West Central Fall Bass League - Green Lake, Diamond Lake & Nest Lake

West Central Fall Bass League - Green Lake - October 13th

The idea of holding a fall league event on Green Lake after the smallmouth season was closed has been kicking around for a few years and this year we finally decided to do it. Green Lake is known as one of the better smallmouth lakes in the state but there is also a good population of largemouth. A few years ago largemouth really played a factor in high tournament finishes on Green but over the past 2 seasons the smallies have once again dominated tournament bags. Despite good weather for the 9 teams who showed up to fish the largemouth were extremely difficult to catch and for the most part the bass brought to the scales were pretty small. My dad and I didn't catch very many fish but we ended up getting a few of the right bites and our 5 weighing 14.60 lbs took 1st place by over 4 lbs. I also had big bass for the day at 4.13 lbs

Our plan for the day was pretty simple. We fished milfoil beds all day long with a Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss and it worked out. Like I said earlier it wasn't easy at all as we often went a long time in between bites but at the end of the day we had the quality we needed for the win.

West Central Fall Bass League - Diamond Lake - October 20th

Diamond Lake has been a staple on the fall league schedule because even though at times it can be extremely tough it also has a very good population of large bass. That was shown last year as the winning 5 fish bag weighed in at over 22 lbs. This year the fishing was much more difficult and the winning weight was 16.65 lbs. I actually ended up fishing alone for this one and my 5 weighing 14.63 lbs was good for 2nd out of the 7 teams fishing.

I started off fishing in the reeds and had a 3 1/2 pounder in the boat relatively quickly but after that nothing seemed to be working for me. Diamond is a shallow lake and most of the fishing is either in the reeds or on the bank. The problem with fishing the bank was that almost all of the docks had been removed and with the water being so low the wood that is normally in the water was mostly high and dry. After fishing shallow for around 2 hours I only had the one bass in the boat so I headed offshore. I have never weighed an offshore fish in any of our league events over the years on Diamond and there have been many of them. Something told me to try it on this day though and it ended up working out to put some fish in the boat. Towards the ended of the day I moved back to my starting area and got on a little flurry to cull out most of my offshore fish and end up with barely enough weight to finish 2nd. My weigh fish came on black and blue homemade jigs and Berkley HAVOC Pit Bosses.

West Central Bass League - Nest Lake - October 27th

For most of the 7 teams fishing Nest Lake on this day the fishing was extremely tough. Only 2 limits were brought to the scales and most teams either zeroed or only had 1 fish. For my dad and I it was what could only be described as a dream day and we weighed our heaviest 5 fish limit ever. Our 5 weighing 25.55 lbs was easily enough to win and I also had the big bass for the day at 5.58 lbs

There really isn't all that much to say about our day. We started on a large weedy flat and had 2 fish in the boat really quickly but after that the action died. After that we bounced around to several other areas but after about 2 hours we were still stuck on those 2 fish. At that point we made the move to what turned out to  be THE SPOT. It really wasn't any different than the other areas we had been fishing but for whatever reason the big bass were stacked along a several 100 yard stretch of cabbage and we found em! It was really pretty unbelievable. By the ended of the day we culling out 4 1/2 lb bass which is something that just doesn't happen in Minnesota or really anywhere else for that matter. Besides averaging over 5 lbs for our tournament limit we figured our best 20 bass weighed around 83 lbs. Not too bad for 3 hours of fishing I'd say! All our fish came on various colors of Berkley HAVOC Pit Bosses.

With that the West Central Fall League season is over. That also means my competitive fishing is over for the 2012 season although I will still be fishing until the lakes freeze over which hopefully is a long ways off still. Our performance in fall league this year was really strong as we had 4 wins and 2 seconds in the 6 events we fished and sacking up over 25 lbs in the final event definitely leaves a good taste in my mouth as we head into winter.