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.