were biting like crazy but the next problem was keeping them on the hook. In the first 15 minutes we probably had 8 bites but could only put 2 of them in the boat. I don't know what was wrong. You would set the hook and have the fish on for a split second and then they'd be gone. After that bite died we headed to a rocky area near one of the islands. Almost immediately I hooked a big smallmouth but it jumped and my hand slipped on the reel and it was gone too. Not the start we were looking for. After that we moved to a stretch of docks and rocks and finally settled down and started catching fish. We threw green pumpkin Strike King KVD tubes around the docks and rocks. On that spot we ended up catching 4 nice smallies with 2 of them being over 3 1/2 lbs to get us to our 10 lb weight. After that we bounced around hitting more smallmouth areas and caught a few more. We might have culled 1 more time to gain an ounce or so.
This was our first win on Wednesday nights so far this season and it was a long time coming. The fishing has been so tough for us this year I didn't know if we would end up with a win or not. It feels good to finally get that win and hopefully we can get some momentum going for the final part of the season.
Friday, August 1, 2008
KLBL - Soloman Lake
Only 7 of the 8 teams fished last night but even with that few boats several of the spots got a lot of pressure. A few boats got away from the crowds though and it seemed to pay off for them. 1st place had 12.70 lbs for their 3 and 2nd had 11.09 lbs. My dad and I finished 5th with 6.43 lbs.
Once again we just couldn't get anything good going. It's been a really tough summer for us so far and I'm not sure what to do to fix it. Last night we never caught a fish for almost 2 hours. We mostly flipped reeds and that just wasn't working for us. We finally switched to fishing a rocky point and thats where we caught all 3 of our keepers. My dad got one on a Strike King spinnerbait and I caught 2 on a Strike King Craw Tube. Those were the only 3 fish we caught.
Once again we just couldn't get anything good going. It's been a really tough summer for us so far and I'm not sure what to do to fix it. Last night we never caught a fish for almost 2 hours. We mostly flipped reeds and that just wasn't working for us. We finally switched to fishing a rocky point and thats where we caught all 3 of our keepers. My dad got one on a Strike King spinnerbait and I caught 2 on a Strike King Craw Tube. Those were the only 3 fish we caught.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
KLBL - Eagle Lake
The turnout was back up a little bit this Wednesday compared to last. We had 15 teams show up to fish Eagle Lake just north of Willmar. The lake has a lot of fish in the 3-5 lb range so it's pretty popular. The only problem is that there is pretty much 1 way to catch them and thats docks and trees. When you get 15 boats on a small lake all doing the same thing it gets beat up really quick but there are still fish to be caught. There was 1 monster bag but overall the weights were down quite a bit from the past. Usually at least half the field or more will weigh 9+ lbs for their 3, but last night only 3 teams topped that mark. 1st place was an astounding 13.57 lbs, 2nd was 9.90 lbs, and 3rd was my dad and I with 9.62 lbs. The big fish for the night was 4.87 lbs.
On this lake boat draw can be a pretty big deal but we unfortunately had a pretty bad number to start. I knew being that far back there was no way we could get to the docks I wanted to start on. Sure enough the first 5 or 6 boats all headed to that stretch so we went to our 2nd favorite stretch of docks. It was super shallow and weedy and just didn't look great and getting through all the weeds was really tough but I did manage to get our best fish of the night that was close to 4 lbs. After that we went across the lake to another stretch of docks that hadn't been hit yet and filled out our limit with small fish. At that point every dock in the lake had been fished so it was time to just buckle down and fish behind people. The fishing wasn't great but we managed to upgrade every once in awhile. We probably ended up catching about 8 fish for the night. All of our bites came on Strike King Bleeding Bait tubes skipped under the docks and trees.
On this lake boat draw can be a pretty big deal but we unfortunately had a pretty bad number to start. I knew being that far back there was no way we could get to the docks I wanted to start on. Sure enough the first 5 or 6 boats all headed to that stretch so we went to our 2nd favorite stretch of docks. It was super shallow and weedy and just didn't look great and getting through all the weeds was really tough but I did manage to get our best fish of the night that was close to 4 lbs. After that we went across the lake to another stretch of docks that hadn't been hit yet and filled out our limit with small fish. At that point every dock in the lake had been fished so it was time to just buckle down and fish behind people. The fishing wasn't great but we managed to upgrade every once in awhile. We probably ended up catching about 8 fish for the night. All of our bites came on Strike King Bleeding Bait tubes skipped under the docks and trees.
Friday, July 25, 2008
KLBL - Long Lake
Thursday night was an interesting night on Long. It was extremely tough fishing which is no surprise to anyone who has fished Long in the summer before. Spring and fall can be dynamite fishing and it can be good in the summer too, but most of the time summer turns Long into the toughest lake around. Of the 8 teams that compete on Thursday nights only 1 ended up with a 3 fish limit. 1 other team had 2 fish. 3 boats had 1 fish each and 3 boats zeroed. 1st place had about 9.5 lbs and 2nd had about 7 lbs. My dad and I were thankfully one of the boats with 1 fish that weighed in at 4 lbs even. With 3 boats zeroing that 1 fish gave us just enough points to stay in the lead for the year. Unfortunately it is no longer an outright lead but we are tied for 1st with 46 points. 3rd place is a little ways back with 39 points. The big fish for the night was a football that weighed 4.70 lbs but was only 17 inches long.
As far as the fishing for us there really isn't that much to say. I never had a bite all night long. My dad caught our 1 fish and possibly had 1 other bite. We flipped reeds most of the night with a few stops on the rocky points. The 1 fish we did catch was on a watermelon Strike King flippin tube in the reeds.
As far as the fishing for us there really isn't that much to say. I never had a bite all night long. My dad caught our 1 fish and possibly had 1 other bite. We flipped reeds most of the night with a few stops on the rocky points. The 1 fish we did catch was on a watermelon Strike King flippin tube in the reeds.
KLBL - Lake Koronis
We had our lowest turnout on a Wednesday night with 10 teams, which isn't too surprising because many people just don't like fishing Koronis. It's a little farther than most of our league lakes so people just don't have the experience on it that they do on other lakes. The fishing wasn't great either so maybe they were all right to stay away. There was one monster bag though. 1st place had almost 12 lbs for their 3 fish including the big bass for the night and year at 5.66 lbs. 2nd place had 8.52 lbs and 3rd had 8.52 lbs as well. The tiebreaker is the biggest fish in the bag. My dad and I finished 6th with about 7 1/2 lbs
We did well the previous week on Koronis finishing 2nd in the Thursday night league. We caught all of those fish on a deep weedline spot so obviously we started there. It didn't really pan out though. After fishing there for quite awhile we ended up leaving with only 1 decent fish and 1 12 incher in the box. We tried to hit our trees and docks but there were boats all over that stuff so we hit a shallow rock and weed point. I managed to catch a 2 lb smallmouth on a Strike King tube so at least we had a limit. After that we hit a few more deep weedline spots and shallow rocks but didn't do anything so we went back to our starting spot. Again it just wasn't going for whatever reason but I did finally manage to put one close to 3 lbs in the boat on that Strike King tube. After that we were done, we tried a few more spots but never caught another fish.
We did well the previous week on Koronis finishing 2nd in the Thursday night league. We caught all of those fish on a deep weedline spot so obviously we started there. It didn't really pan out though. After fishing there for quite awhile we ended up leaving with only 1 decent fish and 1 12 incher in the box. We tried to hit our trees and docks but there were boats all over that stuff so we hit a shallow rock and weed point. I managed to catch a 2 lb smallmouth on a Strike King tube so at least we had a limit. After that we hit a few more deep weedline spots and shallow rocks but didn't do anything so we went back to our starting spot. Again it just wasn't going for whatever reason but I did finally manage to put one close to 3 lbs in the boat on that Strike King tube. After that we were done, we tried a few more spots but never caught another fish.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
West Central Bassmasters Summer Classic - Norway Lake
19 teams
1st place had 21.98 lbs for their 6 fish.
We had 8.37 lbs for our 4 fish to finish 12th.
That's all I have to say about that.
1st place had 21.98 lbs for their 6 fish.
We had 8.37 lbs for our 4 fish to finish 12th.
That's all I have to say about that.
Friday, July 18, 2008
KLBL - Lake Koronis
Lake Koronis can be very hit or miss. Some league nights take a very big weight to win and sometimes it's a very small weight. Tonight was somewhere in between. All 8 teams weighed in limits and most teams had a 3 lb class fish but there were no big fish and very few smallmouths were weighed in. 1st place was a team that ran up to Rice Lake which is connected by a small river. They had 8.89 lbs. My dad and I finished 2nd with 8.78 lbs. The big bass for the night was 3.19 lbs.
We started off our night fishing several stretches of trees and docks that have produced for us in the past. We had a limit in the boat that probably weighed about 6 1/2 lbs after 30 minutes but as we continued that pattern we could tell it wasn't going to produced a big fish for us. After fishing shallow for about an hour we decided to head to a couple deep weedline areas we like. The first one produced no bites but the second spot was very good to us. I actually started pretty far down from our waypoint and we weren't getting any bites but as soon as I got to the waypoint I caught one of our good ones. The very next cast I caught another real solid fish in the 2 3/4 lb range. After that the bite seemed to die but I knew if i caught fish on back to back casts on a spot like that there had to be more in there. After about 10 minutes without a bite I moved the boat up slightly shallower and we started catching them really good. We ended up catching probably close to 10 bass between 2 1/2 lbs and 3 lbs in an area about the size of a bass boat. All those fish came on a watermelon Picasso jig with a Lake Fork Pig Claw trailer. After fishing that area for about 45 minutes we realized the chances of catching one much over 3 lbs there were slim so we set off to try to catch a big smallmouth. For the last hour of the night we ran around hitting different smallie spots that have worked for us in the past but we came up empty on all of them so we went in with our limit of largemouths.
Tonight marked our 3rd 2nd place finish after fishing 5 Thursday nights. I won't complain too much but we need to start turning those 2nds into wins. Maybe I'm just greedy but I really want to win every single one. On the positive side our 2nd place tonight really gave us a cushion on 2nd place in the standings. We have 41 points now and 2nd place has 36 points. Last week we had a 1 point lead and after tonight its up to 5 points. Next Thursday is on Long Lake so hopefully we can keep it up and even if we don't we have a little protection as long as we don't totally bomb out.
We started off our night fishing several stretches of trees and docks that have produced for us in the past. We had a limit in the boat that probably weighed about 6 1/2 lbs after 30 minutes but as we continued that pattern we could tell it wasn't going to produced a big fish for us. After fishing shallow for about an hour we decided to head to a couple deep weedline areas we like. The first one produced no bites but the second spot was very good to us. I actually started pretty far down from our waypoint and we weren't getting any bites but as soon as I got to the waypoint I caught one of our good ones. The very next cast I caught another real solid fish in the 2 3/4 lb range. After that the bite seemed to die but I knew if i caught fish on back to back casts on a spot like that there had to be more in there. After about 10 minutes without a bite I moved the boat up slightly shallower and we started catching them really good. We ended up catching probably close to 10 bass between 2 1/2 lbs and 3 lbs in an area about the size of a bass boat. All those fish came on a watermelon Picasso jig with a Lake Fork Pig Claw trailer. After fishing that area for about 45 minutes we realized the chances of catching one much over 3 lbs there were slim so we set off to try to catch a big smallmouth. For the last hour of the night we ran around hitting different smallie spots that have worked for us in the past but we came up empty on all of them so we went in with our limit of largemouths.
Tonight marked our 3rd 2nd place finish after fishing 5 Thursday nights. I won't complain too much but we need to start turning those 2nds into wins. Maybe I'm just greedy but I really want to win every single one. On the positive side our 2nd place tonight really gave us a cushion on 2nd place in the standings. We have 41 points now and 2nd place has 36 points. Last week we had a 1 point lead and after tonight its up to 5 points. Next Thursday is on Long Lake so hopefully we can keep it up and even if we don't we have a little protection as long as we don't totally bomb out.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
KLBL - Green Lake
We had 14 teams competing tonight on Green Lake. That is a little lower than we have been getting on Wednesday nights but for Green its to be expected. I think a lot of people are a little intimidated by Green. There is a lot of water to fish and it can be very difficult if you are unfamiliar with the lake. Even if you do know the lake it can be extremely difficult as tonights results show. There were a few good bags though. 1st place had 9.67 lbs, 2nd had 9.60 lbs, 3rd had 8.86 lbs and my dad and I took 4th with 7.94 lbs. Big bass was a nice 3.94 lb smallmouth.
We started out fishing our spinnerbaits on the flats like we usually do this time of year. I pulled up near one of our waypoints and after about 15 minutes we hadn't caught anything but that changed quickly and we had a limit in the boat after about 20 minutes of fishing. Two of them were decent but one was just a 13 incher. That spot cooled off so we hit some of our other flats and I caught another decent fish on the spinnerbait. We threw that spinnerbait for the first 1 1/2 hours of the night and ended up catching 4 fish on it. Thats not bad because it's not a huge numbers pattern but usually produces bigger fish. Unfortunately tonight there were no big ones. After that we decided to head out deep. I caught 3 smallies on a Lake Fork twitch worm rigged on a dropshot out in about 25 feet of water. Only one of them helped us though and it still wasn't even 3 lbs. We ended up catching 7 fish in the 3 hours which isn't great but isn't all that bad either. I just wish we had a few bigger ones. We will definitely need more time out there before our next tournament on Green in August.
We started out fishing our spinnerbaits on the flats like we usually do this time of year. I pulled up near one of our waypoints and after about 15 minutes we hadn't caught anything but that changed quickly and we had a limit in the boat after about 20 minutes of fishing. Two of them were decent but one was just a 13 incher. That spot cooled off so we hit some of our other flats and I caught another decent fish on the spinnerbait. We threw that spinnerbait for the first 1 1/2 hours of the night and ended up catching 4 fish on it. Thats not bad because it's not a huge numbers pattern but usually produces bigger fish. Unfortunately tonight there were no big ones. After that we decided to head out deep. I caught 3 smallies on a Lake Fork twitch worm rigged on a dropshot out in about 25 feet of water. Only one of them helped us though and it still wasn't even 3 lbs. We ended up catching 7 fish in the 3 hours which isn't great but isn't all that bad either. I just wish we had a few bigger ones. We will definitely need more time out there before our next tournament on Green in August.
Friday, July 11, 2008
KLBL - Norway Lake
Since the West Central Bassmasters Summer Classic is being held on Norway Lake in a little over a week I will not be going into great detail for last nights fishing. I've got to keep a few secrets, at least for a week or so anyways. All 8 teams fishing commented about how tough the fishing was last night. The weights were down and there just weren't very many fish caught. I guess all the weights weren't down since my dad and I ended up in 1st place with 10.90 lbs. We certainly did not catch very many fish though. We just ended up getting the right bites. 2nd place was all the way down at 7.07 lbs. I also had the big fish for the night at 4.81 lbs. Even though the fishing wasn't great it still feels good to get a win under our belts. Last year we came out of the gate so strong with 5 wins in the first 6 weeks. This year we were starting to wonder if we could even win anymore. Last nights win also propelled us to 1st place in the standings with 33 points. 2nd is not far behind though with 32 points. After that it drops off substantially with 3rd place having 24 points. At this point it looks like a 2 team race but theres a lot of season left and anything can happen.
KLBL - Lake Calhoun
We had another good turnout on Wednesday night with 17 teams showing up to try their hand on Lake Calhoun. Some found the fishing to be very good, while other teams struggled. My dad and I were one of the teams struggling. I'm not sure where we placed but it was quite a ways down there. 1st place was about 10.5 lbs, 2nd was 9.9 lbs, 3rd dropped off to 8.5 lbs and 4th was about 8.2 lbs. The big fish for the night was 4.87 lbs. My dad and I ended up with 6.43 lbs.
We started on the docks and caught 2 fish that weighed about 2 lbs each within the first 4 docks. Those fish came on a Strike King Bleeding Bait tube. After such a quick start we thought we might be onto something but it quickly fizzled. We didn't get anymore bites on the docks so we headed towards a shallow sloppy area. I caught one real quick on a Senko to fill our limit and almost immediately my dad caught a better one on a Spro frog for our first cull of the night. Unfortunately it was our last cull as well. We ran around trying more docks, reeds, cabbage beds and just couldn't get anything going. We finally went back to the docks we started on and I hooked a real nice fish that was probably about 3 lbs but I couldn't get it in the boat. It was just one of those nights.
We started on the docks and caught 2 fish that weighed about 2 lbs each within the first 4 docks. Those fish came on a Strike King Bleeding Bait tube. After such a quick start we thought we might be onto something but it quickly fizzled. We didn't get anymore bites on the docks so we headed towards a shallow sloppy area. I caught one real quick on a Senko to fill our limit and almost immediately my dad caught a better one on a Spro frog for our first cull of the night. Unfortunately it was our last cull as well. We ran around trying more docks, reeds, cabbage beds and just couldn't get anything going. We finally went back to the docks we started on and I hooked a real nice fish that was probably about 3 lbs but I couldn't get it in the boat. It was just one of those nights.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Big Bass Bonanza - Green Lake
Well after two mediocre tournaments to start the BBB year we finally redeemed ourselves a little bit with a 5th place finish on Green Lake. It feels good to be back in the money again but at the same time it's a little disappointing not to win on Green, where we have a lot of experience. The problem is that the lake just isn't fishing very good right now and certainly not the way we are used to it fishing. The winning weight was 23.3 lbs which is very low for this lake. I've never seen a tournament out here take less than a 3 lb average to win. My dad and I had 21.89 lbs which while we were on the water I didn't think would be worth much at all but as the weigh in continued it was starting to look better and better. Most teams brought in bags in the 18 - 20 lb range which is solid but nothing spectacular for this lake. The weights are always tight on Green so getting a couple bigger bites is always key.
Our main pattern going into the event was throwing spinnerbaits on mid depth flats but this pattern usually works best for us from midmorning to mid afternoon. We didn't have much else going so to start our morning we decided to hit a variety of shallow rocky areas and hope to get a few 3 lb fish if we were lucky. The spot I wanted to start on already had a few boats on it so I slid over a couple hundred yards to another rocky area I know. I think we had 3 fish there but the biggest one was only about 2 1/2 lbs so we decided to leave. I know one boat commented at the end of the day they were surprised to see us leave because they went over there and caught fish after we had left. We ended up ahead of them in the tournament though so I don't feel bad about the decision to leave quickly at all. We hit a few more shallow rocks and one deep hump and had 6 fish in the livewell after about 2 1/2 hours but nothing over 2 1/2 lbs.
At that point we went to the mid depth stuff. The mid range areas we like are really pretty featureless and you never know where your going to get a bite so our favorite lure to use for this is a spinnerbait. This way we can put trolling motor down and just go fast until we catch one. We've tried using other lures doing this but the spinnerbait has been by far the best producer of bigger fish for us. Our last shallow area was pretty close to one of our better mid depth areas so i just started trolling out deeper from there. As soon as I got out to about 9 feet I caught one but it wasn't real big. It gave me confidence that the pattern was holding up though. A little while later my dad filled our 8 fish limit. Even though we had a limit I felt like we needed to get rid of at least 6 of them with bigger fish, but its still nice to have 8 in the boat. Right after my dad caught that fish the gals from Big Bass Bonanza pulled up and started taking pictures and filming us. They must have brought some luck with them because right away I caught a solid 3 pounder that they got on film. About 5 minutes later the luck turned sour though. While they were still filming a smallie over 3 lbs shot straight up from under the boat and attacked my spinnerbait. While I was waiting for the net it jumped and broke my spinnerbait in half. My dad flailed at it with the net but just couldn't snare it. It was so close to the boat I guess I should have just lifted it straight in. I'm not sure when the video will be available but you will be able to see I was pretty heartbroken from my reaction. I just knew we weren't fishing for many bites so when you get a big one you have to put it in the boat. Shortly after that we moved to another flat and the bite seemed to be slowing down. My dad finally put our biggest fish in the boat after about 45 minutes. That fish ended up weighing 3.71 lbs and that kind of fish goes a long ways on Green right now. We tried fishing a few more of those type areas but were somewhat surprised to see a boat on what I felt was going to be our best stretch of water.
With our spinnerbait bite dying out we decided to try a few more shallow areas. We ended up seeing quite a few nice fish but nothing on beds. They were just cruising around and seemed to be extremely spooky. We chased a few of the bigger ones around but they wanted nothing to do with our offerings. After figuring out the shallow stuff wasn't working for us we went really deep. We hit a series of humps in 22-28 feet of water. Only one of them produced any bites for us but the one hump gave up a 2 3/4 lb smallie and a 3 1/4 lb smallie. Both of those fish came on drop shot rigs. That's almost the only thing we throw for those deep fish anymore. They really seem to like it. By this point the day was winding down so we ran around and hit a few more flats and humps but didn't catch anything else. The spinnerbait bite had completely died, I think because of the boat traffic, but I did get one more good one to come up but it just barely had the spinnerbait and threw it on the first jump. I really felt like the 2 lost fish were really going to hurt us, and we would have been a lot closer to the lead if we had them, but in the end it didn't hurt too bad because we finally ended up with a check.
This will be the last Big Bass Bonanza tournament for awhile. We have a break until mid August when we head to the Horseshoe Chain. Between now and then our West Central Bassmasters will be holding tournaments on Norway Lake and Green Lake. The Norway event is in 2 weeks and I'm really looking forward to it since my dad and I won out there last year. Hopefully we can take some momentum from Green and repeat out on Norway.
Our main pattern going into the event was throwing spinnerbaits on mid depth flats but this pattern usually works best for us from midmorning to mid afternoon. We didn't have much else going so to start our morning we decided to hit a variety of shallow rocky areas and hope to get a few 3 lb fish if we were lucky. The spot I wanted to start on already had a few boats on it so I slid over a couple hundred yards to another rocky area I know. I think we had 3 fish there but the biggest one was only about 2 1/2 lbs so we decided to leave. I know one boat commented at the end of the day they were surprised to see us leave because they went over there and caught fish after we had left. We ended up ahead of them in the tournament though so I don't feel bad about the decision to leave quickly at all. We hit a few more shallow rocks and one deep hump and had 6 fish in the livewell after about 2 1/2 hours but nothing over 2 1/2 lbs.
At that point we went to the mid depth stuff. The mid range areas we like are really pretty featureless and you never know where your going to get a bite so our favorite lure to use for this is a spinnerbait. This way we can put trolling motor down and just go fast until we catch one. We've tried using other lures doing this but the spinnerbait has been by far the best producer of bigger fish for us. Our last shallow area was pretty close to one of our better mid depth areas so i just started trolling out deeper from there. As soon as I got out to about 9 feet I caught one but it wasn't real big. It gave me confidence that the pattern was holding up though. A little while later my dad filled our 8 fish limit. Even though we had a limit I felt like we needed to get rid of at least 6 of them with bigger fish, but its still nice to have 8 in the boat. Right after my dad caught that fish the gals from Big Bass Bonanza pulled up and started taking pictures and filming us. They must have brought some luck with them because right away I caught a solid 3 pounder that they got on film. About 5 minutes later the luck turned sour though. While they were still filming a smallie over 3 lbs shot straight up from under the boat and attacked my spinnerbait. While I was waiting for the net it jumped and broke my spinnerbait in half. My dad flailed at it with the net but just couldn't snare it. It was so close to the boat I guess I should have just lifted it straight in. I'm not sure when the video will be available but you will be able to see I was pretty heartbroken from my reaction. I just knew we weren't fishing for many bites so when you get a big one you have to put it in the boat. Shortly after that we moved to another flat and the bite seemed to be slowing down. My dad finally put our biggest fish in the boat after about 45 minutes. That fish ended up weighing 3.71 lbs and that kind of fish goes a long ways on Green right now. We tried fishing a few more of those type areas but were somewhat surprised to see a boat on what I felt was going to be our best stretch of water.
With our spinnerbait bite dying out we decided to try a few more shallow areas. We ended up seeing quite a few nice fish but nothing on beds. They were just cruising around and seemed to be extremely spooky. We chased a few of the bigger ones around but they wanted nothing to do with our offerings. After figuring out the shallow stuff wasn't working for us we went really deep. We hit a series of humps in 22-28 feet of water. Only one of them produced any bites for us but the one hump gave up a 2 3/4 lb smallie and a 3 1/4 lb smallie. Both of those fish came on drop shot rigs. That's almost the only thing we throw for those deep fish anymore. They really seem to like it. By this point the day was winding down so we ran around and hit a few more flats and humps but didn't catch anything else. The spinnerbait bite had completely died, I think because of the boat traffic, but I did get one more good one to come up but it just barely had the spinnerbait and threw it on the first jump. I really felt like the 2 lost fish were really going to hurt us, and we would have been a lot closer to the lead if we had them, but in the end it didn't hurt too bad because we finally ended up with a check.
This will be the last Big Bass Bonanza tournament for awhile. We have a break until mid August when we head to the Horseshoe Chain. Between now and then our West Central Bassmasters will be holding tournaments on Norway Lake and Green Lake. The Norway event is in 2 weeks and I'm really looking forward to it since my dad and I won out there last year. Hopefully we can take some momentum from Green and repeat out on Norway.
Friday, July 4, 2008
KLBL - Long Lake
Last nights league was not the normal Thursday night standings league. Since it is the 4th of July weekend we figured many people had plans. However a few teams still wanted to fish so we had league anyway. This was just a stand alone event. Only 6 boats showed up which was about what we expected. Of the 6 boats 4 of them weighed in over 10 lbs for their 3 fish. The winning weight was over 13 lbs. My dad and I ended up in 4th with 10.24 lbs. The big fish for the night was 5.08 lbs.
I've talked about Long Lake before and the primary pattern which is fishing the reeds. We started off doing that but after flipping reeds for over an hour we only had 1 small fish. We knew we needed to do something different so we went to a long, shallow, rocky point. Even though there are rocks down there everything was covered with weeds. Pretty much the only viable lure option was a frog. I started throwing a Spro Bronze Eye frog and almost immediately had one blow up on me. Then just a little bit later a bass close to 4 lbs sucked it in and we put it in the boat. We made another pass and I caught a small one on the frog and my dad picked up a 3 pounder on a Lake Fork Magic Shad. We left the area to let it rest a little before hitting it again right as time was winding down. On the very last cast my dad caught another 3 pounder on the frog and it was time to go in. This was the first league night in a very long time that we weighed 2 fish in that came on the frog.
I've talked about Long Lake before and the primary pattern which is fishing the reeds. We started off doing that but after flipping reeds for over an hour we only had 1 small fish. We knew we needed to do something different so we went to a long, shallow, rocky point. Even though there are rocks down there everything was covered with weeds. Pretty much the only viable lure option was a frog. I started throwing a Spro Bronze Eye frog and almost immediately had one blow up on me. Then just a little bit later a bass close to 4 lbs sucked it in and we put it in the boat. We made another pass and I caught a small one on the frog and my dad picked up a 3 pounder on a Lake Fork Magic Shad. We left the area to let it rest a little before hitting it again right as time was winding down. On the very last cast my dad caught another 3 pounder on the frog and it was time to go in. This was the first league night in a very long time that we weighed 2 fish in that came on the frog.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
KLBL - Diamond Lake
Even with the strong winds tonight we had another good turnout for Wednesday night league. 17 teams showed up to try their hand on Diamond Lake and overall the fishing was disappointing. Most every team caught their limit of 3 fish but the weights were down sharply from past years. 1st place was 8.68 lbs, my dad and I were 2nd with 8.60 lbs, 3rd was 8.49 lbs, and 4th was 8.44 lbs. As you can see the weights were very tight so it was competitive but generally this lake will produce a 3 fish bag of at least 10 lbs and often over 12 lbs for the winner. The big bass for the night was 4.07 lbs.
My dad and I started in our usual spot. I think we have started every league night for the past at least five years there. It's no secret what we do out there. It's a stretch of docks that has produced numerous big fish for us over the years, but tonight there were none to be had. I did end up catching a bass on my very first cast of the night but it was just a small keeper. We caught another small keeper a little bit later off the same dock and filled out our limit on the same stretch within about 20 minutes but we only had about 5 lbs. Next we ran to the reeds near Dogfish Bay but a boat was sitting right where we like to fish. We fished around a little bit with no success so we went to some other docks and reeds and also struck out. With about a half hour left to fish in the night we went back to our Dogfish reeds and no one was on them. I caught a small one, that culled one of our even smaller ones, almost right away and then in the next 20 minutes my dad caught two real good fish that were over 3 lbs each. So much like last week we caught all of our weigh fish right at the end of the night. Our 3 that we ended up weighing came on Strike King Flippin tubes and craw tubes in watermelon and green pumpkin. I feel like we might have messed up by not fishing that stretch of reeds as much as we should have but on the other hand the boat that was there at first stuck around there all night and only ended up with about 5 1/2 lbs. I think those fish just turned on towards the end of the night. Still if we had given ourselves 45 minutes instead of just 30 minutes we might have been able to make up the .08 lb difference between our 2nd place and 1st, but who knows. I felt like we didn't make great decisions all night but we ended up doing well with the one decision to go back to those reeds.
My dad and I started in our usual spot. I think we have started every league night for the past at least five years there. It's no secret what we do out there. It's a stretch of docks that has produced numerous big fish for us over the years, but tonight there were none to be had. I did end up catching a bass on my very first cast of the night but it was just a small keeper. We caught another small keeper a little bit later off the same dock and filled out our limit on the same stretch within about 20 minutes but we only had about 5 lbs. Next we ran to the reeds near Dogfish Bay but a boat was sitting right where we like to fish. We fished around a little bit with no success so we went to some other docks and reeds and also struck out. With about a half hour left to fish in the night we went back to our Dogfish reeds and no one was on them. I caught a small one, that culled one of our even smaller ones, almost right away and then in the next 20 minutes my dad caught two real good fish that were over 3 lbs each. So much like last week we caught all of our weigh fish right at the end of the night. Our 3 that we ended up weighing came on Strike King Flippin tubes and craw tubes in watermelon and green pumpkin. I feel like we might have messed up by not fishing that stretch of reeds as much as we should have but on the other hand the boat that was there at first stuck around there all night and only ended up with about 5 1/2 lbs. I think those fish just turned on towards the end of the night. Still if we had given ourselves 45 minutes instead of just 30 minutes we might have been able to make up the .08 lb difference between our 2nd place and 1st, but who knows. I felt like we didn't make great decisions all night but we ended up doing well with the one decision to go back to those reeds.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
West Central Bassmasters State Qualifier - Green Lake
I haven't gotten around to writing about this one for a few days. The tournament was held Saturday June 28th on Green Lake. It was the final state qualifier for our club. I ended up finishing in 4th place on the day with 14.20 lbs for my 5 fish. That put me in 2nd place for the year, so I qualified for the state tournament in September. I really wanted to be 1st place since that is the guaranteed boater spot but 2nd is still not too bad. My dad also qualified for the state tournament in 5th place. The winning weight on the day was 14.88 lbs with 2nd being 14.76 lbs. The conditions were really bad with high winds and several periods of rain but those weights are still pretty low. Especially considering we are all locals with extensive time on the lake. I guess it's just fishing tough right now.
The day before the tournament we went out and marked as many good bed fish as we good find. Most were small but there were still a few good ones around. Unfortunately with the weather we couldn't really fish for all of them since the waves were just too big in some spots. A few other ones had left the bed since we found them but there were still a few that we ended up catching in the tournament. I caught 3 off beds that were all between 2 3/4 lbs and 3 lbs. They all came on a white Strike King KVD tube. I usually like using green pumpkin but they sure seemed to like the white a lot better that day. My other fish came on a spinnerbait and just casting a tube to a shallow rocky area. My dad had a few bed fish as well and he also caught one in 25 feet of water on a dropshot. That was the only keeper out deep in our boat.
I'm not going to do a full practice report like I have for the other Big Bass Bonanza tournaments since the practices for each event kind of ran into each other. I think we have spent 7 of the last 9 days out on Green. If anything Monday and Tuesday have been even worse than Saturday. I just can't seem to figure much out. Our deep bite seems almost totally dead and the shallow fish are getting done and moving out but they aren't there yet. Finding fish in the mid depth zone has been a chore too. There have been a few encouraging signs that our usually summer pattern is starting to happen but its been spotty. Even though I haven't caught a lot of fish I've seen enough fish following to win the tournament I think. Now we just have to figure out a way to turn those followers into biters and we should be ok. For the tournament we will probably fish shallow, deep, and in between, and just let whatever is working best that day dictate what we do. We have enough spots of each type that we should be able to move around a bit unless the winds are just too much. I just hope it stays hot and it gets that summer pattern going by Sunday. I'll report back after the tournament.
The day before the tournament we went out and marked as many good bed fish as we good find. Most were small but there were still a few good ones around. Unfortunately with the weather we couldn't really fish for all of them since the waves were just too big in some spots. A few other ones had left the bed since we found them but there were still a few that we ended up catching in the tournament. I caught 3 off beds that were all between 2 3/4 lbs and 3 lbs. They all came on a white Strike King KVD tube. I usually like using green pumpkin but they sure seemed to like the white a lot better that day. My other fish came on a spinnerbait and just casting a tube to a shallow rocky area. My dad had a few bed fish as well and he also caught one in 25 feet of water on a dropshot. That was the only keeper out deep in our boat.
I'm not going to do a full practice report like I have for the other Big Bass Bonanza tournaments since the practices for each event kind of ran into each other. I think we have spent 7 of the last 9 days out on Green. If anything Monday and Tuesday have been even worse than Saturday. I just can't seem to figure much out. Our deep bite seems almost totally dead and the shallow fish are getting done and moving out but they aren't there yet. Finding fish in the mid depth zone has been a chore too. There have been a few encouraging signs that our usually summer pattern is starting to happen but its been spotty. Even though I haven't caught a lot of fish I've seen enough fish following to win the tournament I think. Now we just have to figure out a way to turn those followers into biters and we should be ok. For the tournament we will probably fish shallow, deep, and in between, and just let whatever is working best that day dictate what we do. We have enough spots of each type that we should be able to move around a bit unless the winds are just too much. I just hope it stays hot and it gets that summer pattern going by Sunday. I'll report back after the tournament.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Kandi Lakes Bass League - Lake Johanna
We started the Thursday standings league with 9 teams but unfortunately a team had to drop out so we will be at 8 teams the rest of the year. That means we will change from paying 3 places to paying only 2 spots each Thursday night. That wasn't good for my dad and I last night since we finished in 3rd place with 9.76 lbs. 1st place had a little over 13 lbs for their 3 fish and 2nd had 10.76 lbs. The big fish for the night was 4.67 lbs which is also the big bass for the year so far. As far as the standings points go after 3 nights the leaders have 25 points and my dad and I are in 2nd with 23 points.
The fishing was pretty good last night especially compared to Wednesday night. We caught probably 30 or more bass but most were in the 2 1/2 lb range. We only managed to catch 3 fish over 3 lbs and thats what we weighed in. As far as the fishing it's no secret. Theres pretty much one thing to fish on Johanna and thats reeds. One key for us last night though was to fish little pockets inside the reed beds instead of just the outside edge. All of our weigh fish came from back inside the reeds like that. We used watermelon Strike King Craw Tubes and black/blue Picasso jigs for all our fish.
The fishing was pretty good last night especially compared to Wednesday night. We caught probably 30 or more bass but most were in the 2 1/2 lb range. We only managed to catch 3 fish over 3 lbs and thats what we weighed in. As far as the fishing it's no secret. Theres pretty much one thing to fish on Johanna and thats reeds. One key for us last night though was to fish little pockets inside the reed beds instead of just the outside edge. All of our weigh fish came from back inside the reeds like that. We used watermelon Strike King Craw Tubes and black/blue Picasso jigs for all our fish.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Kandi Lakes Bass League - Lake Andrew
We had another good turnout for Wednesday night league with 16 boats showing up to fish Lake Andrew. With 16 boats 4 places are paid. 1st place had 8.33 lbs, 2nd place had 6.98 lbs, 3rd place had 6.45 lbs, and my dad and I were 4th with 6.44 lbs. One hundredth of a pound difference. I guess thats just how it goes sometimes. Since one of the boats ahead of us did not enter the side pot we also took 3rd place in that for a little additional money. The big bass for the night was 3.12 lbs. That team also had another bass over 3 lbs, which were the only 3 pounders caught on the night. That was obviously the winning bag.
While the weights were typical for Lake Andrew the past few years I felt the fishing was anything but typical. There usually aren't any big bags weighed in on the lake but at least there are a lot of fish to be caught. That was not the case last night. In fact my dad and I didn't have a keeper in the boat until 8:10 pm. We went over 2 hours without catching a thing and with a 9 pm check in time there was very little time left to make something happen. We mostly fished deep because there are a lot of good weed line spots out there but we hit a bunch of them and came up empty on all of them. We even tried fishing shallow weeds and docks too with no success. The first keeper did end up coming from an inside corner of a deep weed line but there were no more fish so we ran up to the inlet and threw weightless Lake Fork Ring Fries and quickly put a limit in the boat. The fish had started to turn on a little bit I think. Our limit didn't weigh much though and after catching a few up in the bay the fish kept getting smaller and smaller. With about 5 minutes to go I said lets run to the spot where we caught our first keeper. We didn't have much time but as soon as we got there I caught one. Then my dad caught one. We ended up catching 6 or 7 fish in that last 5 minutes and culled out all of our other fish. For whatever reason those fish just turned on right at the last minute. I'm sure glad we made that move because otherwise we wouldn't have been in the money at all. I just wished I gave ourselves 10 minutes instead of just 5. I think we could have made a run at 2nd place anyway. All those fish came on a watermelon Picasso jig tipped with a Lake Fork Pig Claw.
While the weights were typical for Lake Andrew the past few years I felt the fishing was anything but typical. There usually aren't any big bags weighed in on the lake but at least there are a lot of fish to be caught. That was not the case last night. In fact my dad and I didn't have a keeper in the boat until 8:10 pm. We went over 2 hours without catching a thing and with a 9 pm check in time there was very little time left to make something happen. We mostly fished deep because there are a lot of good weed line spots out there but we hit a bunch of them and came up empty on all of them. We even tried fishing shallow weeds and docks too with no success. The first keeper did end up coming from an inside corner of a deep weed line but there were no more fish so we ran up to the inlet and threw weightless Lake Fork Ring Fries and quickly put a limit in the boat. The fish had started to turn on a little bit I think. Our limit didn't weigh much though and after catching a few up in the bay the fish kept getting smaller and smaller. With about 5 minutes to go I said lets run to the spot where we caught our first keeper. We didn't have much time but as soon as we got there I caught one. Then my dad caught one. We ended up catching 6 or 7 fish in that last 5 minutes and culled out all of our other fish. For whatever reason those fish just turned on right at the last minute. I'm sure glad we made that move because otherwise we wouldn't have been in the money at all. I just wished I gave ourselves 10 minutes instead of just 5. I think we could have made a run at 2nd place anyway. All those fish came on a watermelon Picasso jig tipped with a Lake Fork Pig Claw.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Minnewaska
Well the Big Bass Bonanza on Lake Minnewaska was another disappointing tournament for us this year. We just can't seem to get it going yet but hopefully with the warmer weather we are having that will turn around soon. We ended up I believe in 23rd place out of 49 boats with 8 fish for 20.53 lbs. The winning weight was around 24 1/2 lbs. Based on our practice 20 lbs was a realistic day for us but if everything went perfect we could have been close to 24 lbs but obviously that didn't happen. We just didn't get any big bites or even solid bites at all. Our biggest fish was only a little over 3 lbs and all the rest were just 2 1/2 pounders. 7 of our fish were largemouths and 1 was a smallie. We just couldn't make any of our usual big smallmouth spots work for us.
Like I said in my practice report we found one area that seemed to have a group of quality fish so we started there. It was a weedline in about 10 feet of water, but the funny part was it wasn't good weeds at all, just stringy crap but the fish seemed to be using it. That was practice though and in the tournament we didn't catch anything. Next we tried another similar spot with no luck. After an hour we had no fish out deeper so we went to a reed patch and caught 6 fish in less than an hour on Strike King Flippin tubes and Wild Thangs. After that we pretty much bounced around to different areas the rest of the day. We probably hit 25 different spots and ended up catching a keeper fish here and there. Our spots were a wide range of things. We fished reeds, docks, shallow rock and gravel flats, shallow weed beds and deeper weed beds out to about 12 feet. All of our weigh fish came on various Strike King tube baits and Picasso Jigs tipped with Lake Fork Pig Claws.
Our next Big Bass Bonanza tournament is in 2 weeks on Green Lake. Hopefully we can turn it around since it is our home lake. We are going to be out there a lot too since our final West Central Bassmasters state qualifier tournament is there this coming weekend. We will probably be on Green Lake pretty much every day the next week and a half. Even though I know a ton of spots out there it can't hurt to fish it more. There is just so much to learn out there and that makes it fun.
Like I said in my practice report we found one area that seemed to have a group of quality fish so we started there. It was a weedline in about 10 feet of water, but the funny part was it wasn't good weeds at all, just stringy crap but the fish seemed to be using it. That was practice though and in the tournament we didn't catch anything. Next we tried another similar spot with no luck. After an hour we had no fish out deeper so we went to a reed patch and caught 6 fish in less than an hour on Strike King Flippin tubes and Wild Thangs. After that we pretty much bounced around to different areas the rest of the day. We probably hit 25 different spots and ended up catching a keeper fish here and there. Our spots were a wide range of things. We fished reeds, docks, shallow rock and gravel flats, shallow weed beds and deeper weed beds out to about 12 feet. All of our weigh fish came on various Strike King tube baits and Picasso Jigs tipped with Lake Fork Pig Claws.
Our next Big Bass Bonanza tournament is in 2 weeks on Green Lake. Hopefully we can turn it around since it is our home lake. We are going to be out there a lot too since our final West Central Bassmasters state qualifier tournament is there this coming weekend. We will probably be on Green Lake pretty much every day the next week and a half. Even though I know a ton of spots out there it can't hurt to fish it more. There is just so much to learn out there and that makes it fun.
Friday, June 20, 2008
KLBL - Nest Lake
I haven't been on Nest Lake since our West Central Bassmasters event several weeks ago. The fishing was awesome then but last night it was downright tough for us and several other teams. The water is a lot dirtier now and the weedgrowth is really exploding. There were still some nice fish brought in though. The winning weight was 12.46 lbs for 3 fish, 2nd was my dad and I with 9.80 lbs and 3rd was 8.72 lbs. The big fish was a 4.56 lb largemouth.
Like I said earlier the fishing was extremely tough for us. We decided to start on a spot we usually don't start on but has been very good to us the past few years. Unfortunately when we got there a boat was anchored crappie fishing directly on top of our waypoint. We fished around the general area for awhile but it wasn't happening. Then we moved to a deep spot that usually holds some really nice largemouth but we struck out again. Now I was starting to get a little worried. We then ran to a stretch of docks just to fill our limit. We ended up catching 3 pretty quickly on Bleeding bait tubes and Senkos but we only had 5 1/2 lbs at the most. After that we hit a few more areas that we like but couldn't get anything going. We noticed that the crappie fisherman was gone so we headed back to our starting spot and finally caught a nice smallmouth. I actually got my dropshot rig hung in a rock and when I finally got it to pop free I thought I was hung up again right away but it was a fish! I think it was down there looking at that violent shaking action and got triggered to bite. It seems like smallies do that a lot. We kept working the area with dropshots rigged with Lake Fork twitch worms and caught 2 more good smallies in the next 15 minutes and that was it for our fish catching. We hit some more areas but got nothing. We ended up catching only 3 nice fish all night in about a 20 minute period so getting 2nd place was a very pleasant surprise.
Like I said earlier the fishing was extremely tough for us. We decided to start on a spot we usually don't start on but has been very good to us the past few years. Unfortunately when we got there a boat was anchored crappie fishing directly on top of our waypoint. We fished around the general area for awhile but it wasn't happening. Then we moved to a deep spot that usually holds some really nice largemouth but we struck out again. Now I was starting to get a little worried. We then ran to a stretch of docks just to fill our limit. We ended up catching 3 pretty quickly on Bleeding bait tubes and Senkos but we only had 5 1/2 lbs at the most. After that we hit a few more areas that we like but couldn't get anything going. We noticed that the crappie fisherman was gone so we headed back to our starting spot and finally caught a nice smallmouth. I actually got my dropshot rig hung in a rock and when I finally got it to pop free I thought I was hung up again right away but it was a fish! I think it was down there looking at that violent shaking action and got triggered to bite. It seems like smallies do that a lot. We kept working the area with dropshots rigged with Lake Fork twitch worms and caught 2 more good smallies in the next 15 minutes and that was it for our fish catching. We hit some more areas but got nothing. We ended up catching only 3 nice fish all night in about a 20 minute period so getting 2nd place was a very pleasant surprise.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
KLBL - Long Lake
We had our biggest turnout of the year on Long Lake tonight with 20 teams showing up. Most of the boats ended up weighing in their 3 fish but for the most part it sounded like the fishing was pretty tough. Even though it was kind of tough there were still a lot of big weights. I think 7 of the 20 teams weighed in over 10 lbs for their 3 fish. 1st had 12.48 lbs, 2nd had 12.20 lbs. 3rd had 11.98 lbs and 4th had 11.27 lbs. The big fish was 5.19 lbs.
Our night was really tough. We started on the small reed island and my dad caught about a 3 pounder almost right away. After that we didn't catch another fish for over an hour. I finally put a small keeper in the boat off pig farmers point but then it got slow again for us. We ran all over the place trying different things but nothing was really working. We then headed back to the south side and I started throwing a Spro Bronze Eye frog and almost right away had a blow up but the fish missed the bait. I quickly fired my frog back in there and it smashed it that time. It ended up being our biggest fish at 4.11 lbs. So now we finally had our limit and less then 5 minutes later my dad culled up with a 3 pounder on a Lake Fork Ring Fry. That was it for our night. We had 4 bites in 3 hours. Pretty slow. We ended up with 10.61 lbs which was good for 6th place and out of the money. However, 2 of the top 4 teams did not enter the optional sidepot so we did end up 4th place in the sidepot for a few bucks. Thanks guys for not entering!
Our night was really tough. We started on the small reed island and my dad caught about a 3 pounder almost right away. After that we didn't catch another fish for over an hour. I finally put a small keeper in the boat off pig farmers point but then it got slow again for us. We ran all over the place trying different things but nothing was really working. We then headed back to the south side and I started throwing a Spro Bronze Eye frog and almost right away had a blow up but the fish missed the bait. I quickly fired my frog back in there and it smashed it that time. It ended up being our biggest fish at 4.11 lbs. So now we finally had our limit and less then 5 minutes later my dad culled up with a 3 pounder on a Lake Fork Ring Fry. That was it for our night. We had 4 bites in 3 hours. Pretty slow. We ended up with 10.61 lbs which was good for 6th place and out of the money. However, 2 of the top 4 teams did not enter the optional sidepot so we did end up 4th place in the sidepot for a few bucks. Thanks guys for not entering!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Big Bass Bonanza Practice - Lake Minnewaska
It's Tuesday so today was the last day to practice for the BBB next Sunday. One word can be used to describe our practice period on Lake Minnewaska: FRUSTRATING! I won't go into too much detail since theres still a few days before the tournament but I can say a few things. First of all, we have several spots that we have caught good smallmouths on in the past but we cannot get bit on any of them. Our tournaments the past several years have been later in the summer but these are spots I thought the fish used year round. I guess one way to look at it though is that last year we never got bit on those smallmouth spots in practice either and we ended up catching several nice ones during the tournament. We actually should have won if it weren't for 2 giants that got off halfway to the boat. I hope those fish show up again this year.
Another problem with our practice is we couldn't find a big bite at all. Our biggest fish have been about 3 1/2 lbs. We've caught quite a few 2 1/2 lb to 3 1/2 lb fish but nothing bigger. If we're going to win this thing we are going to need several fish in that 4+ lb range. I think a limit of 3 lb to 3 1/2 lb fish will do very well in this tournament but the winner is going to have several fish over 4 lbs as well.
The worst part of practice was we caught fish everywhere. I know that sounds good right, but the problem is for us the fish seemed really scattered. I think the majority of the fish are just coming off the spawn and don't seem to be grouped up at all. We caught fish in 1 foot of water out to 20 feet of water and almost every depth in between. It also seemed like whenever we caught 1 good one there were no other fish with it or only little ones around. Finding a group of quality 2 1/2 lb to 3 1/2 lb fish was almost impossible. I think we may have one spot with a group like that but we didn't fish it real hard so we will have to wait until tournament day to be sure.
I know I've had pretty much only bad things to say but in reality we did pretty good for a practice on this lake. Usually our practices on Minnewaska are terrible and this time we at least caught a lot of pretty nice fish. So with all that in mind I think we have a tentative plan but it might change. Nothing ever stays the same in fishing anyway. We are probably going to start on that one group of fish and hit it as hard as we can. We'll keep fishing that as long as it kicks out nice fish. After that it's going to be KVD style, running and gunning all over the lake. We'll hit all the spots we caught a good fish in practice and a bunch of our old spots as well. We may end up hitting as many as 25-30 spots in the day. I don't know how other people will be fishing but for us this seems like the best way to box a limit of those 3 lb bass. Hopefully it will work out come Sunday.
Another problem with our practice is we couldn't find a big bite at all. Our biggest fish have been about 3 1/2 lbs. We've caught quite a few 2 1/2 lb to 3 1/2 lb fish but nothing bigger. If we're going to win this thing we are going to need several fish in that 4+ lb range. I think a limit of 3 lb to 3 1/2 lb fish will do very well in this tournament but the winner is going to have several fish over 4 lbs as well.
The worst part of practice was we caught fish everywhere. I know that sounds good right, but the problem is for us the fish seemed really scattered. I think the majority of the fish are just coming off the spawn and don't seem to be grouped up at all. We caught fish in 1 foot of water out to 20 feet of water and almost every depth in between. It also seemed like whenever we caught 1 good one there were no other fish with it or only little ones around. Finding a group of quality 2 1/2 lb to 3 1/2 lb fish was almost impossible. I think we may have one spot with a group like that but we didn't fish it real hard so we will have to wait until tournament day to be sure.
I know I've had pretty much only bad things to say but in reality we did pretty good for a practice on this lake. Usually our practices on Minnewaska are terrible and this time we at least caught a lot of pretty nice fish. So with all that in mind I think we have a tentative plan but it might change. Nothing ever stays the same in fishing anyway. We are probably going to start on that one group of fish and hit it as hard as we can. We'll keep fishing that as long as it kicks out nice fish. After that it's going to be KVD style, running and gunning all over the lake. We'll hit all the spots we caught a good fish in practice and a bunch of our old spots as well. We may end up hitting as many as 25-30 spots in the day. I don't know how other people will be fishing but for us this seems like the best way to box a limit of those 3 lb bass. Hopefully it will work out come Sunday.
Friday, June 13, 2008
KLBL - Lake Florida
After canceling last Thursday we finally had our first Standings league night. There are only 9 teams fishing the standings this year which was less than we hoped for, but on the other hand having only 9 boats on the water will make getting to the spots we want to fish a lot easier. Lake Florida is almost entirely surrounded by houses which means its got a lot of docks and this is what most people choose to fish. Theres also a good deep weedline bite which is what my dad and I have focused on the past couple years. The lake used to be known for kicking out a lot of big fish off the docks but the last couple years even a 3 pounder is a really good fish out there. So the weights were typical for the past few years. 1st place had 8.87 lbs, 2nd was my dad and I with 8.67 lbs, and 3rd was actually a tie at 8.18 lbs but one team had a bigger fish so they took 3rd outright. The big bass for the night was 3.83 lbs.
Like I said earlier my dad and I have pretty much focused on deep water only the past few years but with the spring we've had and the water temps still in the mid 60s we decided to start shallow on the docks. We had a limit weighing about 7 lbs within the first half hour by skipping Strike King Bleeding Bait tubes under the docks. This is my favorite bait for dock fishing because it is a double dipped tube meaning it has a lot of plastic so its heavy and skips really well. After that we hit one of our deep spots which is a combination of rocks and weeds. We started a little ways down from our waypoint and as soon as we reached it, it was on. We caught 4 fish between 2 1/2 lbs and 3 lbs within 10 minutes, culling out all of our dock fish. But after that it was done. We couldn't buy another bite out there which is strange because it seemed like they were stacked up pretty good. After that we bounced around hitting some other deep spots and a few more docks with no success. We finally went back to the good spot but once again got nothing. Then we tried a newer deep spot that we haven't really fished as much but are finally starting to learn. The fishing was slower there but we did end up catching 4 more of those 2 1/2 lb to 3 lb bass. All of our fish came on watermelon Picasso jigs (with my dads own skirt color combinations) with Lake Fork Pig Claws and watermelon Berkley Gulp Turtleback worms.
Towards the end of the night I could feel a cold coming on and sure enough when I woke up this morning I was feeling sick as a dog. Thats going to make it tough tomorrow when we plan to head up to Lake Minnewaska to start practicing for the Big Bass Bonanza tournament. If we end up doing bad in that tournament you know my excuse, I was sick as hell during practice. Just Kidding. But hopefully I'll be feeling better tomorrow and we can get on some good ones. It's gonna be a slugfest I think. I'll report back after our practice is complete.
Like I said earlier my dad and I have pretty much focused on deep water only the past few years but with the spring we've had and the water temps still in the mid 60s we decided to start shallow on the docks. We had a limit weighing about 7 lbs within the first half hour by skipping Strike King Bleeding Bait tubes under the docks. This is my favorite bait for dock fishing because it is a double dipped tube meaning it has a lot of plastic so its heavy and skips really well. After that we hit one of our deep spots which is a combination of rocks and weeds. We started a little ways down from our waypoint and as soon as we reached it, it was on. We caught 4 fish between 2 1/2 lbs and 3 lbs within 10 minutes, culling out all of our dock fish. But after that it was done. We couldn't buy another bite out there which is strange because it seemed like they were stacked up pretty good. After that we bounced around hitting some other deep spots and a few more docks with no success. We finally went back to the good spot but once again got nothing. Then we tried a newer deep spot that we haven't really fished as much but are finally starting to learn. The fishing was slower there but we did end up catching 4 more of those 2 1/2 lb to 3 lb bass. All of our fish came on watermelon Picasso jigs (with my dads own skirt color combinations) with Lake Fork Pig Claws and watermelon Berkley Gulp Turtleback worms.
Towards the end of the night I could feel a cold coming on and sure enough when I woke up this morning I was feeling sick as a dog. Thats going to make it tough tomorrow when we plan to head up to Lake Minnewaska to start practicing for the Big Bass Bonanza tournament. If we end up doing bad in that tournament you know my excuse, I was sick as hell during practice. Just Kidding. But hopefully I'll be feeling better tomorrow and we can get on some good ones. It's gonna be a slugfest I think. I'll report back after our practice is complete.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
KLBL - Solomon Lake
The 2nd night of Wednesday league probably should have been canceled. There was strong winds, rain, and a little bit of lightening. I was thinking it was pretty stupid when were were out there in the middle of the lake with thunder and lighting going on but there were no apparent ground strikes. When we launched it was only drizzle and wind though so if its like that we usually fish. I was actually kind of surprised 12 boats showed up tonight. Despite the weather the fishing was pretty damn good for quite a few of the guys. I think 6 of the 12 boats weighed over 9 lbs for their 3 fish. First had 12.67 lbs, Second had 11.10 lbs, and my dad and I finished 3rd with 10.90 lbs. Fourth place also had just over 10 lbs, which you would normally think would be in the money, but on Solomon 10 lbs can be just another bag some nights.
While it sounded like some boats caught quite a few fish, some others struggled and my dad and I were one of those. I think we ended up catching only 6 fish on the night, and 3 of those were just 13 inchers. We had a bad boat draw which I knew would let boats get to the 2 spots I most wanted to fish. We started on one of the reed islands but another boat was already in the prime spot. We watched them catch fish while we couldn't buy a bite. We bounced around to some other stuff and after an hour only had 1 13 incher in the well. After hitting that other stuff we noticed no one had gone back to where we wanted to start so we went back there and almost immediately my dad popped a 4.44 lb fish which was our big one for the night. But then it shut down again. We bounced around to a few more reed patches and eventually I put a 2 1/2 lb fish in the boat which is small for the lake but helped a lot at the time. We had let the big fish spot rest for awhile and surprisingly no one had gone to it so we went back a 3rd time and my first flip I nailed one about 4lbs. Once again though that was it for the spot and for our night. All our fish came on Strike King craw tubes that we flipped in the reeds. I was throwing black/red flake which definitely got more bites than my dad's watermelon, but then again his one fish was the big one for us.
I'm usually pretty even keeled when it comes to fishing but tonight I was losing it a little bit. We watched boats around us catching fish when we struggled to get a bite and the wind and rain certainly is not fun. That affected me somewhat. I don't know if it was the difference between winning or not because 12.67 lbs will be hard to beat no matter what, but it could have hurt somehow. We did end up pulling it together for a solid bag of fish. Maybe I'm being to hard on myself since we did end up in the money but to me not winning is pretty much just losing. You'll probably notice that if you read this blog. I'm somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to decisions that are made in a tournament. If we don't win I'll focus more on the reasons why we did bad rather than the reasons we did good. Maybe thats good or maybe thats bad, but no matter what theres always room for improvement.
While it sounded like some boats caught quite a few fish, some others struggled and my dad and I were one of those. I think we ended up catching only 6 fish on the night, and 3 of those were just 13 inchers. We had a bad boat draw which I knew would let boats get to the 2 spots I most wanted to fish. We started on one of the reed islands but another boat was already in the prime spot. We watched them catch fish while we couldn't buy a bite. We bounced around to some other stuff and after an hour only had 1 13 incher in the well. After hitting that other stuff we noticed no one had gone back to where we wanted to start so we went back there and almost immediately my dad popped a 4.44 lb fish which was our big one for the night. But then it shut down again. We bounced around to a few more reed patches and eventually I put a 2 1/2 lb fish in the boat which is small for the lake but helped a lot at the time. We had let the big fish spot rest for awhile and surprisingly no one had gone to it so we went back a 3rd time and my first flip I nailed one about 4lbs. Once again though that was it for the spot and for our night. All our fish came on Strike King craw tubes that we flipped in the reeds. I was throwing black/red flake which definitely got more bites than my dad's watermelon, but then again his one fish was the big one for us.
I'm usually pretty even keeled when it comes to fishing but tonight I was losing it a little bit. We watched boats around us catching fish when we struggled to get a bite and the wind and rain certainly is not fun. That affected me somewhat. I don't know if it was the difference between winning or not because 12.67 lbs will be hard to beat no matter what, but it could have hurt somehow. We did end up pulling it together for a solid bag of fish. Maybe I'm being to hard on myself since we did end up in the money but to me not winning is pretty much just losing. You'll probably notice that if you read this blog. I'm somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to decisions that are made in a tournament. If we don't win I'll focus more on the reasons why we did bad rather than the reasons we did good. Maybe thats good or maybe thats bad, but no matter what theres always room for improvement.
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