West Central Fall Bass League Tournament - Lake Koronis & West Central Fall Bass League - Ringo Lake

West Central Fall Bass League Tournament - Lake Koronis - September 29th

The West Central Fall Bass League Tournament is basically the same as a normal fall league event except that the entry fee is $50 instead of $20 and we fish for 8 hours instead of 5. Despite perfect fall weather only 5 teams decided to show up for the tournament on Lake Koronis. We had excellent turnouts all summer long but for some reason attendance has been light so far for fall league. In any case the fishing was good for those who showed up. 1st place weighed in a 5 fish limit for over 18 lbs and our 5 weighing 17.41 lbs was good for 2nd place.

I knew our game plan coming in was going to be mostly fishing docks but we didn't want to start on that right away in the morning so our first few stops were deep weed lines. The action was slow but we eventually came across a point were my dad quickly put our biggest fish of day in the boat on a slow rolled Strike King spinnerbait. Immediately after netting his fish I hooked into what turned out to be a 4.54 lb smallmouth. Normally catching two 4 lb plus bass back to back would be a good thing but because of our regulations here in Minnesota, smallmouth must be immediately released after the 2nd weekend in September. It is really tough to throw back a big fish like that but it is what it is. After around 2 hours of fishing deep we only had the one fish in the box so the rest of the day was spent on the docks. The action wasn't fast and furious as we ended up catching only around 12 bass for the day but every once in awhile one of them would be a 3 lb plus fish and we eventually got up to our final weight. All the shallow fish came on a black/blue Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss.

West Central Fall Bass League - Ringo Lake - October 6th

Now that we are into October the fall league switches to a noon start time and maybe that is the reason 7 teams showed up to fish despite the weather being cold and windy. It also might have been because very little is known about Ringo. Despite it being close to our other league lakes it just doesn't get fished. For the most part it just doesn't have a very large population of bass but over the past couple of years people have been checking it out and it seems that there are more bass in the lake than at any time in the past. Before the week long off limits period people had reported having excellent bass fishing on the lake but mother nature threw us a curve 2 days before the event with a massive cold front. The lake is extremely shallow, with 7 feet being the deepest spot, and with such cold temperatures the water temps really plummeted. The water temps when we launched were around 45 degrees which was around a 20 degree drop from what it had been. Needless to say this shut the bite down in a hurry. Of the 7 teams fishing only one 5 fish limit came in and another boat weighed 3 and the rest only had 1 or no fish. Fortunately for us we were the team with the only limit and our 5 weighed in at 11.38 lbs. I also weighed in a big fish at 4.85 lbs but the big bass for the day ended up being 4.86 lbs. That is too close! I'll take the win though.

The fishing was certainly not great for us but I guess we figured a little something out that made the difference. After trying a variety of things my dad started slow rolling a green pumpkin chatterbait along the bottom and that was the ticket. He put 3 in the boat before I had even had a bite. I might be a little slow but I'm no dummy so I switched to the same lure and almost immediately put the big one in the boat and another keeper a short while later. Besides the chatterbait I think the other key for us was ignoring the reeds. Ringo is basically a slough lake and with so much of that cover available that is where the other competitors focused. We found before the cut off that we were getting more bites on hard bottom areas outside the reeds and that pattern held up on competition day.