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.