Minnesota Pro Team Tour TOC - Clearwater Lake & West Central Fall Bass League - Norway Lake

Minnesota Pro Team Tour TOC - Clearwater Lake - September 15th-16th

We have fished the Big Bass Bonanza tournament circuit for a number of years but this year there were some major changes in store for the Tournament of Champions. This year BBB combined with the Excel tournament series to form the Minnesota Pro Team Tour. Excel is basically the northern division and BBB is the southern division. At the end of the year the top 15 teams from each division were invited to fish the TOC on Clearwater Lake. The stakes were also much higher than in past BBB TOC's. This year first place was worth $10,000 which is a great prize considering that there was no entry fee to fish the TOC.

Day 1

We had a tough practice but had enough good bites to put a game plan together that I thought could be pretty effective. We decided to start our tournament day on a large flat and to my surprise only 2 other boats started in the same area. Unfortunately they were set up on key spots that I had hoped to move around to. We didn't end up getting a bite for over an hour as we watched one of the other boats hammer the fish so it was time to try something else. Eventually we started putting some small keepers in the boat and then things really started rolling. I came to a tiny patch of milfoil and hooked into 3 bass in the 2 1/2 - 3 lb range but unfortunately I was only able to put 2 of them in the boat. At this point we moved back to our starting area and just ground it out. The bites weren't coming fast but every bite we got was a quality fish. By the end of the day we had worked up to an 8 fish limit weighing 22.18 lbs that put us in 7th place. For the day all of our fish came on either a green pumpkin or black and blue Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss flipped into or around milfoil.

Day 2 

We were definitely off to a good start after day 1 but what concerned me was the lack of bites we were getting. We only caught 11 keepers on day 1 and I knew putting 8 more keepers in the boat on day 2 was going to be really tough. With the difficult practice we had we did not have many different things going so on day 2 we had to go with the same plan as day one and hope it worked out. Long story short it didn't. We did end up hooking into 8 bass on the day but I lost 3 quality fish and we only ended up weighing 5 fish for 9.66 lbs. That dropped us like a rock in the standings and we ended up in 22nd place. Definitely not what we were hoping for with the stakes so high but it was a great experience and I like the direction the Minnesota Pro Team Tour is heading.

West Central Fall Bass League - Norway Lake - September 23rd

The Fall Bass League is run the same way as the summer league except that we fish on Saturdays for 5 hours for a 5 fish limit. The first Fall league was actually the previous weekend but since we were fishing the MN Pro Team Tour TOC we had to miss it so this was our first shot at fall league this year. With the cold and windy morning only 4 boats decided to show up to fish and those who stayed home probably made a wise choice. The fishing was tough on Norway Lake as 3 of the boats combined to catch only 7 fish. Fortunately we had a pretty good day and our 5 fish limit weighing 13.34 lbs was easily enough for the win. I think the key for us on the day was fishing fast and covering a lot of different types of water but at the same time working our lures quite slowly if that makes any sense.