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.