West Central Bass League - Nest Lake

The first event of the 2010 West Central Bassmasters Bass League is in the books. We had a beautiful night to fish with cool temperatures and a light wind. I don't know if it was the weather or if people were just really ready to go fishing but for whatever reason we had the highest turnout ever for a bass league event with 26 teams showing up to compete. Most teams reported the fishing to be pretty tough and even though most of those competing were able to bring in a 3 fish limit the majority of the fish were quite small. There were some very nice bags as always though. My dad and I were able to get the year of to a very good start with a win in the first event of the season. We weighed in a 3 fish limit for 10.74 lbs. 2nd place went to Ron & Joe with 9.89 lbs. 3rd went to Jeff & Kris with 9.35 lbs and 4th went to Kelly & Mike with 8.60 lbs. The big fish for the evening was caught by David and weighed in at 4.04 lbs.

Our fishing for the evening seemed like it was pretty tough although in hindsight we really did have a pretty good night of fishing. We ended up catching around 15 fish and ended up throwing back enough weight to have had a high finish with the fish we released. The night did not go exactly according to plan though (but in fishing, it never really does.) We started on a deeper rocky area for smallmouth and after about 5 minutes I could tell the smallies were not "on" like they should have been. We still fished the area for another 20 minutes or so without a bite before moving to another area.

Despite realizing the smallmouth were not biting well our second stop was another smallmouth spot. This area was shallower with a mix of rock and weeds. On his first cast with a Strike King tube my dad boated a solid 3 1/2 lb largemouth. That was unexpected but a good fish none the less. A few minutes later I had a 5 lb largemouth shoot out of the water next to the boat as I was reeling my lure in. That fish caught me so off guard I was not able to drop my jig back to it quick enough to get it. We quickly realized that despite no smallies in the area there were a good number of quality largemouth around and we were able to move our weight up to the 10 lb range in the next hour. Those fish mostly came on watermelon jigs and tubes.

With a strong weight already in the box we were able to go back to our starting smallmouth area and really grind it out. Usually on a lake with both species you look for a largemouth to be your kicker fish but there are some really big smallies in Nest Lake and a 4 lb plus fish is a very good possibility. We did not find find one over 4 but my dad did finally catch a 3 1/2 lb smallie on a drop shot rig with a watermelon Lake Fork Tackle trick worm. That fish moved us up to our final weight for the evening. We were able to catch a few more 3 lb largemouth and smallmouth over the rest of the night but at that point they did not help us. It is always a good feeling when a 3 lb fish does not help your limit.

Thursday night league kicks off tonight on Lake Solomon and hopefully my dad and I can keep it going and win both events this week. We are sure going to give it our best shot!