West Central Bass League - Week 11 & West Central Tournament Series - Green Lake

West Central Bass League - Nest Lake - August 15th

We had another great turnout as 21 teams showed up to fish Nest Lake despite the strong possibility of thunderstorms. After getting out on the water it was apparent the storms were coming. We ended up fishing for a little over an hour before most of the teams decided they had enough of the lightning and headed back to the ramp. At that point it was decided that the night would be over. The league rules state that an hour of fishing constitutes a full night of fishing so we held the weigh in. Despite fishing for such a short period of time the weights were off the charts as usual for the West Central Bass League this year.

1st - Paul & John - 3 - 11.89 lbs
2nd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 11.85 lbs
3rd - Donovan & Mike - 3 - 11.01 lbs
4th - Chris & James - 3 - 10.51 lbs
5th - Kelly & Eric - 3 - 10.17 lbs

Big Bass - Dean & Joey - 4.70 lbs

The weights for league this year have been crazy and even limiting this group to a little over an hour of fishing doesn't seem to hinder us. For our fishing we pulled up to our first and only spot of the night and it was on right from the start. We missed the first couple bites but had 10 lbs in the box within about 10 minutes including a nice kicker smallie weighing 4.45 lbs. From there we continued to upgrade to our final weight. Our weigh fish for the night came on a homemade watermelon/green pumpkin football jig and a green pumpkin Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss.

West Central Bass League - Lake Calhoun - August 16th

The storm that blew through the previous night brought with it the first major cold front of the season and the conditions Thursday night were pretty tough. It was cold, windy and the skies were high. It definitely affected the bite as the weights and numbers of fish were very low for Calhoun which is normally a very productive lake for numbers at a minimum and often it kicks out some very big bags. Because of the conditions we had our lowest turnout of the year as only 15 teams showed up to fish. There was only 1 good bag brought to the scales on this night and fortunately it was by us!

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 10.96 lbs
2nd - Ron & Joe - 7.76 lbs
3rd - Paul & Troy - 7.43 lbs
4th - Ross & Daryl - 7.26 lbs

Big Bass - Andy Nitchals - 4.38 lbs

Despite the big bag our fishing was not easy at all. We got very few bites on the night but we just happened to get 3 of the right bites. We started on docks and were able to get a few small keepers in the boat pretty quickly. Eventually we came to a dock that had a thick weed mat blown in on it and it just looked right. That dock produced a nice bass in the 3 1/2 lb range but since the other docks were getting fished we didn't really have anywhere else to go. We ended up trying offshore for awhile but that bite never really materialized on Calhoun this year so we went looking for the thickest shallow cover we could find. We found an area of reeds, pads and various other weeds matted up on the surface and started to work it over thoroughly. We only got a few bites from there but they were the right size and allowed us to win handily. Our weigh fish all came on a Okeechobee craw Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss.

West Central Tournament Series - Green Lake - August 19th

We had another great turnout for the final West Central Tournament Series of the 2012 season. 24 teams showed up to fish Green Lake for what turned out to be a pretty tough bite. The reports from the days leading up to the event indicated that Green Lake was really on fire but I don't know why exactly but on Sunday most people reported the fishing to be pretty tough. Tough on Green Lake is relative though. I think most everyone caught a lot of fish but the 3 lb class fish were reluctant to show themselves and the weights at the end of the day reflected that. The winning weight was a modest 18.59 lbs and only 2 other bags eclipsed the 18 lb mark. Our 6 fish limit weighed in at 16.91 lbs which tied us with 2 other teams on total weight but they both had a bigger bass than our to win that tiebreaker and we ended up in 8th place.

Full results of the tournament do not appear to be up as of this writing but they will be posted here. http://www.wcmnbassmasters.org/8.html

Since our final regular season league night will be held on Green Lake this Thursday I'm not going to go into much detail in this report. I will say that we tried a variety of things but only a couple things really worked well for us, but of course it didn't work well enough. As I said before 3 lb bites were tough to come by but we had a couple chances at them that didn't make it to the boat and that really hurt us in the final standings. I don't think we would have been able to win but I think we would have been at least in the money. Even though my results this year haven't been great it hasn't been because of lost fish. This was the first event of the year that lost fish really made a difference but that's just how it goes sometimes.