Andy's Bass Blog

B.A.S.S. Federation Nation Championship - Ouachita River

2011-11-16T15:18:00.004-06:00

As B.A.S.S. Federation Nation anglers our ultimate dream is to qualify for the Bassmaster Classic through the amateur ranks. Sure the camaraderie and competition at the club, state, and divisional level is a big part of it, but in the end what we are all striving for is a spot in the Bassmaster Classic. The B.A.S.S. Federation Nation Championship is the last step before the Classic. Do well there and you are in! Fortunately for me I was able to qualify for the BFNC at the Ouachita River held November 3-5 in Monroe Louisiana. Just getting to this point was a big accomplishment as the process of qualify is a long road through various tournaments. Unfortunately for me I was unable to capitalize on the opportunity. I really struggled on the Ouachita River and ended up weighing 11 bass for 12 lbs over the three day competition. This placed me 42 out of 54 anglers. In actuality you do not have to beat the full field though. There are six divisions and the winner of each division is awarded a Classic spot. I was in the Northern Division fishing against 8 other anglers and of course did not fair well there either, finishing 8th out of the 9 anglers and far short of my goal.

After the practice period I was pretty confident that I had an area where I could at least catch a limit. Although I had a couple of decent bites I knew finding the better quality fish was going to be a real challenge for me. I was boat 10 on the first day so I figured I would be able to get to my limit spot first and sure enough I did. The area was a creek, or bayou as they call them, off of the D'Arbonne Bayou. The fish were all the way as far back as I could go before a small bridge blocked the way. With the idle zones and the stumps back in the creek it took a good 45 minutes to get back in there but even with the water temps dropping rapidly the fish were still there. The action wasn't as fast as I had hoped for but I was able to get a small limit before noon. All of those fish came on a small 1/4 oz chartreuse and white Strike King spinnerbait slow rolled along the wood cover. It didn't feel as though I was going to get any big bites in this area though so as soon as I had 5 in the box I headed out to check some other backwater areas off the main river. I knew these areas wouldn't produce many bites but I also felt that I could get 1 or 2 bites in the 3 lb or better range from at least of them. My afternoon was uneventful until my final stop where I went as far back into one of the lakes as I could and the shad were going crazy. There were seemingly millions of shad flicking on the surface in the shallows. It seemed to be an ideal situation and I quickly put my best fish of the day in the boat. It was a little over 2 lbs and also came on the little Strike King spinnerbait. I fished around for awhile longer but with a 30 minute run back to the ramp I had very little time. My 5 fish limit for 5 lbs 13 oz had me in a respectable 26th place out of the whole field but there was a big problem. My Division leader was in 2nd place overall with a massive 14 lb 1 oz bag.

Going into day 2 with such a large deficit to overcome there was really no choice about what to do. I had to abandon my limit spot and fish for bigger fish even though I really didn't have an area I felt had a concentration of them. I started in the area where I ended day one and also fished several of the other backwaters off the main river where I had gotten bigger bites in practice but nothing happened. I went all morning fishing those areas and only came up with 1 small keeper on a chartreuse/black back Strike King KVD 1.5 crankbait. Towards the end of the day I decided to quickly hit my limit area with the little time I had left and just hope to find a big bite back in there. That didn't happen but I was able to add 2 more small keepers on a black/blue Strike King Rodent before time ran out. My Division leader struggled on the day but my 3 fish for 3 lbs 1oz only had me sliding further back.

On day 3 I was totally out of contention so I just decided to go fishing and try to have some fun. I started back in my small fish just to get some bites to start the day. The fish were actually biting really good and I caught more fish than I had any of the other days but most of them were short. I did pick up 3 keepers on the black/blue Strike King Rodent before deciding to just go exploring. The rest of the day was unproductive as I never had another bite. My 3 for the day ended up weighing in at 3 lbs 2 oz.

Even though the fishing was tough for me the week was still pretty incredible. Every competitor fished out of an identical brand new Skeeter ZX 200 with a Yamaha SHO 200 on the back. That is an impressive boat/motor combination without a doubt. Seeing 60 identical rigs parked in 2 rows in the boat yard is also something you don't see every day. The B.A.S.S. staff was also great. They handled everything that needed to be done as far as backing boats in or dealing with any boat issues. All we as competitors had to do was just go fishing. Jon Stewart, the Tournament Director, runs a great tournament and I hope to be fishing more with him. I'll sure be trying as hard as I can to get back!

West Central Fall Bass League - Diamond Lake

2011-10-27T15:28:00.004-05:00

We had 7 teams fishing the West Central Fall Bass League on Oct. 22 on Diamond Lake. The weather was just about perfect for a late fall day with calm winds and mild temperatures. The fish apparently liked the weather too because a lot of fish were caught and some big ones were brought to the scales as well including one of the heaviest bass weighed for league in years. Here are the results.

1st - Pat & Nasha - 5 - 22.49 lbs

2nd - Kolton - 5 - 16.68 lbs

Big Bass - Butch - 6.42 lbs.

My dad and I had a great day for numbers as we caught more than 30 bass on the day but besides a couple in the 3-4 lb range we just were not able to find enough quality fish to compete. Our 5 weighed in at 14.60 lbs to take 3rd place. We focused our efforts on the trees and a few remaining docks and that was not the deal for the day. We caught fish on a variety of lures but all our weigh fish ended up coming on various colors of Sweet Beavers.

This was not the final event on the Fall League schedule but it was my last tournament of the year in Minnesota. It seems like almost yesterday when the season started. My fishing is not over yet though as I will soon be heading down to Louisiana to compete in the B.A.S.S. Federation Nation Championship on the Ouachita River. I did some scouting down there a few weeks ago and it is definitely a challenging fishery but I'm super excited to get back down there and earn my spot in the Bassmaster Classic!

West Central Fall Bass League Tournament - Lake Osakis

2011-10-14T17:47:00.003-05:00

On October 1st The West Central Bassmasters held what we call the West Central Fall Bass League Tournament. Instead of our normal fall bass league format in which we fish 5 hours with a $20 entry fee, the tournament is a $50 entry and we fish for 7 hours. This year the lake chosen was Lake Osakis and after a day's fishing many were unhappy with the choice. The lake was very tough for the 8 teams fishing and only three 5 bass limits were brought to the scales. For some reason it wasn't tough for my dad and I and we were able to catch a lot of fish with a few nice ones to take the win handily. Here are the results.

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 5 - 16.50 lbs

2nd - Paul & John - 5 - 13.36 lbs

Big Bass - Andy Nitchals - 3.74 lbs

As I said earlier we had a good day on the water. While the others struggled we were able to get onto a key area that gave up 30 or more bass for us on the day. What was interesting is that we never saw another tournament boat all day long. It is pretty rare when things happen like that. In my experience on Osakis you just have to fish a lot of water with no bites to find a small little area where the bass are schooled up and that is what we were able to find. All of our fish came by pitching jigs and various soft plastics to the reeds and bullrushes.

West Central Fall Bass League - Lake Johanna & Norway Lake

2011-09-26T17:26:00.004-05:00

West Central Fall Bass League - Lake Johanna - September 17th

The forecast for the day was cold, windy and cloudy and that is exactly what we got for our event on Lake Johanna. It wasn't nearly as windy as many people were expecting although that is probably part of the reason we only had 8 boats fishing. The fish didn't cooperate very well either as most teams reported extremely tough fishing even though at the end of the day some nice bags were brought in. Here are the results.

1st - Dean & JD - 5 - 19.17 lbs

2nd - David & Lenny - 5 - 17.65 lbs

Big Bass - David & Lenny - 4.61 lbs

My dad and I had a tough day and only brought 4 to the scales weighing 13.70 lbs. That put us in 4th place for the day. Even though we only brought 4 to the weigh in that is a little misleading since we lost 4 fish that we had hooked up. So we had the bites but we just didn't get them in the boat for some reason. None of the fish we lost would have been enough to take 1st place though so that's a little consolation. As usual for Johanna all our fish came on jigs and various plastics fished in the reeds.

West Central Fall Bass League - Norway Lake - September 24th

We had a very nice turnout with 13 teams competing on Norway/Games Lakes for the West Central Fall Bass League. Although the day started cold it warmed up into a beautiful fall day on the water. The fishing was pretty good to with a lot of limits caught and some nice weights for Norway Lake. Here are the results.

1st - Paul & Lee - 5 - 15.15 lbs

2nd - Ross & Robbie - 5 - 14.33 lbs

3rd - Butch - 5 - 13.91 lbs

4th - Wayne - 5 - 13.57 lbs

Big Bass - Ross & Robbie - 4.71 lbs

My dad and I had another pretty tough week as we brought in 5 weighing 12.59 lbs to take 5th place. Actually the only real difference from our bag and those in the money was one 4 pounder. The teams who were in the money all had one 4 pounder and we just never had that bite. We spent a fair amount of time out deep like we usually do on these lakes but for whatever reason that bite was just not happening so we ended up catching our fish by fishing jigs and soft plastics around the docks and reeds.

Green Mill/West Central Bassmasters Fall Classic - Green Lake

2011-09-22T16:56:00.003-05:00

The West Central Bassmasters along with Green Mill teamed up for the 2nd annual Fall Classic held on Green Lake in Spicer on September 11th. We had a beautiful day that felt more like summer than fall and 33 of the 34 teams competing where able to bring in their 6 fish limit. The other team had mechanical issues so they did not get to the weigh in on time but I'm sure they had a limit as well because the fishing was excellent for most of the teams. My dad and I also had some great fishing for the day and we ended up weighing 5 smallmouth and 1 largemouth for 19.74 lbs which was good enough to take 1st place for the day! My track record for Green Lake tournaments is pretty strong, with numerous 2nd and 3rd place finishes, but it had actually been a number of years since I've gotten a win out there so this one felt really good. The full results of the tournament can be found here.

http://www.wcmnbassmasters.org/resources/2011FallClassicResults.pdf

A couple of things I found interesting about the results were the average size of the bass and the lack of largemouths weighed in. The weights all the way down were very solid and that led to the average weight of all the fish weighed in being 2.64 lbs per bass. This is the heaviest average I can remember in the tournaments our club has run out there. What makes that more surprising to me is that the big largemouth have almost completely disappeared. In the past couple of years the largemouth in the 2-4 lb range had really taken off and to do well in tournaments you usually needed to have at least a few of them in your bag. This year only 24 of the 198 bass weighed were largemouth. I have no idea where those bigger green fish went and no one else I've talked to seems to know either. The big fish of the day was a 4.74 lb smallmouth which is an absolute giant for Green Lake in recent years.

Immediately prior to the event my dad and I were up at the Whitefish Chain for a week fishing the Minnesota B.A.S.S. Federation Nation TOC so with no chance to pre-fish Green that week I decided that we would not pre-fish Green at all beforehand. That made the last time we had seen the lake about 3 weeks earlier for our last league night of the season. I would never attempt this for any other tournament but I have an extensive history on Green and thought it would be kind of fun to just figure things out on the fly.

We decided to start in the same spot we ended our last league night. That evening they were blasting topwaters at the end of the night and the hope was that they would be doing the same thing right away in the morning. The area was a large sand and gravel flat with a few scattered weeds in 4-8 feet of water. Sure enough it was on as soon as we pulled up and they were hitting the Super Spook. We had probably a dozen bites but they just weren't really getting it very good. We didn't lose any fish but just had a hard time hooking up. We did land about half of them but only 1 ended up riding to the weigh in. That smallie was about 3 1/4 lbs.

After the topwater action slowed we moved slightly deeper to the 8-15 foot range to test out several thick milfoil beds. Right away I put a 3 lb class largemouth in the boat on a green pumpkin Strike King Coffee Tube and a short while later added a nice 3 3/4 lb smallie on a watermelon Sweet Beaver in a clearing between to milfoil patches. At this point it was still early in the morning and we had 3 quality fish in the boat with only 3 more to go. I was wondering if the bite was just wide open all over the lake or if we were really onto something.

I did want to check some deep water in the 20-30 foot range though because I really like catching them that way on Green so that was our next couple stops. It didn't take long to figure out that deep bite wasn't going to happen. I caught 1 tiny bass out deep but the other key was there was nothing on our HDS screens. No bait, no fish, the screens were just blank. It made our decision to focus on shallow to mid depths for the rest of the day pretty easy.

After checking the deep stuff we moved back to the 6-12 foot range for the rest of the day primarily focusing on milfoil patches and sand/gravel flats. I was able to catch our second biggest bass of the day on a chartreuse/white Strike King spinnerbait fished over the sand which was actually the first spinnerbait fish I had caught on Green Lake all year. The action was much slower for quality fish in the late morning through the afternoon but we just kept bouncing around to various milfoil patches and every once in awhile we would get a smallie in the 3 to 3 1/4 lb range by flipping various plastics into and around the weeds. We ended up catching a pile of fish on the day but not really a ton of quality fish. For the day we ended up with 7 that went 3 lbs or better but with a 6 fish limit that was enough to get the job done!

West Central Fall Bass League - Nest Lake

2011-09-19T17:36:00.002-05:00

September 10th marked the first West Central Fall Bass League of the season although it sure didn't feel like fall out there. We had sunny, calm conditions with a high around 85 degrees. It was hot out there and this fishing was pretty hot for a few of the 11 teams competing on Nest Lake as well. The fall league is basically the same as our summer league except that they are held on Saturdays instead of during the week. We also fish for 5 hours and have a 5 fish limit instead of 3 hours and 3 fish. Here are the results.

1st - David & Tanisha - 5 - 16.91 lbs

2nd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 5 - 16.90 lbs

3rd - Paul & Scott - 5 - 16.13 lbs

Big Bass - David & Tanisha - 4.17 lbs

As you can see we had a good day but after the scales settled it was a huge disappointment to lose out by .01 lbs! We did have a fun day though catching a mixed bag of about a dozen fish with many of them being quality bass. We started on a large flat with cabbage and milfoil on it although this year the milfoil really exploded out there and was matted up everywhere. That is exactly what I was hoping to see and we got to work quickly by pitching various plastics to the clumps of milfoil. Most of those fish were smaller but one was a solid 3 pounder that stayed in the box for awhile. After the action slowed we headed out to a deeper rock area to see if the smallies were going. We were only able to get 1 bite out there but my dad put a nice smallie near 4 lbs in the boat on a green pumpkin football jig. Next it was off to an area I hoped would have cabbage but the milfoil had taken over just like everywhere else on the lake. Again we had only 1 bite in the area but it was our best largemouth of the day and a little over 3 1/2 lbs. After that we just bounced around between shallow rocks and milfoil switching back and forth between smallies and largemouth. As the day wore on it became apparent that the smallies were biting pretty well so we focused on that a little bit more and of the 5 bass we weighed 4 of them ended up being smallies.

Minnesota B.A.S.S. Federation Nation Tournament of Champions - Whitefish Chain

2011-09-15T21:51:00.003-05:00

This tournament was held over two days on September 8-9th on the Whitefish Chain of Lakes north or Brainerd. There is really only one goal for this tournament and that is to make the top 12. Those top 12 anglers then advance to the Divisional tournament that will be held next year in Illinois. Coming into this event I had qualified for the previous three Divisionals and will also be representing Minnesota at the National Championship later this fall so I really wanted to keep my streak going. Unfortunately for me I was not able to accomplish my goal. Over the two days I ended up weighing in 10 bass for 20.72 lbs which put me in 24th place out of 160 anglers. To finish that high against such a large field is a pretty good accomplishment but anything outside of the top 12 is just a huge disappointment. At least my club, the West Central Bassmasters, has continued our hot streak in the event. We placed 2 anglers in the top 12 for the 4th consecutive year and also took 2nd overall in the final team standings. A big congratulations to Joe Patock and Ron Mehr for finishing 3rd and 8th respectively to advance to the Divisional tournament!

Day 1

I had a pretty tough practice which seems to be par for the course for me the last few years in this tournament. That doesn't mean a thing though since I was able to advance each of those years. I actually ended up putting a few things together that I really thought were going to be good enough even though I knew I would get very few bites doing them. It's not about the number of bites though at the end of the day and I really thought the few bites I would get would be the size I needed.

We blasted off at Moonlight Bay and I was fishing within about a minute after that. I started off throwing a Super Spook on a bank with milfoil and cabbage. I really didn't expect much for numbers but this is where I thought I could get a kicker right off the bat in the morning. As it turns out the fish were biting big time and they were keepers but none of them would be the ones I'd want in the box at the end of the day. After boxing a limit and throwing the Spook for about an hour it just didn't feel like a big bite was coming so it was off to the next area.

My next stop was a weedline area that is kind of hard to describe. Let's just say it had some unique turns and points all in one general area with the coontail growing out to about 18-19 feet and some thicker milfoil up shallower. Once again I did not expect a ton of bites but instead they were biting good here too and again they were small. I was able to upgrade though and after fishing this area for awhile I had now had a limit of 14 inchers in the livewell. These fish were caught on jigs, 6" finesse worms and my trusty Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss. At this point I had caught quite a few bass but had not seen even one of the quality fish I had found in practice. I did feel like the bite would be better in the afternoon though so I suggested to my non-boater that we try some of his areas and then return to this spot later in the day.

So it was off to his spots or large area as it were. It turned out to be pretty similar to my primary area with coontail out to around 19 feet adjacent to a large flat. We fished along the edge of the flat for a long time and the action was really slow but once we got to a nice inside corner I was able to put my largest fish of the day into the boat. That one went about 2 3/4 lbs and came on a 6" finesse worm. After fishing that corner for quite awhile it was pretty clear nothing else was going to happen so it was back to my area where we would end up closing out the day.

After returning to my weedline area the fish were still biting and still pretty small but eventually my non-boater was able to put a couple fish in the 2lb range in the boat so I really started thinking the afternoon bite was going to play out after all. For the most part it didn't until right near the end of the day when I hooked a good fish in the 3 lb range only to have it jump off a little ways from the boat. After such a tough day for the quality fish losing that one really stung! I knew I wouldn't be way up in the standings even with it but it was just going to be that much more ground for me to make up the next day. For the day I weighed in 5 for 9.59 lbs which put me in 51st place.

Day 2

Despite being so far back in the pack after day 1 I was by no means out of the game. I've been in these tournaments long enough to know that day 2 is almost always a much tougher day and the weights usually drop off quite a bit. I still knew I had a lot of ground to make up though but based on my practice I knew I was around the fish to make up that ground if I could just get them to bite and get them in the boat.

I decided to skip my Spook pattern in the morning in hopes that my primary weedline area, which I felt would be better in the afternoon, would also be on in the early morning. I hadn't fished it right off the bat in the morning so I didn't know what to expect other than that I knew there were quality fish there. Just like the previous day the fish were there and biting but also all in the 14 inch range. Eventually I was able to boat one on a jig that went about 2 1/4 lbs which was decent but I also knew that would have to be my small fish for the day.

After fishing awhile longer we decided to hit some of my non-boaters docks and hope that the afternoon bite would be better. The dock bite was tough and I was only able to put one keeper in the boat that didn't help me at that point. It was nice to be in the back of the boat for awhile though and recharge a little bit. I knew I would have to be on my game the last couple hours of the day if I had any chance to make the top 12.

We made our way back to my primary weedline area and I continued to catch fish, upgrading by ounces every once in awhile, instead of the pounds I needed. Eventually I came across a little spot on the weedline where the bottom was slimy and the fish were sitting right there. I was able to catch 4 keepers making the exact same cast and each one was bigger than the next, topping out at about 2 1/2 lbs. I just kept thinking please keep getting bigger but then the action just died. Those fish all come on a 6" finesse worm rigged on a drop shot. Eventually after about half an hour casting to the same little spot my non-boater hooked into a 3 lb fish which was the biggest fish in my boat over the two days. I really hoped that fish would fire the school back up and I could pull it out at the end of the day and I thought it had happened. I called last cast and pulled up the trolling motor when I hooked into a giant. I looked down into the clear water and saw a huge white mouth only to be heartbroken when it turned to the side and was way too long to be a bass. Turns out it was about a 6 lb northern. No last second heroics for me. I did end up with better weight than day 1 with 5 bass for 11.13 lbs but I ended up about 1 1/2 lbs short of the top 12 mark. The good one I lost on day 1 would have put me really close to the cut line but I think I would have still ended up just a little short even if I had boated it. At least that's what I'm going to tell myself!

West Central Bass League - Tournament of Champions Week

2011-09-12T16:50:00.002-05:00

West Central Bass League TOC - Diamond Lake - August 31st

The top 10 teams, based on the final points in the TOY standings on Wednesday night were invited to fish the Tournament of Champions. Each team then threw their pick for a lake into a hat and Diamond Lake was drawn. Diamond used to be known as an extremely tough lake but also one that held giant fish. It has changed in recent years and the big fish are gone for the most part but it now kicks out huge numbers of fish. On this night most of the teams reported catching a lot of fish and some nice weights were brought in as well. Here are the results.

1st - Ron & Joe - 3 - 11.39 lbs

2nd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 10.55 lbs

3rd - Bill & Todd - 3 - 9.59 lbs

Big Bass #1 - Scott & Kelly - 4.41 lbs

Big Bass #2 - Ron & Joe - 3.92 lbs

Bill & Todd - 3.92 lbs

As you can see we finished 2nd to cap off a pretty good year on Wednesday nights in which we also finished 3rd in the TOY standings. For the final night on Diamond our plan was to primarily fish the docks and trees since that had been the main pattern all year on the lake. We did venture to the reeds a couple of times but were unable to get bit doing that although several other teams reported catching a lot of fish out of the reeds. We ended up catching a lot of fish on the docks though. All of our weigh fish came by pitching and skipping docks with various jigs and soft plastics.

West Central Bass League TOC - Norway Lake - September 1st

Just as on Wednesday nights the top 10 teams were invited to fish the Thursday night Tournament of Champions. We had fished Norway Lake on the last regular season night and by luck of the draw that is where the TOC was held. At least everyone in the field had been out the previous week so we all had a feel for the conditions. The fishing didn't end up being quite as good though. Here are the results.

1st - Ron & Joe - 3 - 9.39 lbs

2nd - Paul & Pete - 3 - 9.22 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 8.86 lbs

Big Bass #1 - Mike Nitchals - 3.85 lbs

Big Bass #2 - Ron & Joe - 3.70 lbs

We were able to end the Thursday night campaign which had us placing 2nd in the TOY standings on a solid note with one last in the money finish. As many readers know my preference is to fish in Games lake but that plan had not been working at all this year. The previous week we decided to abandon Games and Spend our time in Norway. We were able to produce a decent limit but at the end of the night we ended up culling all those fish out on a quick trip to Games. For the TOC there was no question that we would spend most of our time in Games. We were able to catch a pretty quick limit fishing deep with crankbaits and jigs but the fish were small and after awhile it slowed way down. We ended up running around a little bit but I knew we had to be back on our prime deep stuff at the end of the night. That is when my dad caught the big fish of the night on a Rapala DT 16 with about 20 minutes to go.

With the TOC's complete the summer West Central Bass League season is now over. The fishing is far from over though as the West Central Fall Bass League starts on September 10th and runs until the end of October. Since we run out of daylight on weeknights the Fall League is held every Saturday. This allows us to fish for 5 hours instead of just 3 which I enjoy because it gives a little more time to figure things out. Last year the fall fishing was extremely tough for the most part. Hopefully it will be a lot better this year!

West Central Bass League - Week 13

2011-08-30T19:23:00.004-05:00

West Central Bass League - Green Lake - Aug 24th

August 24th marked the final Wednesday night of the 2011 West Central Bass League season. We still have the TOC's for the top 10 on each night but the regular season and TOY standings are all wrapped up. We had 15 boats fishing on what started out to be a pretty windy evening but ended up being a perfect night for fishing. For the most part though the smallies didn't cooperate and the overall weights for the night were pretty low. Here are the results.

1st - Ron & Joe - 3 - 9.50 lbs

2nd - Grant & Tim - 3 - 8.96 lbs

3rd - Paul & Pete - 3 - 8.30 lbs

4th - Dean & JD - 3 - 8.28 lbs

Big Bass - Grant & Tim - 3.73 lbs

My dad and I couldn't find any real quality either and ended up just out of the money in 5th place with 3 for 7.75 lbs. We actually ended up catching quite a few fish on the night but only found 1 in the 3 lb range. We primarily fished sand and gravel flats with scattered weeds in 6-10 feet of water. Most of our fish came dragging green pumpkin tubes but towards the end of the night I was able to get several bites on the Super Spook but only 1 fish actually hooked up with the lure.

The Team of the Year standings were also decided on this night. The top 10 in the standings are invited to fish the TOC on Diamond Lake. Generally the TOY race is a tight one near the top but this year Ron & Joe had it wrapped up before the final night. There was a tie for 2nd going into the night but we just didn't get it done and slipped to 3rd in the overall standings. Here are the top 5 teams for the year.

1st - Ron & Joe - 259 points

2nd - Paul & Pete - 243 points

3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 241 points

4th - Scott & Kelly - 225 points

5th - Grant & April - 217 points

West Central Bass League - Norway Lake - August 25th

We had 16 boats fishing the final Thursday night of the West Central Bass League. The fishing was pretty typical for the lake in recent years although the top weight was one of, if not the largest weight weighed on this lake. Here are the results.

1st - Paul & Pete - 3 - 13.01 lbs

2nd - Jim & John - 3 - 9.46 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 9.36 lbs

4th - Grant & Tim - 3 - 8.50 lbs

Big Bass - Paul & Pete - 5.18 lbs

I'm not going to go into any detail on how we caught our fish on this night since by luck of the draw we are returning to Norway Lake for the TOC. Hopefully that will be another successful night as well and I will give the details at that time.

For Thursday night the TOY race was extremely tight and after a little flip flopping still ended up really close with only 2 points separating the top 3 teams. As on Wednesdays the top 10 in the standings are invited to fish the TOC. Here are the top 5.

1st - Paul & Pete - 251 points

2nd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 250 points

3rd - Ron & Joe - 249 points

4th - Dean & JD - 227 points

5th - Grant & Tim - 210 points

It was another great year for the West Central Bass League. Congratulations to everyone who was able to make the TOC on either night!

West Central Bass League - Week 12 & Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Le Homme Dieu

2011-08-26T19:54:00.003-05:00

West Central Bass League - Eagle Lake - August 17th

We had 19 boats fishing Eagle Lake on this night and it was sort of a tale of two lakes. 8 teams brought in 3 fish limits weighing 10 lbs or more while the rest of the teams had 8 lbs or less. In addition to that many of the larger bags were comprised mostly of smallmouth bass. Here are the results.

1st - Grant & Tim - 3 - 12.89 lbs

2nd - Ron & Joe - 3 - 12.12 lbs

3rd - Ron & Dave - 3 - 11.65 lbs

4th - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 11.23 lbs

5th - Brad & Wayne - 3 - 10.96 lbs

Big Bass - Jeff & Kris - 5.03 lbs Smallmouth

Despite our strong weight at the end of the night our evening started off pretty slow. We fished docks for quite awhile and only had one lost fish to show for it. After that we moved to another area where my dad quickly put a chunky 3 1/2 lb largemouth in the boat on a watermelon jig. A short while later I added a 3 1/2 lb smallie from a little deeper water on a drop shot finesse worm. After the action slowed in that area we moved back to the dock where we had lost a fish earlier but were unable to get that fish to bite again so we started working the large flat out from the docks and quickly got into the smallies. My dad filled our limit with a 3 lb class fish and just a few minutes later I had a 5 lb plus smallie almost to the net before it jumped off. That was a heart breaker but just a short while later my dad added a 4 1/2 lb smallmouth for a nice upgrade. We stayed in that area the rest of the night and caught several more fish but none that would help us. All of the smallies came on spinnerbaits burned just under the surface.

West Central Bass League - Lake Andrew - August 18th

We had 18 teams fishing Lake Andrew and overall I would have to say the fishing was very good. This lake is not known for big fish in recent years but a few of them showed up on this night. To get into the 5th and final money spot also took the most weight I can remember in years. Here are the results.

1st - Kyle & Jim - 3 - 9.94 lbs

2nd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 9.83 lbs

3rd - Travis & Hunter - 3 - 9.28 lbs

4th - Ron & Joe - 3 - 8.67 lbs

5th - Paul & Pete - 3 - 8.55 lbs

Big Bass - Kyle & Jim - 5.65 lbs

Unlike the previous night on Eagle we got off to a fast start on Andrew. I didn't catch one on my first cast but I did on the 2nd and 3rd and we continued to whack em for about a half hour on one small stretch of deep weed line. Many of the fish were smaller but after that half hour we already had a really solid bag in the boat. Once the action slowed we poked around the same general area and a short while later I put a 4 lb class fish in the boat from a little shallower water. All of those fish came on a homemade watermelon jig. A little later in the evening we moved up to the slop and I was able to put a 3 lb fish in the boat on a Spro Bronzeye frog. It wasn't a huge upgrade but it helped a little. I think that might have been the first frog fish I have weighed this year.

Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Le Homme Dieu - August 21st

This tournament was the final event of 5 on the Big Bass Bonanza for 2011. Going into it my dad and I were sitting in 11th place in the TOY standings. The top 10 in the standings are invited to fish a no entry fee TOC so that was what we were gunning for. To make a long story short we didn't get the job done as we finished 24th out of 36 on Le Homme Dieu. Our 8 fish limit weighed in at a paltry 14.35 lbs. The final results are not out yet but I believe we ended up finishing 13th in the overall TOY standings which was by far our worst showing since we started fishing the BBB circuit.

Our practice for this tournament was really tough. We were able to catch fish but for the most part they were all small until the end of the day when we got onto what I thought was going to be a really solid pattern and location. We ended up spending most of our tournament day on a large flat in 6-12 feet of water throwing a variety of baits from spinnerbaits and crankbaits to jigs and Texas rigged plastics. Our first fish of the day was a nice 2 1/2 lb bass which tells me that the quality fish were still around but we were just unable to put any other nice ones in the boat as you can tell from our total weight.

B.A.S.S. Federation Nation Northern Divisional - Mississippi River, Pools 18 & 19

2011-08-19T19:49:00.007-05:00

As many of you probably know by now I had a very successful tournament last week at the Northern Divisional out of Ft. Madison Iowa held August 10-12. I finished the 3 day event with a combined total of 12 bass for 21 lbs 14 oz to place 11th out of 96 overall but more importantly it was the heaviest weight of anyone on the 12 man Minnesota team. By being the top angler for Minnesota I have earned the right to fish in the B.A.S.S. Federation National Championship to be held on the Ouachita River in Louisiana in November. If I finish 1st in my division at that tournament I will be going to the Bassmaster Classic! For this blog I will break down my week on the Mississippi.

Before I can get to the Iowa fishing I have to go back to last fall and the Minnesota State TOC on Lake Minnetonka. The main goal at the TOC is to finish in the top 12 to make the team for Divisionals but the secondary goal is to be in the top 6 which means you will be a guaranteed boater at Divisionals. I finished 7th last fall so going into the Divisionals I was already setting up a game plan as a non-boater. When I pulled into the hotel in Ft. Madison the first person I ran into was Rick Billings who finished 13th last fall. I was wondering what he was doing there and he informed me that the 5th place guy had dropped out and he had moved up to 12th. Later that evening at the team meeting I was officially given the opportunity to move up to the 6th and final guaranteed boater slot which I gladly accepted. In these tournaments each angler gets equal time running the trolling motor but being the boater is still quite a big advantage so I was thrilled with the chance. Now I just had to go catch em!

Day 1

On the first day of the tournament I had a great boat draw as the 5th boat out and a partner who didn't have a whole lot going but what he did have was all in the same general area that I planned to fish. This worked out well because the fishing was really tough and the portion of the river we were allowed to fish was huge. I wanted to spend as much time with a line in the water as I could instead of running all over up and down the river. After my practice I really only had confidence in 1 large backwater area and 1 smaller backwater lake nearby. I decided to go to the larger area simply because I felt it had the size to hold more fish and the way things were playing out I knew just catching 5 keepers, of any size, a day would probably be enough to do well.

After a 20 minute run I was able to start right on what I felt was the best stretch of water in my larger area. It was a ridge with logs and brush in about a foot of water on top that dropped off sharply to 3-4 foot along the edge. Several other boats, but not nearly as many as I expected, came into the area and set up on several of the other "good" brushy points nearby. Even though practice was tough I really felt like I could put 5 keepers in the boat quickly. Of course that didn't happen and after an hour of fishing I had only boated a couple of short fish.

After the slow start I jumped over to one of the brushy points that another boat had started on and promptly put my first keeper in the boat. Next I moved over to the other point a boat had started on and put 2 more keepers in the box followed by my 4th keeper a short ways down the same bank. Now I had 4 in the box and it was only an hour and a half into the day. Things were looking up but then reality struck and I didn't have another keeper bite for hours. Finally around noon or so I was able to put my 5th keeper in the boat. All of my fish on the first day came by flipping a black/blue Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss rigged with a 3/8 oz tungsten weight to brush and laydown logs.

On the 20 minute run back to the weigh in site I noticed that I was slowly losing RPMs along the way. I had never experienced anything like that before but I wasn't too worried by it so I made 1 last stop to fish for about 10 minutes before checking in. I didn't catch anything there but at that point I was barely able to get the boat back on plane. Now I definitely knew I had some sort of issue but we were able to cruise slowly to the weigh in with plenty of time to spare.

My 5 bass limit on day one was one of only 17 limits brought in by the entire field so as I expected the fishing was extremely tough. They weighed in at 9 lbs 5 oz which put me in 13th overall but 2nd on the Minnesota team to Tom Kiefer who weighed in 11 lbs.

Day 2

After the day 1 weigh in I scrambled around to try to figure out my boat issues but to make a long story short I wasn't able to get anything resolved. Fortunately our Minnesota team was full of great guys and I was able to borrow a boat from Joe Patock. I'm a Skeeter guy and Joe's boat is a Ranger but I won't complain too much. It was actually a great boat to fish out of and I can't thank Joe enough!

On day 2 I was in the middle of the pack for the blast off order but I was still able to get on the spot I wanted to start on which was the same place I started day 1. Once again all it produced was short fish. Next I moved to the same point I caught my first keeper on day 1. A boat had started there again but I was able to come behind them and pick up my first keeper of the day. After that I bounced around fishing points and banks with brush and laydowns and actually ended up catching a lot more fish than on day 1 but none of them met the 14" length limit.

By this time my partner wanted some time on the trolling motor and he chose to fish in a slough I had fished on day 1 but hadn't made my way to yet on this day. I was able to pick up my 2nd keeper behind him on just a muddy bank. My 2 fish from the backwaters, like day 1, came on a black/blue Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss. At this point he wanted to go check some of his other stuff and I was extremely disappointed to be leaving with only 2 keepers despite catching so many fish.

His first stop was a creek mouth with rip rap on either side. While he worked the rocks with a tube I wanted to show them something different so I picked up a chartreuse/black back Strike King KVD 1.5 crankbait and almost immediately had a keeper smallmouth in the boat. A short while later the crank struck again and I had another keeper largemouth in the boat. That was it for me on the day and I was just hoping that the fishing got tougher as everyone was predicting it to.

On day 2 my 4 bass weighed in at 6 lbs 10 oz which although much lighter than day 1 actually moved me up from 13th to 12th in the overall standings. It was a tough day for the rest of the Minnesota team as well and the day 1 leader zeroed. I actually went from about 2 lbs behind on day 1 to having a nearly 4 lb lead on the rest of the team going into day 3. I knew if there was ever a time to advance to the next tournament this was it but I also knew I still had to catch em on day 3. I was confident I could scrape out at least a few more keepers from my area on day 3 but nothing is ever guaranteed in fishing.

Day 3

On day 3 I was one of the last boats out at blast off but my partner for the day hadn't caught much the previous 2 days and since I was in a good position to finish first on the Minnesota team he told me to just go do my thing and he would stay out of the way. That really is true sportsmanship and if the positions were reversed I would do the same thing for him or anyone else. With that in mind I knew I had a full day to fish my area and just catch as much as I could.

I started on a different stretch than I did the first 2 days and almost right away I had one in the boat that was just on the edge of being a keeper or not. I decided to keep it for the time being and check it later in the day thinking that if it was the only fish I caught I would weigh it and risk the short fish penalty. It could have been the difference maker in a tough tournament like this. After that the action was just slow. I wasn't even getting many short fish like the previous day.

I started experimenting with several different lure and weight combinations, even though I don't think it made that much difference, but about halfway through the day I finally got a solid keeper on a black/blue Berkley Chigger Craw rigged with a 1/2 oz tungsten weight. I stuck with that combination for the rest of the day and was able to boat 2 more good keepers with the last one coming about 45 minutes before I had to leave for the weigh in. Right before leaving I checked the first fish I caught on the day and it just was too close to risk it so I threw it back leaving me with 3 fish in the box. With the 4 lb lead going into the day I felt pretty good about my chances but you just never know and I certainly didn't want to get penalized and lose out that way.

My 3 bass for the day weighed in at 5 lbs 15 oz and overall the fishing was even tougher yet so despite the smaller weight I once again moved up one place to finish 11th in the entire field. I was one of the last people in line to weigh on day 3 and before I even weighed in my Minnesota teammates informed me that my 3 fish were going to be more than enough to finish 1st on our team. I didn't want to believe it at first but when everything was officially weighed I had done it!

I have been fishing this Federation stuff for a long time and to finally make it to the National Championship is really unbelievable! It isn't over yet though. I still have to perform at the Ouachita River in November.

Now I'll address a couple of questions I have gotten that were pretty interesting to me. The first was about my choice of area for the tournament. Many people apparently felt that it would not be able to hold up over the course of a 3 day tournament. For me it was the only area I felt like I could get a number of keeper bites. I had a number of spots up and down the river that I felt like I could get maybe 1 or 2 bites off of but this backwater area was the only place I had the confidence I could go to and get multiple keeper bites. I knew there would be pressure from other fishermen in the area but as it turned out there weren't nearly as many boats in there as I expected and I'm sure that helped a lot but it was a large backwater and there's no question a large number of bass live there. It was just a matter of getting them to bite.

I was also asked about being nervous going into day 3 with a chance to close it out and to be honest I wasn't nervous at all. Like I told him I just go and do what I do and a lot of the time it works. Sometimes it doesn't. I do have a lot of confidence in the way I fish though and that really is what you need in tournaments like this. I won't lie though as day 3 ground on and the fishing was extremely slow I was feeling the pressure ratchet up and up. It was probably the most nerve-wracking day I've ever had on the water. That's not to say I got all spun out or anything that affected my fishing but it was pretty intense.

This was my 3rd consecutive Divisional tournament and I stunk it up the previous 2 years but I guess I made up for it this time! I wouldn't trade away those other 2 years though. For me the week of the Divisional has become my favorite week of the year. It really is an amazing experience to go down and hang out with the other state team members. If you fish B.A.S.S. Federation stuff you really do owe it to yourself to try as hard as you can to get on your 12 man state team. I'll sure be trying to make it again next year. I promise it will be a blast even if the fishing isn't so hot.

West Central Bass League - Week 10 & Other Results

2011-08-14T18:54:00.005-05:00

West Central Bass League - Norway/Games Lakes - August 3rd

We had a nice turnout on this night with 21 boats fishing in very pleasant conditions. A lot of fish were caught as well but as is typical for these lakes in recent years the weights were relatively small. It was one of the few nights of the year where the 9 lb barrier was not bested by any team. Here are the results.

1st - Ron & Joe - 3 - 8.91 lbs

2nd - Paul & Pete - 3 - 8.77 lbs

3rd - Tyler & Joakim - 3 - 8.65 lbs

4th - Dean & Kathy - 3 - 8.42 lbs

5th - Troy & Chad - 3 - 8.17 lbs

Big Bass - Paul & Pete - 4.66 lbs

My dad and I struggled once again on these lakes and ended up with 3 fish for 6.41 lbs. That was only good enough for 14th place on the evening. Normally we fish deep for schools of larger fish but that bite has been almost nonexistent over the past several years so we decided to start shallow on dock and reeds this time. We were able to catch some fish doing that but couldn't find the size so we ended up back on the deep structure where we were able to find fish with Rapala DT 16 crankbaits and homemade jigs but as you can tell from the results we never found the quality we needed. This is apparently a lake I need to put more time on to hopefully figure out how to compete out there.

West Central Bass League - Lake Calhoun - August 4th

We had another beautiful night of fishing with calm winds and mild temperatures for the 18 teams competing on Lake Calhoun. The fishing was pretty good too as all 18 teams were able to bring a 3 fish limit to the scales. Here are the results.

1st - Tim & Grant - 3 - 10.82 lbs

2nd - Ron & Joe - 3 - 9.97 lbs

3rd - Paul & Paul - 3 - 8.50 lbs

4th - Dean & JD - 3 - 7.69 lbs

5th - Jeff S - 3 - 7.56 lbs

Big Bass - Jeff S - 4.56 lbs

My dad and I brought in a 3 fish limit for 7.54 lbs which was good for 6th place and just out of the money by .02 lbs. The last time we fished this lake for league we were on the fish really good and caught the fire out of them so the plan was to fish pretty much the same way in the deeper weeds. It didn't end up happening for us the same way although we caught a fair number of fish the size was just lacking.

As many of you probably know I left to fish the B.A.S.S. Federation Northern Divisional the next day after our Lake Calhoun league event and I will get to that in my next blog. While I was away though my dad fished with several people in my place and I will post the results for those events here. I won't go into any detail since I did not fish these events.

Big Bass Bonanza - Green Lake - August 6th

My dad and Eric Tessmer weighed an 8 fish limit for 17.81 lbs to finish in 14th place out of 32 boats. The winners had 25.02 lbs

West Central Bass League - Long Lake - August 10th

18 boats fishing

1st - Ron & Joe - 3 - 14.52 lbs

2nd - Scott & Kelly - 3 - 13.41 lbs

3rd - Kyle & Kirk - 3 - 13.37 lbs

4th - Troy & Chad - 3 - 10.08 lbs

5th - Paul & Pete - 3 - 9.29 lbs

Big Bass - Ron & Joe - 5.67 lbs

My dad and John Z. had a 3 fish limit for 5.17 lbs which put them in 7th for the night.

West Central Bass League - Lake Koronis - August 11th

12 boats fishing

1st - Ron & Joe - 3 - 12.56 lbs

2nd - Paul & Pete - 3 - 10.83 lbs

3rd - Grand & Tim - 3 - 8.06 lbs

Big Bass - Ron & Joe - 4.74 lbs

My dad and Isaiah G. weighed a 3 fish limit for 6.07 lbs which put them in 9th for the night.

My next blog post will detail my week in Fort Madison for the Northern Divisionals. I'll try to have it up in the next few days.

West Central Bass League - Week 9

2011-08-01T11:34:00.003-05:00

West Central Bass League - Lake Andrew - July 27th

We once again had 17 teams fishing the West Central Bass League on Lake Andrew. That seems to be a common number this year and really it is just about the right amount of boats for our lakes in this area. There have been times when crowding is a major issue on a small lake like Andrew but it wasn't at all on this night. Unfortunately the fish still wouldn't cooperate for the most part. It was a typical night on the lake with the winners having 10 lbs but the vast majority of limits brought in weighed 4-5 lbs. Here are the results.

1st - Paul & Pete - 3 - 10.08 lbs

2nd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 7.90 lbs

3rd - Ron & Joe - 3 - 7.32 lbs

4th - Scott & Kelly - 3 - 6.65 lbs

5th - Jared & Tonya - 3 - 5.64 lbs

Big Bass - Paul & Pete - 4.01 lbs

Our plan for the night was to fish deep weedlines and hope to just get 3 good bites. Catching fish on this lake is usually not a problem but finding quality definitely is. We actually started off with a bang and had our limit in the boat within about 10 minutes including our biggest fish of the night that was a little under 3 lbs. After that we caught fish pretty much every place we stopped and ended up catching probably 30 fish for the night but we just didn't get enough quality bites to challenge for the win. All our weigh fish came on a watermelon Brush Hog fished on deep weedlines.

West Central Bass League - Lake Johanna - July 28th

This one had me nervous since the league had visited Johanna the week before and we were unable to even get one bite. Just by luck of the draw we happened to return this week and with a week long off limits period there was no chance to get out to figure anything out. As tough as the fishing was the previous week for some of the teams it was even tougher this week and of the 12 teams fishing only 3 limits were brought to the scales.

1st - Paul & Pete - 3 - 10.17 lbs

2nd - Lee & Tim - 3 - 9.17 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 8.69 lbs

Big Bass - Paul & Pete - 4.14 lbs

Like I said earlier I didn't know what to expect for the night except that I knew we were going to fish completely different areas than we did the previous week and that is what we did. We still fished the same type of cover which are the many large reed beds on the lake but just did it in spots that we don't normally fish. It ended up working out for us as we were able to boat 3 fish after blanking a week before. The 3 fish we caught came on a watermelon homemade jig flipped and swam around the reeds.

West Central Bass League - Week 8

2011-07-28T14:57:00.003-05:00

West Central Bass League - Lake Johanna - July 20th

Johanna used to be one of the better big fish lakes on the West Central Bass League schedule but in recent years the big bass seem to be much more scarce. It does seem to be making a little comeback as far as the average size fish goes though. Overall the fishing was pretty tough with 17 boats fishing and only 31 bass brought to the scales but the average weight per fish was an impressive 3.28 lbs. It seemed to be a tale of two lakes on this night. Some teams reported catching them really good while the other half of the field struggled mightily. Put my dad and I in the latter camp as we failed to boat a fish to tie with 3 others for last place on the night. Here are the rest of the results.

1st - Paul & Pete - 3 - 11.89 lbs

2nd - Bill & Todd - 3 - 11.81 lbs

3rd - Jim & Brad - 3 - 11.02 lbs

4th - Ron & Joe - 3 - 10.38 lbs

5th - Paul & Dave - 3 - 9.52 lbs

Big Bass - Bill & Todd - 4.52 lbs

What can I say? We never had a bite in 3 hours of fishing. We mostly fished areas that have traditionally been good for us but nothing was happening. I could sense early on that it was going to be really tough so we buckled down and fished thoroughly in a couple of spots which turned out to be our big mistake. In retrospect we should have been moving faster and fishing different areas of the lake since the good bags came from a completely different area of the lake and everyone who was fishing the same general area as us struggled.

West Central Bass League - Nest Lake - July 21st

The West Central Bass League had visited Nest Lake 2 weeks earlier and the fishing was just about the worst it's ever been on the lake so the expectations for fishing on this night were not high among the 17 teams competing. The fishing did improve somewhat but for the most part it was another tough night on the water for most. Here are the results.

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 11.10 lbs

2nd - Dean - 3 - 9.45 lbs

3rd - Ron & Joe - 3 - 8.23 lbs

4th - Donovan & Brad - 3 - 8.20 lbs

5th - Paul & Pete - 3 - 7.42 lbs

Big Bass - Andy Nitchals - 4.37 lbs

Despite the talk of tough fishing I mentioned earlier we actually caught them pretty good for the evening. We started on several smallmouth spots even though I knew they were going to be really tough to get to bite and that proved to be true. We never had a bite from a brown fish so it was on to the pattern I really felt would work. That involved finding the thickest milfoil and cabbage in 5-7 feet of water. We ran this pattern the rest of the night and it really paid off as we caught quality fish in several areas where we found the right combination of cover. We probably caught around 15 fish in the 3 hours and most of them were 3 lbs or better. It was a nice way to recover from the previous nights bomb. We caught our fish on a variety of soft plastics but all our weigh fish ended up biting a watermelon Zoom Brush Hog.

West Central Bass League - Week 7

2011-07-18T17:04:00.004-05:00

West Central Bass League - Lake Solomon - July 13th

This was the second visit to Solomon for the West Central Bass League and while the fishing wasn't great earlier in the year, at the end of the night some pretty impressive weights were brought in. That was not the case on this night as most teams reported catching very few fish and the final weights were some of the lowest in years for this lake. With 19 teams fishing we paid back 5 spots.

1st - Scott & Kelly - 3 - 8.28 lbs

2nd - Travis & Hunter - 3 - 8.03 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 7.05 lbs

4th - Grant & April - 3 - 6.65 lbs

5th - Lee & Nick - 3 - 6.20 lbs

Big Bass - Scott & Kelly - 3.70 lbs

I knew going into the night that the bites would be few and far between so I put a 1/2 oz black/blue jig in my hands and stuck with it all night long hoping for just 3 good bites. We mostly flipped reeds all night long since that is the primary cover in the lake but we were never able to get a bite from the reeds. Our first and best fish in the 3 lb range came as I swam my jig by a log in the water. None of the other wood we fished panned out though and the rest of our keepers ended up coming when we found a school of small fish on a shallow rocky area. We probably caught 8 fish out of the school but the biggest 2 were only around 2 lbs which was at least enough to get us into 3rd.

West Central Bass League - Eagle Lake - July 14th

Last year Eagle Lake kicked out some of the largest weights seen on the West Central Bass League. This year the fishing was quite a bit tougher for the 18 teams competing but some nice weights were still brought to the scales. Here are the results.

1st - Scott & Al - 3 - 10.72 lbs

2nd - Ross & Daryl - 3 - 10.45 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 9.91 lbs

4th - Dean & JD - 3 - 9.35 lbs

5th - Paul & Troy - 3 - 9.34 lbs

Big Bass - Todd & Jeff - 4.60 lbs

Eagle is almost entirely developed so the primary cover is docks and that is where we started. Within half an hour we had a 3 fish limit in the boat with 2 fish over 3 lbs. Those fish came on a green pumpkin Strike King Bleeding Bait tube skipped under the docks. I was expecting the fishing to be a grind so it was great to get off to such a hot start. This allowed us to explore some offshore while most everyone else was beating the docks. We were able to find an area where a thick coontail weed line came up next to a rocky bottom. After working the area pretty thoroughly I was able to add a nice 3 lb smallie on a watermelon Berkley Slim Shaky worm rigged on a drop shot. That fish came about half way through the night and we were never able to catch another keeper the rest of the evening but it was enough to get us into 3rd once again.

With the 2 3rd place finishes this week we have moved back into the lead for the Team of the Year standings on both Wednesday and Thursday nights. We do allow 2 drops out of the 12 weeks we fish in the summer so it is tough to figured out how the points shake out until the very end of the year. In any case it is a good place to be right now.

West Central Bass League - Week 6 & Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Ida

2011-07-16T15:55:00.003-05:00

West Central Bass League - Nest Lake - July 6th

Well it was another tough night of fishing for the West Central Bass League. Nest is usually one of the better lakes on the schedule with numbers of quality largemouth and smallmouth but they did not want to show themselves on this night. There were no smallies weighed in and 11 of the 19 teams were unable to bring in a 3 fish limit. That is just unheard of for Nest Lake. Here are the results.

1st - Jared & Tonya - 3 - 8.90 lbs

2nd - Ron & Joe - 3 - 8.88 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 8.60 lbs

4th - Paul & Pete - 3 - 8.06 lbs

5th - Scott & Kelly - 3 - 7.24 lbs

Big Bass - Mike Nitchals - 4.15 lbs

Even though we ended up in 3rd for the night it was still a struggle for us. We ended up boating only 4 keepers on the night. Our first couple of stops were areas that usually produce smallmouth for us but the action was nonexistent and after half the night was over we had not boated a fish. Finally we were able to catch 2 in the 2 1/4 lb range on back to back casts in shallow weeds from 5-7 feet deep. We decided to run this pattern the rest of the night but didn't have another bite until we got back to the area where we caught the first 2 and were able to fill out our limit with another 2 lb class fish. With about 10 minutes left before check in we hit one last spot with similar cover. 5 minutes before weigh in my dad was able to boat the big fish of the night. Catching a big fish at the very end of the night has been a trend for us this year it seems. It would be nice to catch them earlier and feel more comfortable but as long as we keep catching them I don't really care when it happens! All of our fish came on various soft plastics on Texas rigs.

West Central Bass League - Diamond Lake - July 7th

I know I've been talking a lot about the tough fishing for our West Central Bass League nights but for a change the fishing was actually really good on Diamond. Most of the 15 teams competing reported catching a lot of fish for the night and the top weights were quite impressive as well. My dad and I probably boated between 25-30 fish for the night but we were just not able to find any of the right bites and our 3 fish limit weighed in at 7.88 lbs to put us in 9th. Here are the rest of the results.

1st - Dean - 3 - 11.16 lbs

2nd - Ron & Joe - 3 - 10.50 lbs

3rd - Ross & Daryl - 3 - 10.38 lbs

4th - Grant & Tim - 3 - 9.65 lbs

Big Bass - Ross & Daryl - 4.11 lbs

Our plan for the night was to primarily target docks and trees and that is pretty much what we did all night. Like I said earlier getting bites was no problem at all but we were just unable to find any of the right bites. We did lose a couple of fish that would have moved us up in the standings but they wouldn't have been enough to get up into the money. I'm not really sure what I would do differently if I had it to do over again. Our fish ended up coming on jigs and various soft plastics.

Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Ida - July 10th

What a difference a year makes! Last year on Ida 23 lbs won but 2nd was just under 18 lbs. This year 18 lbs wasn't even in the top half of the field. I'm not sure why but the nicer fish really showed up this year. It took 22 lbs to win this year but the weights were tight all the way down the list. My dad and I weighed and 8 fish limit for 18.74 which we thought would be decent but we only ended up in 14th place out of 34 boats. This was really disappointing coming on the heels of our poor performance on Minnewaska. With 2 events to go on the circuit we are sitting in 14th place for the TOY standings. We have some work to do to get up into the top 10 to qualify for the Tournament of Champions.

There isn't a whole lot to say about the fishing on Ida. We came into the event with a specific game plan and stuck with it pretty much the entire day. That plan was to fish thicker weeds on a large flat in 8-12 feet of water and basically play the numbers game. It was difficult to pinpoint schools of larger fish so you just had to catch a number of fish and every once in awhile one would be a good one. The problem for us is that we just didn't catch enough fish. We probably caught 35 on the day but I know if we had caught 50 for the day a couple of those would have been big enough to get us into the money. We just didn't get the number of bites I was expecting. Our weigh fish ended up coming on Texas rigged Sweet Beavers and various straight tail worms rigged on a drop shot.

West Central Bass League - Week 5

2011-07-07T15:12:00.002-05:00

West Central Bass League - Lake Koronis - June 27th

Once again we were faced with extremely windy conditions for league night. We just can't seem to escape the wind this year but at least it wasn't too bad out there. The fishing on the other hand was pretty bad as many teams reported tough fishing although most were able to bring in a 3 fish limit. With 14 teams fishing we paid 4 spots.

1st - Scott & Kelly - 3 - 10.12 lbs

2nd - Jared & Tonya - 3 - 9.89 lbs

3rd - Paul & Pete - 3 - 8.37 lbs

4th - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 7.98 lbs

Big Bass - Isaiah & Tyler - 4.30 lbs

My dad and I were one of the teams who really struggled for the night but things ended up alright for us as we squeaked into the last money spot. With the high water we decided to start on the trees and docks however it quickly became apparent that bite was not happening although I was able to put 1 in the boat that was around 13 inches. For the next 2 hours we bounced around trying shallow and deep for largemouth and smallies but were just never able to generate a bite. Around 8:15 I was finally able to a good one in the boat weighing nearly 4 lbs. That fish came on a watermelon Sweet Beaver fished on a weedy point. For the rest of the night we ran this pattern and were able to put 1 more nice one in the boat to give us just enough. We only boated 3 fish for the night but a lot of times in tournament fishing it's not about the number you catch, it's the size. Tonight it was just enough to get our money back.

West Central Bass League - Long Lake - June 28th

Well if Koronis was tough I don't know what to call Long Lake on this night. It's the worst night of fishing for the West Central Bass League in at least 5 years if not longer. What is strange too is that just a few weeks earlier this lake was absolutely on fire with numbers of 4 lb plus fish being caught. It was like a switch had been flipped though and none of us could get the bass to cooperate. Even the winners reported getting only 3 bites all night. The rest of us did not fair so well as only 20 total bass were brought in by the 19 teams fishing. The average weight was an impressive 3.57 lbs though. My dad and I were lucky to catch 1 bass weighing 3.21 lbs to put us in 11th for the night. Here are the rest of the results.

1st - TJ & Isaiah - 3 - 13.66 lbs

2nd - Jim & John - 2 - 7.45 lbs

3rd - Jared & Tonya - 2 - 6.94 lbs

4th - Scott & Al - 2 - 6.67 lbs

5th - Dean & JD - 1 - 4.84 lbs

Big Bass - Dean & JD - 4.84 lbs

There's not much to tell about our night. We went 2 1/2 hours without a bite to start the night. With a half hour left to fish I finally put one in the boat on a watermelon 6 inch Senko fished in the reeds. A short while later I had another one on the Senko halfway to the boat before he jumped off. That was really painful as it would have been enough to get us into the money but at least that's the only fish I have lost in competition this year that really hurt us. Hopefully it will be the last one too!

West Central Bass League - Week 4 & West Central Bassmasters Summer Classic - Green Lake

2011-06-28T15:04:00.001-05:00

West Central Bass League - Norway/Games Lake Cup - June 22nd

This past Wednesday was the Norway/Games Lake Cup. In my previous post I talked about how the Cups work so I will skip that here. Despite the rainy and cold conditions I was surprised that 20 teams showed up to fish. It sounds like many teams were able to catch a lot of fish but as is typical for these lakes the past few years the weights overall were pretty small. Here are the results.

1st - Ron & Joe - 3 - 9.88 lbs

2nd - Jared & Tonya - 3 - 8.44 lbs

3rd - Tom & Jim - 3 - 8.23 lbs

4th - Brad & Wayne - 3 - 8.18 lbs

5th - Scott & Kelly - 3 - 8.05 lbs

Big Bass #1 - Brad & Wayne - 4.26 lbs

Big Bass #2 - Lee & Nick - 4.09 lbs

Our hot start to the season is officially over! My dad and I really struggled and only managed to boat 6 bass on the night. Our 3 best fish weighed in at 5.68 lbs which put us all the way down in 15th place for the night. Fortunately the way the league is structured each team is allowed to drop their 2 worst finishes and it looks like this will be one of them. Hopefully there aren't too many more bombs for us the rest of the way. As I said before the fishing was really tough for us and we scrambled around trying a variety of things but were only able to get bit in one place. That was an area of deep rocks that we plied with Rapala DT 16 crankbaits and jigs. All 3 of our weigh fish came on the crankbait though.

West Central Bass League - Lake Florida - June 23rd

The way we make the schedule for our bass league is to draw the lakes at random before the beginning of each year. As it turns out we ended up fishing Lake Florida twice in the first month of the season this year. Our club also had a state qualifier tournament on the lake so many of us have been on this body of water a bunch already this year. We actually had nice weather for once on a league night but for the 17 teams competing that did not translate to good fishing. For whatever reason the lake fished was extremely stingy for most of the competitors. Here are the results.

1st - Ron & Joe - 3 - 9.18 lbs

2nd - Paul & Troy - 3 - 8.78 lbs

3rd - Lee & Brad - 3 - 8.53 lbs

4th - Travis & Hunter - 3 - 7.08 lbs

5th - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 6.91 lbs

Big Bass - Ron & Joe - 3.99 lbs

After the huge disappointments of the last Big Bass Bonanza tournament and the previous nights league it was nice to get back in the money even if it was the last paying spot. It sure wasn't easy though. We only boated 3 bass for the entire night and were fortunate that those 3 were just enough to squeak in. We started on one of our usual deep water areas but nothing was happening at all so we quickly headed to some docks that also did not produce although my dad added a small keeper on a chatterbait throwing to open water as I fished the docks. After that it was back to the deep area to try to grind out a couple of good fish. I know those fish live there but getting them to bite was all but impossible. They really did not seem to want any slow moving lures so my dad started slow rolling the chatterbait and caught our 2nd keeper of the night. This prompted me to pull out a Rapala DT 10 and within a few casts I boated our final keeper of the night. Now we thought we were onto something but we were never able to get another bite the rest of the evening.

Green Mill/West Central Bassmasters Summer Classic - Green Lake - June 25th

This past Saturday marked the first of two open tournaments the West Central Bassmasters and Green Mill put on each year at Green Lake in Spicer Minnesota. The next event will be held on September 11th but for now let's talk about this one. We had 36 teams competing this year including some of the best local anglers as well as some of the best fishermen from throughout the state. Green is always a popular lake because it kicks out numbers of quality smallmouth and increasingly numbers of quality largemouth as well. This year the green fish did not come into play as much though as only 2 largemouth were weighed in among the top 8 teams. Compared to last year the top weights were better but from the sound of things the fishing was extremely tough for most everyone. It certainly was for my dad and I but we were able to put a little something together and weighed a 6 fish limit for 18.58 lbs which was good enough for 2nd place. Instead of posting the complete results here you can see them at this link:

http://www.wcmnbassmasters.org/resources/June+25+2011SummerClassic.pdf

At this time of year most anglers focus on the shallow rocks and there were certainly a number of fish up cruising and on beds but for us the primary plan was to fish deep structure. However we did start on a couple of nice bedding fish that I had found the previous afternoon. It was pretty dark first thing in the morning though and I was unable to see them. I hoped that blind fishing the area would produce a couple of bites but after half an hour without a bite it was off to our deep stuff. Green Lake is loaded with structure and there are hundreds if not thousands of little places where a smallmouth might live. We narrowed our efforts to 10 to 12 spots from 20 to 30 feet deep that we rotated through the rest of the day. As I said earlier the fishing wasn't easy by any means. It was just a matter of picking off one here and there throughout the day but the fishing did pick up noticeably in the afternoon for whatever reason. With about 10 minutes left in the day we headed to one last spot near the weigh in site where I added a nice 3 1/4 lb smallie at the last minute to give us just enough weight to edge out 3rd place. We have caught numerous key fish in the last minutes of fishing this year and it just shows that you can never give up! All of our weigh fish came on green pumpkin or watermelon LFT Twitch Worms rigged on a drop shot. There was nothing fancy about the rigging it was just a matter of putting our heads down and keeping our baits in what we felt were the highest percentage areas.

West Central Bass League - Week 3 & Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Minnewaska

2011-06-26T18:59:00.003-05:00

West Central Bass League - Lake Calhoun - June 15th

Lake Calhoun is one of the more popular lakes on the league schedule and it showed on Wednesday night as 22 teams showed up to fish. That is our highest turnout of the year so far. I think it is such a popular lake because catching numbers of fish is generally not difficult at all although finding the bigger bites can be a much tougher challenge. A few teams were able to find them though. Here are the results.

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 12.53 lbs

2nd - Grant & April King - 3 - 10.50 lbs

3rd - Ron & Joe - 3 - 8.70 lbs

4th - Kyle & Kirk - 3 - 8.63 lbs

5th - Scott & Kelly - 3 - 8.33 lbs

Big Bass - Andy Nitchals - 4.70 lbs

This win marked our 5th in a row to start off the league season! Streaks like this have been put together before in the West Central Bass League but I don't know if it's ever happened at the start of the year like this. In any case it feels really good to have everything working right. Our night actually started off pretty slow though as we fished a stretch of docks and only had 1 small keeper to show for it. After that we moved off shore where we added another small keeper and immediately after my dad caught our limit fish that was close to 3 1/2 lbs. Catching 2 fish so quickly had me thinking we were on a school but after fishing for quite awhile longer in the area we were unable to generate anymore bits. After that we heading to the reeds and tucked in among all the other boats. The fish were biting good but most of them were small. We were able to get 2 fish in the 2 1/2 lb range though and I figured that would be a pretty good bag for the night although not enough to win so we headed back off shore to try to find that school of big ones I knew was sitting out there. It took awhile but eventually we found them and it was game on! In the last 45 minutes I don't even know how many fish in the 2 1/2 to 4 lb range we caught. It was wild and the best part was the fish kept getting bigger as the night went on. With a 9:00 pm check in I caught the big fish of the night at 8:58 pm. I wanted to stay and keep pounding on them but we had to go in. All of those fish came on homemade jigs and various colors of texas rigged Sweet Beavers.

West Central Bass League - Green Lake Cup - June 16th

Each year the West Central Bass League holds a "Cup" event on Green and Norway Lakes. They are basically the same format with a slightly higher entry fee and instead of one big bass two are paid. In past years the Cups generated much more interest but lately they haven't seemed to and this year was no different as only 16 teams came out to fish on Green Lake. We had much nicer weather than when we fished Green the first week of the season but once again the bite was extremely tough. Here are the results.

1st - Paul & Troy - 3 - 9.46 lbs

2nd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 9.00 lbs

3rd - Craig & Jeff - 3 - 8.57 lbs

4th - Scott & Don - 3 - 8.39 lbs

Big Bass #1 - Craig & Jeff - 4.29 lbs

Big Bass #2 - Paul & Troy - 3.43 lbs

As you can see the streak is over at 5. I won't complain though since 2nd is not such a bad place to be either. I hadn't been on the lake since the last league night so I wasn't really sure what was going on with the fish. We started on some milfoil but that didn't produce so we went up to some shallow rocks where I quickly put 3 small bed fish in the box just to have a limit. They were very small I wouldn't normally waste time on them but they bite within 5 casts so it didn't take up much time. Next it was off to another spawning area where I found a 3 lb class fish on a bed. It took about 5 minutes working it with a watermelon/red Strike King Coffee Tube to put that one in the boat. After that the clouds rolled in and wind picked up so I scrapped plans to search for more bed fish and instead headed out deep. It was pretty slow but we added 2 more solid fish on LFT Twitch Worms rigged on a drop shot fished in 20 to 30 feet of water and that was it for the night.

Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Minnewaska - June 19th

I don't really know what to say about this one. After getting in the groove right off the bat to start the season this tournament was just a disaster! So far every decision I made seemed to be right but in this one nothing went right. We were just never able to put anything together and ended up with an 8 fish limit for 14.51 lbs and that was with a near 4lb fish that I caught with 15 minutes to go. Without that fish it would have been even uglier! That put us in 26th place out of 39 teams on the day. The winning weight was right around 22 lbs so obviously we were not even close.

I could go through all the details of the day as I normally do but that would be pretty pointless. We spent the majority of our day fishing weedlines in 10 to 15 feet of water with jigs and various soft plastics and actually caught a lot of fish. The problem was they were all 1 1/2 lbs or less. The funny thing is that most of the top finishers including the winners were fishing this exact same pattern. We just never got into the right areas for some reason. Part of the problem was that we found what seemed to be a big school of fish in practice with nothing under 2 1/2 lbs in it. We checked it 3 different times throughout the day and spent nearly half our total time trying to figure out how to get them to bite but they just never did! We caught plenty of fish in the area but they were all small. Another problem was the way the fish were biting. I had probably 8 bites that tore the flappers off my jig trailer without ever getting a hook into any of them as well as numerous other missed bites. Of course they were probably small fish but if even a couple of them were nicer fish it would have helped a bunch. Even our big fish that I caught at the end of the day bit my trailer off the jig and I was fortunate to pitch right back into the same spot and have her bite again.

This was by far my worst performance in 3 plus years of fishing the Big Bass Bonanza circuit and I have to say it stings a little bit. Especially after the hot start to the season where it seemed nothing could go wrong. That's fishing though. Bad days are going to happen. Unless your name is KVD!

West Central Bassmasters - State Qualifier Tournaments

2011-06-16T13:58:00.002-05:00

Over the weekend of June 11th and 12th the West Central Bassmasters held 3 tournaments to determine the anglers we would send to the State TOC on the Whitefish Chain in September. On Saturday we held a 4 hour tournament on Norway-Games in the morning and then another 4 hour tournament on Lake Florida in the afternoon. Then on Sunday we held a 7 hour tournament on Washington-Stella near Darwin. Our club is allowed to send 6 anglers plus 1 alternate to the state tournament and I will get to those results at the end of this post.

Norway & Games Lakes

I was pretty worried about this one because in practice the fishing was really tough and the fish were not in the usual areas that I like to fish. I was able to find an area of reeds that seemed to have slightly better quality although not great for this lake. That is the area I ended up exploiting for my entire 4 fish limit including an unexpected kicker that weighed in at 3.40 lbs. All of my weigh fish ended up coming on a watermelon Yamamoto Senko fished slowly in the reeds. My 4 fish ended up weighing 9.43 lbs which put me in 3rd place for the morning. However the person finishing 2nd is our club tournament director who was not trying to qualify for state so I actually received the 2nd place points.

Lake Florida

We had a bass league event on Lake Florida the previous week which my dad and I were able to win so going into the afternoon tournament my game plan was to do basically the same thing as in league. That plan was to fish jigs and soft plastics in deeper weeds while most of the other competitors fished shallow around docks. During the 4 hours I really only fished 3 locations and the fishing was actually extremely tough. I probably only caught 5-6 bass on the afternoon but my 4 fish limit weighing 11.15 lbs was good for 3rd place. Once again the same situation as the morning tournament occurred as the tournament director finished 2nd so I was again able to receive 2nd place points. Normally those would be pretty strong showings but unfortunately for me Ron Mehr took 1st place in both events so I was behind the eight ball going into the final tournament on Sunday.

Washington & Stella Lakes

My practice for this event like Norway was also pretty unspectacular and I really only had one area that I had much confidence in and wouldn't you know it Ron started right where I was hoping to start! It turns out that this was a blessing in disguise as Ron struggled in the morning and I was forced to move to another part of the same area and caught them really good right off the bat. Within about an hour I had my 5 fish limit with 2 fish over 3 lbs and another around 2 1/2 lbs. Those fish came on Senkos fished in the bullrushes and a couple on a Strike King Bleeding Bait tube fished under a dock in the same area. After the action slowed I ran around without much success until I found a tree branch out in the middle of a shallow bay. I ran my Strike King spinnerbait along side the tree and was able to put another 3 lb class fish in the boat. Once again the action slowed for me until the last half hour of the day when I was able to put another 3 lb class fish in the boat. That fish came on a Berkley HAVOC Pit Boss fished over a shallow rocky area. At that point I knew I had a really good limit for the day but I would need some help from others as well. Even if I won the event, if Ron finished 2nd he still would have beat me for the club AOY. My 5 fish limit for 15.58 lbs was enough to win the event and I got the help I needed as 2 others finished between Ron and I to give me the club's AOY by just 1 point! This also ensures that I will be a guaranteed boater at the state TOC!

Here are the 2011 West Central Bassmasters state qualifiers:

1st - Andy Nitchals

2nd - Ron Mehr

3rd - Eric Tessmer

4th - Joe Patock

5th - Dean Drexler

6th - Tim Stockland

Alternate - Bill Neumann

Big Bass Bonanza - Horseshoe Chain & WC Bass League - Week 2

2011-06-15T13:33:00.002-05:00

Sorry for the delay guys but I've been spending too much time fishing (Is that even possible?) and not enough time writing. In this post I'll recap the Big Bass Bonanza tournament on the Horseshoe Chain that was held on June 5th as well as the 2nd week of the West Central Bass League held on June 8th and 9th.

Big Bass Bonanza - Horseshoe Chain

Even though the Horseshoe Chain is relatively close to my house it is not a body of water I have fished much over the years. I really only started fishing it after joining the Big Bass Bonanza circuit several years ago because it is pretty much an annual stop on that trail. In the past it was a real struggle just to put an 8 fish limit in the boat and in previous visits we finished around the middle of the pack. This year was different though as we were able to find an area of the Chain that we had never fished before and was very productive for us. My dad and I ended up weighing an 8 fish limit for 19.98 lbs and I also caught the big bass of the tournament which weighed in at 5.08 lbs. The winning weight was 21.58 lbs so we were not too far off the pace.

For the most part our practice was pretty tough but we located a large weedy spawning bay that held a lot of quality fish both on beds and cruising around in the shallows. Practice is cut off on Tuesday before the Sunday tournament though and I had a feeling there would be a major change in the conditions come tournament day. As we pulled into the bay for our first stop of the morning I was right. The weeds had really grown up and the water was much more stained. My hope was that with the number of fish in there in practice there would at least still be a few hanging around. In the first hour we were able to put 5 fish in the boat but only one of them was in the 2 3/4 lb range that we were looking for. Most of those fish came on a watermelon LFT Magic Shad. Even though we were catching fish pretty steadily the size was not there so it was off to the next stop.

Our next area was a tree lined bank that we had actually not caught anything on in practice but had seen several big bass cruising along with a ton of sunfish. My hope was that the sunnies would still be there and they were. Right away I saw a cleared out area of sunfish beds and a big bass just lazily cruising around the beds. The fish actually seemed very comfortable and not spooky and all so I just let the boat kind of drift a short distance away while continuing to cast into the beds. After the boat was far enough away that I couldn't actually see the fish anymore there was a light tick on my watermelon LFT Magic Shad and I horsed that 5.08 lb beauty right into the net with hardly any fight at all. After that we continued down the bank and were able to add another 2 lb fish from under a tree but that was it.

The next stop was a rocky area that had a large number of quality smallmouth on beds in practice. Of course with the changing conditions they were pretty much all gone but there was a 2 1/2 pounder left which I was quickly able to put in the boat with a sand Strike King KVD tube rigged on a dropshot. That fish gave us our limit and it was still pretty early in the morning. I knew we had about 20 lbs at that point which normally is a pretty good weight for the Chain but I knew we needed a few more quality fish to contend for the win. Unfortunately nothing else really happened for us the rest of the day. With about an hour left in the day we returned to our starting bay and were able to locate a fish on a bed that was nearly 4 lbs. I didn't know for sure at the time but I had a feeling that could be the winning fish. Needless to say we fished it for the remainder of the day. She was really spooky but with time running out she really seemed to be getting more agitated but of course the clock ticked down and we were forced to leave her in the water. That was a really frustrating way to end the day but at the same time coming away from the first event with a 4th place finish and big bass feels pretty good!

West Central Bass League - Diamond Lake

Despite the extremely windy conditions yet again we had 18 teams competing on the 2nd night of bass league on Diamond Lake. With the conditions I actually expected a lot fewer teams but for the most part it sounds like a lot of fish were caught although the quality was down somewhat for Diamond. Here are the results:

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 10.64 lbs

2nd - Jeff & Kris - 3 - 9.66 lbs

3rd - Grant & April King - 3 - 8.85 lbs

4th - Joe & Ron - 3 - 8.25 lbs

5th - Paul & Pete - 3 - 7.58 lbs

Big Bass - Andy Nitchals - 4.37 lbs

Make it 3 in a row for Team Nitchals! It has been an awesome start to the league season for us and hopefully it will continue all year long. We started our night on a protected stretch of docks but almost immediately it didn't feel right to me so we switched to fishing the large number of reed beds Diamond contains. For the most part though they were exposed to the strong wind which made for really tough fishing. We bounced around to several reed areas and were not able to find any concentrations of fish but every once in awhile were able to catch a 3 lb class fish. Towards the end of the night the wind had calmed enough that we could get to another stretch of docks that has been productive for us and with half an hour to go in the night I caught that 4.37 pounder to put us over the top. The big fish and one of our other keepers came on a watermelon homemade jig and my dad added one weigh fish on a watermelon Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver.

West Central Bass League - Solomon Lake

We again had 18 teams fishing on Thursday night on Solomon Lake. While it was still pretty windy it was nothing compared to the previous night. Solomon has a reputation for kicking out a lot of quality bass in the 3-5 lb range but I had been out there several times and was unable to put any quality in the boat. I was really wondering what kind of weights would show up at the end of the night and while the overall weights were maybe a little bit lower the top bags were all very strong. Here are the results:

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 11.87 lbs

2nd - Jared & Tonya - 3 - 11.84 lbs

3rd - Joe & Ron - 3 - 10.42 lbs

4th - Ross & Daryl - 3 - 10.21 lbs

5th - Dean & JD - 3 - 9.48 lbs

Big Bass - Jay & Willie - 5.78 lbs

Make it 4 in a row for us! This one was the toughest challenge yet though even though our average fish was nearly 4 lbs. Our league nights run from 6 pm to 9 pm and at 8 pm we only had 2 fish in the boat. One of them was almost 4 lbs but the other was just a 14 inch rat. We had already fished a number of different areas but nothing was working for us. This is a lake that has a reputation for turning on right at dusk though so I tried not to worry too much and hoped the fishing would get better in the last hour. It certainly did! We were able to catch quite a few fish in the last hour including 2 in the 3 lb range to give us a pretty good bag. At 8:55 pm only 5 minutes before check in I caught our big fish of the night that weighed in at 4.91 lbs and push our pretty good bag to a great bag. It turns out that Tonya & Jared had caught their big fish that went nearly 5 1/2 lbs on their very last cast but we had just enough weight to edge them out by .03 lbs! All of our weigh fish for the evening came on a black/blue Berkely HAVOC Pit Boss fished in the reeds and bullrushes.

It has been an amazing run so far this season! It is still very early though but hopefully it keeps up. In my next post I'll recap the West Central Bassmasters state qualifier tournaments we held over the past weekend. I won't go into the details here but they also went quite well for me.

And so it begins...

2011-06-04T17:57:00.002-05:00

The Minnesota bass season is officially in full swing. Memorial Day weekend is what we bass fisherman dream about all winter long. I had done some fishing earlier of course but for me I just can't really fish the way I want to fish until it is actually legal. Speaking of dreams I had pretty much a dream day on the water for the opener. I chose to hit an area lake, never mind which area, where I figured there would be some big fish up spawning. Right away in the morning I pulled up to one of my favorite areas and actually lost one about 4 lbs on my very first cast. I've heard catching a fish on the first cast is bad luck but what does losing a big one on the first cast mean? The rest of the morning was really slow. At 11:00 am I only had 2 in the boat but one was 4 lbs and the other was right about 5 lbs. After that it was on though! The water temps had warmed up a few degrees and I'm pretty sure that's what made the difference. For the day I ended up catching 12 that went 4 lbs or better topped by a 4.97, 5.22 and a 5.53. About half of the fish were caught off beds with techniques I will not reveal here. The other half were caught blind casting a LFT Magic Shad in spawning areas.

It was an amazing day that does not happen often enough but what really gets my blood flowing is competitive fishing. I have already fished one tournament this year down in Iowa but with the season open here in MN it's game on! This week we had our first two West Central Bass League events and tomorrow is the first Big Bass Bonanza tournament of the year.

West Central Bass League - Lake Florida - June 1st

The West Central Bass League runs every Wednesday and Thursday until the end of August. The lakes are drawn at random and this year Lake Florida was the first stop of the season. It was a beautiful night and the winds actually laid down for once and it was flat calm out on the water. Despite the conditions we only had 21 boats turn out to fish. I say only 21 because based on last year I expected the number to be closer to 30 boats. In any case Florida is a small lake and 21 boats is plenty out there. The fishing ended up being pretty tough although the weights were better on average than they were last year. Here are the results.

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 10.87 lbs

2nd - Paul & Pete - 3 - 8.86 lbs

3rd - Tom & Jim - 3 - 8.74 lbs

4th - Jeff & Greg - 3 - 8.56 lbs

5th - Lee & Nick - 3 - 8.29 lbs

Big Bass - Lee & Nick - 4.01 lbs

As you can see my dad and I were able to take 1st place on the 1st night! What a great way to kick off the league season. With the cold spring we've had here most of the competitors focused on shallow water and docks. I heard there were a lot of fish caught on beds as well. We decided to buck the trend though and focus on deeper water from 8 to 16 feet. Our first stop was a bust but after making a few moves we found some better quality fish in the deeper water. My dad ended up catching 2 of our weigh fish. 1 came on a watermelon homemade jig and the other was on a Red Eye Shad. I added our big fish of the night, which weighed 3.95 lbs, on a watermelon Sweet Beaver with about 20 minutes to go.

West Central Bass League - Green Lake - June 2

Unlike the calm conditions the previous night, Thursday hit us with 30 mph winds out of the SE. Those kind of winds are tough on any lake but it is the absolute worst wind for fishing on Green Lake. Only 13 teams showed up to fish but the conditions were absolutely brutal out there and the results show it.

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 8.72 lbs

2nd - Ron & Joe - 3 - 7.14 lbs

3rd - Paul & Troy - 3 - 6.53 lbs

4th - Scott & Al - 3 - 6.35 lbs

Big Bass - Ron & Joe - 3.53 lbs

Well make it 2 in a row! We have some pretty stiff competition in the West Central Bass League so winning 2 in a row is no small feat. I'm just happy to start off the season with such a bang. Hopefully we can carry it throughout the entire year. Despite winning by a healthy margin the fishing for us was by no means easy. We did end up catching a fair number of small keeper largemouth but triggering the smallies was extremely difficult. We ended up weighing 2 smallies and one largemouth. My dad caught the green one on a Texas rigged tube in a milfoil patch. I caught the smallies on a tube on a shallow sand flat and our big fish which went 3.50 lbs on a watermelon LFT Hyper Finesse worm rigged on a drop shot in 25 feet of water. Our big fish came with about 30 minutes left to fish and it was out in the rough water. I was taking every other wave over the bow trying to hold on that deep structure but it paid off. Those are the situations I'm so glad I went with a 52 inch shaft on my Minn Kota instead of the standard 42 inch!

Okoboji Open Recap & 2011 Tournament Schedule

2011-05-08T19:32:00.004-05:00

It's been a long winter here in Minnesota and this blog has been dormant for quite awhile. Since this a tournament recap blog there really isn't much for me to post about during the winter months since I do not fish at all during the winter and there are certainly no tournaments.

I have gone on a few trips though since the last post though. In late November of 2010 my dad and I along with a few friends headed down to Table Rock for some late season fishing. The weather was pretty cold for the most part but the fishing was really good. We caught a lot of fish every day but just weren't able to get a lot of quality. When we got back to MN all the lakes were frozen so that was it for the year. Then in mid March of this year the same group of guys packed up for the long haul to south Texas. We ended up spending two weeks fishing on Amistad and Falcon lakes. What an amazing trip! We had a few tough days but for the most part fishing was really good and my dad and I both picked up our personal best bass. Mine weighed in at 8.63 lbs and his went 8.75 lbs on our scale. Those are not huge fish for south Texas but I'm satisfied for now. Taking these late fall and early spring trips is such a nice way to shorten the winters up here. I don't know if I could survive without it!

Okoboji Open - Okoboji Lake

My first tournament of 2011 ended up being the Okoboji Open held May 1st on Okoboji Lake. I have fished this tournament off and on over the years and after each time fishing it I vow to never fish it again! It is always cold and windy with cold water and tough fishing and to the surprise of no one we had those exact conditions again this year. Blast off temps were right around freezing and the wind blew 30-40 mph all day long. Not what you would call ideal fishing conditions but the weights for the field actually ended up being very good. It took 5 fish for nearly 19 lbs to take first place and there were 2 bass over 6 lbs weighed in. With 48 boats fishing they paid back 8 places and to make a check you needed a limit of right about 15 lbs. My dad and I came up just a little bit short with 5 fish weighing in at 13.73 lbs for 12th place.

We headed down to Okoboji 2 days before the tournament to get some practice time in and the fishing was extremely tough for us. In fact over 2 long days of fishing we only boated 3 or 4 keeper bass. However we did find one small area where I was able to get several good bites that I shook off instead of catching. This is where we decided to start the tournament and where we ended up spending most of our day. Basically all we did was fish docks and a few laydowns all day long. Even though we never boated a fish there in practice we did end up catching 20-25 bass on tournament day with around half of them being over the 15" length limit. They came on a variety of soft plastics but all 5 of our weigh fish bit a green pumpkin Berkley Havoc Pit Boss. This is a brand new lure that I am already gaining a lot of confidence in!

Our downfall in this event was just never getting a big bite. All it would have took was one 4 lb or better fish and we would have been in the money. Part of that was probably our fault because as the day wore on it became apparent that even though there were a lot of quality fish in the area, there did not seem to be any real big ones. On the other hand the weather warmed up pretty nicely in the afternoon and you never know when a few big mamas will move up on a spring day like that. I guess I do wish we had done a little more exploring than we did but all in all it was a decent tournament to start the year with. Now I just have to wait patiently until we can fish for bass here in Minnesota!

2011 Tournament Schedule

May 1st - Okoboji Open: Okoboji Lake

June 5th - Big Bass Bonanza: Horseshoe Chain

June 11th - West Central Bassmasters State Qualifier: Norway Lake & Lake Florida

June 12th - West Central Bassmasters State Qualifier: Lakes Washington & Stella

June 19th - Big Bass Bonanza: Lake Minnewaska

June 25th - Green Mill/West Central Bassmasters Summer Classic: Green Lake Spicer

July 10th - Big Bass Bonanza: Lake Ida

August 7th - Big Bass Bonanza: Green Lake Spicer

August 10th-12th - B.A.S.S. Federation Northern Divisional: Mississippi River, Prairie du Chien

August 21st - Big Bass Bonanza: Lake Le Homme Dieu

September 8th-9th - Minnesota B.A.S.S. Federation TOC: Whitefish Chain

September 11th - Green Mill/West Central Bassmasters Fall Classic: Green Lake Spicer

September 18th - Big Bass Bonanza TOC

I'll also be fishing the West Central Bass League every Wednesday and Thursday night in June, July and August as well as the West Central Fall Bass League every Saturday from September until it is too cold to fish.

West Central Fall Bass League - Lake Andrew

2010-11-10T17:47:00.002-06:00

November 6th was our final West Central Fall Bass League of the season. The schedule actually ended the week before but since the weather was decent a few people still wanted to fish. We had 5 boats fishing on Lake Andrew and as usual this season the fishing was tough. One boat was able to catch a 5 fish limit but unfortunately they were late coming back to the weigh in so they were disqualified. Only 3 other fish were caught on the day.

1st - Paul 2 4.00 lbs (approximately)

2nd - Andy & Mike 1 2.56 lbs

Big Bass - Andy Nitchals 2.56 lbs

As you can see the DQ ended up working out very well for us but it's still not the way I want to see it happen. It did move us up into the money but I still would have had big bass regardless. Our day was pretty unproductive obviously. We actually went the first 4 hours and 40 minutes of the 5 hour tournament without a bite. At the end of the day we moved back to a weedline area that we had already fished and almost immediately I hooked into a decent bass. Of course I had to lose that fish for no apparent reason but about 2 casts later I was able to connect with the 1 fish we did catch. I was hoping to catch a limit quick in that last 15 minutes but after that the action was done. The one fish came on a watermelon Sweet Beaver fished in the cabbage.

West Central Fall Bass League - Nest Lake

2010-11-03T19:21:00.002-05:00

October 30th marked the final event scheduled for the 2010 West Central Fall Bass League season. We returned to Nest Lake which is where the Fall League kicked off about 2 months ago. After a massive front that moved through earlier in the week expectations for good catches were low and that proved to be true. The water temps had dropped over 10 degrees and the winds had really churned it up. Only 1 limit was brought in by the five teams fishing. With 5 boats fishing there were two spots paid.

1st - Andy Nitchals & Grant King 5 12.60 lbs

2nd - Wayne & Ralph 3 6.08 lbs

Big Bass - Grant King 4.32 lbs

Going into the day I felt that fishing the greenest cabbage we could find would be our best bet to get a limit and that is exactly how it played out. Finding the good green weeds though was difficult and much of the day was spent fishing in seemingly dead water. When we were able to find good weeds though there were a few bites to be had. Our fish ended up coming from 2 areas that were 3 to 6 feet deep. I really struggled personally on the day but Grant was able to clean up and catch most of our fish on a Jackall Cover Craw fished slowly in the weeds.

West Central Fall Bass League - Diamond Lake

2010-10-28T17:43:00.002-05:00

October 23rd was the fall league's return to Diamond Lake. We have fished Diamond every year that the fall league has been running and usually it kicks out some really big weights. Generally we fish it earlier in the fall and fishing it later certainly affected the fishing. There were very few docks left in the water and most of the overhanging trees had no leaves on them so they provided very little cover. That left reeds as the primary cover. All 6 teams competing were able to bring in a 5 fish limit and every single fish weighed came from the reeds. 2 spots were paid and my dad and I ended up just out of the money in 3rd with 5 fish for 13.87 lbs.

1st - Wayne & Ralph 14.32 lbs

2nd - Dean 13.93 lbs

Big Bass - Paul 4.32 lbs

Just like the previous week my dad and I had a very good first 1 1/2 hours. We started in the reeds and were just a little bit off for the first half hour or so but once we figured out where they were it was lights out. We caught 20 or more bass in about an hour by pitching jigs and various plastics to the edge of the reeds. After that first hour or so of catching them really good the action really died. We tried working deeper into the reeds but that didn't work either so it was off to try some other areas of the lake. Nothing else was working for us though so we ended up going back to our starting area to try to pick up one more 3 lb bite that I knew we needed but it just didn't happen for us.

West Central Fall Bass League - Lake Minnie Belle

2010-10-28T17:25:00.002-05:00

October 16th was the West Central Fall Bass League's second trip to a lake that is not normally on the summer schedule. The first was to Red Rock and the fishing was extremely tough so we were all hoping that Minnie Belle would offer better fishing. The fishing turned out to be better overall but still not great. There were 5 teams competing so 2 spots were paid.

1st - Pat & Nasha Marting 5 17.01 lbs

2nd - Andy & Mike Nitchals 5 12.02 lbs

Big Bass - Pat & Nasha 4.13 lbs

The week before the tournament my dad and I had spent a few hours on the lake and determined that our best bet to catch bigger fish was on the docks. The problem with that though is at this time of year people are taking their docks out of the water. Sure enough when we came back a week later for league there were very few docks left in the water. We decided to start on the few docks there were and fish as many of them as we could before anyone else. It turned out to be a good move because we had our final weight after about 1 1/2 hours. All the dock fish came on jigs and tubes. The rest of the day was spent fishing mid depths and a couple deep weedline areas as well as another pass through the docks we caught them on earlier but we just were not able to catch anything that would help us upgrade and we were left almost 5 lbs behind the winners.

Bass League - September 1st & 2nd

2010-10-12T19:53:00.002-05:00

I wasn't sure about doing blogs for these two nights since they were unofficial events but since I have blogged about every competitive fishing outing of mine for the past 3 years I decided to put them in for the completeness of the record. Our official West Central Bass League season had ended with the TOC's the previous week but since there were still people who wanted to fish we held two more nightly leagues the first week of September.

September 1st - Nest Lake

We had 9 boats competing and the fishing was pretty good as 8 of them were able to bring in a 3 fish limit but the weights were quite a bit lower than we had seen on Nest Lake earlier in the year.

1st - Paul & Brian 9.52 lbs

2nd - Lee & Nick 9.00 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike 8.85 lbs

Big Bass - Paul & Brian 4.39 lbs

September 2nd - Lake Calhoun

There were 7 boats fishing this night but the fishing was much tougher as only 4 limits were brought to the scales. With so few competing only 2 places were paid.

1st - Ron 10.85 lbs

2nd - Andy & Mike 7.11 lbs

Big Bass - Ron 4.60 lbs

West Central Fall Bass League - Long Lake

2010-10-12T19:16:00.002-05:00

On October 9th the West Central Fall Bass League visited Long Lake just north of Willmar. It's known for being a really tough lake most of the time but it also has a reputation for giving up giant bass. That all held true as the fishing was extremely tough but the fish that came in were good ones. There were 5 teams fishing and only 6 bass caught for the day. Here are the results.

1st - Andy & Mike 4 19.49 lbs

2nd - Roy & Daran 1 4.69 lbs

Big Bass - Mike Nitchals 5.56 lbs

With only 6 fish being caught all day I guess we were fortunate to end up catching 4 of them to walk away with the win. There really wasn't anything special about what we were doing either. We just happened to get in the right areas at the right time I guess. All of our fish came by fishing in the reeds. I caught 3 of them on a black/blue punch skirt with a Chigger Craw and my dad added the big fish on a watermelon weightless Ring Fry. Even though they all came from the reeds, they were all in completely different areas of the lake so it wasn't like we ran into a school or found an area holding more fish. It was just a matter of keeping our heads down and just grinding for every bite. I did end up losing one fish halfway back to the boat that would have given us our limit but it was only around 3 lbs. Despite being one fish short of a limit, it still ended up being one of our biggest 5 fish bags ever.

West Central Fall Bass League Tournament - Red Rock Lake

2010-10-12T18:44:00.003-05:00

October 2nd was our West Central Fall Bass League Tournament on Red Rock Lake. The tournament is basically the same as any other Fall League day except that we fish a longer day and the entry fee is higher. Otherwise all the same rules as league apply. We had 10 boats fishing and it was a struggle for everyone. Even the winners reported getting very few bites during the day. My dad and I really struggled to catch just 2 fish for 2.96 lbs which put us in 6th place. Here are the results for the money finishers.

1st - Kelly & Butch 5 14.68 lbs

2nd - Dean & JD 3 9.16 lbs

3rd - Wayne & Ralph 5 7.19 lbs

Big Bass - Kelly & Butch 4.61 lbs

There isn't much to recap on my fishing for the day. I only had one bite the entire day and it ended up being short. My dad caught our 2 keepers on a watermelon Chigger Craw on the outside weedline in about 8 feet of water. That was the only way we could figure out to get bites but even then there just weren't enough bites to come up with a decent finish.

West Central Fall Bass League - Lake Johanna

2010-09-30T17:32:00.002-05:00

September 25th marked the 3rd fall league of the season and we had our best turnout of the year so far with 12 teams competing on Lake Johanna. Most of the teams probably wished they had stayed home though because the fishing was extremely difficult. Only 1 team was able to bring in a 5 fish limit and 2 teams were able to bring in 3 fish. Here are the results.

1st - Brian & Scott 16.99 lbs 5 fish

2nd - Andy & Mike 11.03 lbs 3 fish

3rd - Dean & JD 10.19 lbs 3 fish

Big Bass - Andy Nitchals 4.60 lbs

Our fishing for the day actually started off strong. We got to our starting area which is just a bay lined with reeds and were able to catch 3 fish in the first 30 to 45 minutes. The two I boated came on a black/blue Chigger Craw and the one my dad caught came on a watermelon Senko. After that we never had another bite the rest of the day. We tried several different areas as well as going back and hitting our starting spot several more times but were just never able to make anything else happen. I knew our fish were good ones but I had no idea the fishing was that tough for everyone and we were able to get a decent finish even without a limit.

Big Bass Bonanza TOC - Lake Koronis

2010-09-20T17:36:00.002-05:00

Sunday September 12th was the Big Bass Bonanza Tournament of Champions. The top 10 in the season points were all invited to fish and throw the name of a lake in the hat. Lake Koronis was drawn and the top 10 teams all got to fish for cash and prizes with no entry fee. I don't have official results for this event but first place ended up being and 8 fish limit for nearly 24 lbs. There were several other weights over 20 lbs as well. My dad and I struggled all day and only ended up with an 8 fish limit weighing 16.75 lbs. That put us in 9th for the day.

In practice we had 2 different patterns going but both were producing quality bites for us. One was fishing deeper weedlines in the 10 foot range for largemouth and the other was fishing shallower weedlines in 2-5 feet of water for smallmouth. We bounced back and forth trying each for awhile during the tournament day but neither one worked nearly as well as in practice. In fact we were barely able to catch our limit and ended the day catching only 9 keepers total. Our big fish was a 4+ lb smallmouth that came on a spinnerbait in the shallow weeds but it was the only smallie we were able to hook up with. The rest of our fish were largemouths caught on the deeper weedlines with watermelon jigs and Sweet Beavers.

Lake Koronis can be very spotty for us but I had much higher expectations coming into this event. I guess that has kind of been how our year has gone on the BBB trail this season. Every tournament ended up being just a grind with tough fishing conditions and uncooperative fish. Generally those are the conditions I like since I feel it is easier to win a tough tournament than it is to win a slugfest but things just didn't work out for the most part. We were able to finish in the top 10 once again though so it wasn't all bad but hopefully next year it will be even better!

West Central Fall Bass League - Nest Lake

2010-09-20T17:20:00.002-05:00

The day after the MN BASS Federation TOC concluded was our first West Central Fall Bass League of the season. The rules of the fall league are basically the same as our nightly leagues throughout the summer but we fish for 5 hours and have a 5 fish limit instead of 3 hours and 3 fish. We will be holding these events every Saturday until it gets too cold to fish or no one wants to show up anymore. There were 10 teams fishing on Nest Lake despite the extremely windy conditions. The fish were mostly uncooperative though, but a few big bags were still brought in.

1st - Paul & Brian 18.86 lbs

2nd - Andy & Mike 16.29 lbs

3rd - Travis & Jason 15.81 lbs

Big Bass - Paul & Brian 5.19 lbs

There isn't a whole lot to say about our fishing for the day although it ended up being good enough to take 2nd place on the day. Most of our main smallmouth areas on Nest Lake ended up being out in the wind so we just had to suck it up and get out in the wind and fish as best we could. We bounced around to several spots throughout the 5 hour day and were able to pick up a fish here and there. We did end up catching several largemouth but ended up weighing 5 smallies that were all between 3-4 lbs. Our fish mostly bit on green pumpkin tubes and football jigs and came from rocky areas between 1-10 feet deep.

Minnesota BASS Federation Tournament of Champions - Lake Minnetonka

2010-09-15T17:23:00.003-05:00

Day 1

At the pre-tournament meeting the night before the event I drew boat 78 out of 82 for day 1 of the tournament. I actually didn't even mind being so far back in the pack because I knew I would have at least an extra hour of fishing time over the boats in earlier flights. For some reason I also had a feeling that the areas I wanted to fish would not be getting a lot of fishing pressure anyways. I was right as I pulled into my first spot and there was nobody on it. My starting area was a deep weed line on the inside turn of a point. Almost immediately I started catching fish but the size was not what I was expecting. I was able to put a limit in the boat in about 45 minutes although only one of the bass was over 2 lbs. Those came on black/blue Chigger Craws and hematoma Sweet Beavers that I Tx-rigged with a 3/8 oz. weight. Even though the fish were small I was happy to have a limit so early and I knew I had a long day ahead of me so there was plenty of time to upgrade.

After the action slowed on my deep spot I moved up to some nearby docks just to check if the better fished had moved up there for some reason even though it was early in the day and pretty cloudy. I was only able to catch one fish on a 3/8 oz. watermelon jig but it was around 2 lbs so I was able to get rid of one that was barely 12 inches. At that point I went back deep to check some of the other spots I had found in practice but none of them produced even a single bite.

With my deep stuff failing me I moved to another stretch of docks and as I was swimming my jig between some of them I got bite off by what was probably a big muskie. Instead of retying I picked up a rod rigged with a green pumpkin Bleeding Bait Tube and for some reason that's what they really seemed to want. I started catching fish under basically every dock I fished. They were still small but every couple docks or so I would get one that went around 2 lbs that allowed me to upgrade. I just had a feeling that eventually I was going to run into a big bite or two. Sure enough I got one about 4 lbs to bite and I got her clear from the boat it was under but for some reason it just pulled free. That was a heart breaker but at least I knew there were some quality fish still around. To make a long story short I never got another good bite the rest of the day and was pretty disappointed as I headed back to the weigh-in.

My 5 fish limit on day 1 ended up weighing 11.19 lbs which was actually a little more than I expected to have but still nowhere near enough to be at the top of the leader board. I believe my weight for the day put me in 36th place. The leading weights were close to 18 lbs and the top 12 cut line was about 13.75 lbs. The big one I lost would have put me right near that cut line but there was nothing that could be done about it at that point. Even though I was back in the pack a little ways I still wasn't out of it so that was good at least. I knew I would have to catch them the next day though.

Day 2

On day 2 I was boat 5 so I knew I would be able to get any spot I wanted to start on. I decided to start in the same spot as day 1 even though the fish were smaller than I was expecting. I knew from practice that there were good ones in the area though and even if all I caught were little ones again it would be good to get a quick limit. Right off the bat my partner lost one at the boat that was around 2 1/2 lbs so I was encouraged that some better fish may have moved back. My first couple of fish were all small though but eventually got a few in the 2 1/2 to 3 lb range. I ended up working the same spot for a couple of hours in the morning just fishing as slowly as I possibly could.

After the action really slowed on my starting area I back to the docks where I had lost the big one the day before. I was hoping the same fish would bite again or that some other big fish had moved under the docks. That was not the case at all though as the dock bite was completely dead. I was only able to manage one small keeper that didn't even help me. Even though I had caught a lot of fish the day before I really hadn't fished the docks very hard so I was expecting to catch a few fish at least but it just didn't happen.

I moved back out to try a few other weed line areas but they weren't working either and eventually moved back to my starting spot. I was able to pick up another fish in the 2 1/2 lb range this time before the action died. At this point I didn't have much else going but my partner wanted to try some areas that he had fished in the past. Even though he didn't get any time to practice they were areas that he had caught fish on at the same time of year. As soon as we pulled up on one of his weed lines I put another 3 lb fish in the boat. A short while later I caught another 2 1/2 lb fish. At this point I knew I had a really solid bag but I was just missing that one big kicker. I kept fishing hard for the last hour of the day but never got any more action. All of the fish I caught on day 2 came on the hematoma Sweet Beaver. Like day 1 I was pretty disappointed as I headed back to the weigh-in site. I knew if I had that big fish from the first day I would be in but as it was I just knew I was going to be short of the top 12 cut line.

I was one of the first boats to weigh and my 5 fish limit went 14.11 lbs. That gave me a 2 day total of 25.30 lbs. The whole week I was expecting the top 12 line to be 26 lbs and I didn't get there. As the rest of the field weighed in though it became apparent that the fishing was extremely tough on day 2 and the bags coming in were very small for the most part. I was shocked when my 14.11 lbs ended up being the 2nd biggest bag of the day and was enough to give me a final finish of 7th place out of about 165 anglers. With this top 12 finish I have now qualified for 3 consecutive Northern Divisionals after finishing 2nd and 3rd the previous 2 years. I would sure like to win one of these things but I won't complain too much!

West Central Bass League - Long Lake TOC

2010-08-30T17:56:00.002-05:00

Thursday August 26th was the West Central Bass League Tournament of Champions. The top 10 teams in the year long point standings were invited to compete however one team had boat problems the night before and were unable to fish. With limited time we went down the list to try to fill the field but there were no takers so only 9 teams competing on Long Lake. My guess is that 8 of the teams wished they didn't have to fish either since it was brutal out on the lake. Of the 9 teams 6 failed to catch a single fish in the 3 hours of fishing. 2 other teams had 1 fish apiece and the winners reported getting 3 bites all night. They were a pretty amazing 3 bites though as you will see from the results.

1st - Ron & Joe 15.15 lbs

2nd - Ron & Dave 4.23 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike 3.01 lbs

Big Bass - Ron & Joe 5.54 lbs

Fortunately for us we were one of the teams who were actually able to catch a fish although it seems more like dumb luck than any type of skill. I never had a bite the entire evening. The bass my dad caught came about 20 minutes into the night while flipping reeds. It actually didn't even hit while in the reeds but after my dad had started reeling in to make another flip. About half way through the night I could tell that it was super tough out there and had the feeling that if we could catch just one more keeper it would be good enough for at least 2nd place. We bounced around to our best summer spots on the lake but were just never able to make anything happen. That is the way summer time fishing on Long can be most of the time though.

West Central Bass League - Norway Lake TOC

2010-08-30T17:45:00.003-05:00

Wednesday August 25th was the West Central Bass League Tournament of Champions. The top 10 teams in the year long point standings were invited to fish. Each team then chose one of our league lakes and we drew the name of a lake to fish that night. Norway Lake was chosen. That got a few groans since the lake has been very tough this year but my dad and I were able to get a 1st and a 2nd there earlier in the year so we were happy with the choice. The lake ended up being stingy once again but my dad and I were able to finish off the Wednesday night season with another 2nd place. Here are the full results.

1st - Ron & Joe 9.07 lbs

2nd - Andy & Mike 7.78 lbs

3rd - Tim & Grant 7.56 lbs

Big Bass - Paul & Pete 3.62 lbs

As usual we started our night fishing deep structure on Games Lake. Our action started almost immediately and we had our 3 fish limit in the boat in about 15 minutes by throwing Rapala DT 14s. We then hopped around to several other locations but not much was happening in any of those spots. After that we went back to our starting area and worked it over with jigs and soft plastics and were able to catch a few more fish doing that. While we were able to upgrade a little bit at a time the quality fish just didn't seem to be there. With about 45 minutes left in the night we decided to head back to Norway Lake to fish shallow cover with the hopes of coming across one big bite. With about 15 minutes left in the evening I was able to catch our big fish from under a dock but it only ended up weighing 3 lbs. That fish still was just enough to bump us over the 3rd place finishers and into 2nd.

Big Bass Bonanza - Sauk Lake

2010-08-27T17:56:00.002-05:00

The 5th and final event on the Big Bass Bonanza circuit was held August 22nd on Sauk Lake. The fishing was extremely tough for the 31 teams competing and even the teams who did well reported catching very few fish. In fact only 8 limits were brought to the scales and 7 teams weighed no fish. My dad and I ended up in the middle with 4 fish for 10.38 lbs. That put us in 17th place out of the 31 boats. This was just barely enough for us to hang on to a top 10 spot in the Team of the Year standings. We finished the TOY standings in 8th place with 193 points and the 10th place team finished with 190 points so there was very little cushion for us. With our top 10 finish we will be fishing the BBB TOC on Lake Koronis in a few weeks.

Going into this event we knew the fishing would be extremely difficult but I was still confident we could put our 8 fish limit in the boat. We practiced for one day and had 2 patterns going. The main pattern was fishing docks and trees but this is what everyone else does on Sauk too. Our other pattern involved fishing shallow weedlines which we felt would get a little less pressure. At the end of the day neither pattern ended up working well for us but we did get 2 of our weigh fish from the docks and trees and 2 of our fish from the weedlines. Besides a couple of short fish we only had one other bite the whole day. It ended up being the worst fishing I have experienced in 3 years on the Big Bass Bonanza circuit.

West Central Bass League - Eagle Lake

2010-08-24T20:04:00.002-05:00

Thursday August 19th was the final regular season night of the 2010 West Central Bass League season. We had 11 teams competing and as usual Eagle Lake kicked out some monster bags. What was unusual was the color of the fish for the winning team. For the first time that I can remember a team targeted smallmouth and brought in 3 brown fish to take the win. Big smallmouth have been weighed in the past but they were always just random fish. Here are the results.

1st - Grant & Travis 14.10 lbs

2nd - Joe & Pete 11.86 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals 10.85 lbs

Even though this was the final regular season night there is still one more night of league fishing this year. The top 10 in the points standings at the end of the year are invited to fish in the Tournament of Champions which will be held August 26th on Long Lake. The top 4 in the standings will receive payouts based on their point standing throughout the year as well. Here are the top 4 teams on Thursday nights for the 2010 season.

1st - Ron & Joe 238 points

2nd - Tim & Grant 234

3rd - Paul & Troy 228

4th - Andy & Mike Nitchals 225

Our fishing this night was actually quite slow but we kept plugging away and ended up weighing in a very nice bag. The only problem was the 2 bags ahead of us were giants! We caught our fish the usual Eagle Lake way by skipping docks and trees although I believe all of our fish came from under docks. 2 of our fish were just average size but a 4.5 lb bass that came about mid way through the night really bumped our weight up enough to get into the final money spot.

West Central Bass League - Diamond Lake

2010-08-24T19:47:00.002-05:00

Wednesday August 18th was the final regular season night of the 2010 West Central Bass League season. We had 15 teams competing on what turned out to be a pretty good night of fishing on Diamond Lake. There were a lot of fish caught and the weights were very solid as well. Here are the results.

1st - David & Lenny 9.62 lbs

2nd - Kelly & Scott 9.46 lbs

3rd - Joe & Greg 9.40 lbs

4th - Dean & JD 9.26 lbs

Big Bass - Kelly & Scott 3.68 lbs

Even though this was the final regular season night there is still one more night of league fishing this year. The top 10 in the points standings at the end of the year are invited to fish in the Tournament of Champions which will be held August 25th on Norway Lake. The top 4 in the standings will receive payouts based on their point standing throughout the year as well. Here are the top 4 teams on Wednesday nights for the 2010 season.

1st - Ron & Joe 224 points

2nd - Paul & Pete 220

3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals 215

4th - Kelly & Scott 192

My dad and I were only able to manage a 6th place finish on Diamond Lake with 3 fish for 7.88 lbs. We actually caught 30 or more bass in the 3 hours of fishing but we just didn't come across the quality fish that many other teams did. Most of our bites came by skipping tubes under the docks but I did add our best fish of the night on a Chigger Craw flipped in the reeds.

B.A.S.S. Northern Divisional - Bays de Noc

2010-08-23T17:33:00.002-05:00

2010 marked my 2nd consecutive trip to the Northern Divisional after years of coming close but failing to qualify through the Minnesota TOC. Normally the Divisional rotates between the 8 states but for political reasons it returned to Bays de Noc for another year. On the one hand I was disappointed because I did terrible there last year and would have liked to compete on a new body of water but on the other hand last year gave me a lot of experience that hopefully would be useful to me this year. In the end I ended up doing quite a bit better than last year but still stunk it up. Over the course of the 3 day tournament I ended up weighing in 8 bass for 23 lbs 8 oz. This put me in 76th place out of 112 anglers. The 12 man Minnesota team did not fare much better as a whole. We finished in 6th place last year but this year we ended up dropping one spot to 7th.

My troubles started off right away in the morning on Day 1 when I remarked to my partner, "I have never had boat problems on a tournament day. I'm sure that just jinxed us." Right after I said that I checked the kill switch one last time and sure enough it didn't work. A wire had pulled free and there was no way to get it repaired as the blast off had started. Fortunately the Minnesota team had a spare boat in the water and ready to go. After a mad scramble to get our gear in the other boat we ended up blasting off only a couple minutes after the last boat had left. I was only able to grab a handful of rods and tackle though and also had none of my waypoints in the new boat. It was great to only lose a few minutes of time though as we started off on about a 25 mile run to my first spot. My first area was a large flat hump with various high rocky spots on it. I thought I would be able to get on my preferred areas even without my waypoints but the cloud cover really hindered my ability to see the high spots. I was able to catch my 1 fish of the day in this area on a green pumpkin tube. It ended up weighing 4 lbs 12 oz so it was a really nice fish but I just didn't get any more of them. After that we ran around to some of my other areas and my partners spots but nothing would work for me. He was getting quite a few bites dragging a tube just like I was but I just wasn't getting bit for some reason. I guess the whole boat ordeal was messing with my mind more than it should have but whatever the case the whole day was just a disaster.

Day 2 ended up being much better for me as I was able to weigh in a 5 fish limit for 13 lbs 13 oz. That is not a huge limit by any means but it felt good to just get 5 fish in the box. My partner for the day wanted to spend his time in the same area that I started on the day before. That suited me just fine since it was my best area as well. We were the first boat to arrive but it was really slow for most of the morning. I was able to pick up a fish here and there though as I moved around the rocky areas on the hump. In the morning dragging a tube and drop shot extremely slowly was working the best but as the sun came out around noon the spinnerbait bite picked up considerably. By the end of the day I had caught around 10 fish with most of them coming on a spinnerbait in the afternoon.

The forecast for day 3 was for strong south winds which on Bays de Noc is the one direction you don't want to see. Any strong winds make it tough out there since it is such a large body of water but there is nothing blocking a wind from the south. With that forecast in mind the tournament director decided to limit the fishing waters to Little Bay de Noc only for the day. This upset many competitors since all of the best areas were off limits for the day. Personally I do not like the call either. I feel that the day should have been cancelled or we should have been allowed to fish the entire lake. Regardless of our feelings though we had to make the best of it. Neither my partner nor I had much going in the waters we were allowed to fish so we just went fishing basically. I ended up catching one really early on a spinnerbait and then didn't have a bite the rest of the day until we came back to the weigh in site. I was able to catch one more keeper on a drop shot right outside the harbor as we bounced around in the 5-6 foot waves that were coming in at that point. My 2 fish for the day weighed in at 4 lbs 15 oz and I was able to get some more big water driving time in as well. I never felt comfortable in big waves like that but after doing it 2 years in a row now I feel like I have gotten the hang of it. It's still not my idea of a good time but at least I don't feel like I'm going to die!

Even though my performance in this tournament was not very good I still had a great time over the week. Our 12 man team worked well together even though it didn't really show in the final standings and they were a great group of guys to hang out with. I was almost sad when the week came to an end. In any case I'll be trying to make the 2011 Northern Divisional once again when we have our MN State TOC on Lake Minnetonka on September 9-10.

West Central Bass League - Lake Koronis

2010-08-20T17:27:00.003-05:00

August 5th was the last league night I fished before leaving for the BASS Northern Divisional on Bays de Noc in Escanaba Michigan. We had one of our lowest turnouts of the year with only 10 boats showing up to compete. Koronis is not one of the more popular lakes on the league schedule so this is not too surprising though. My dad and I could only manage to find 3 little keepers for 4.87 lbs which put us in 7th place for the night. With only 10 boats we paid 3 spots instead of the usual 4.

1st - Paul & Troy 9.29 lbs

2nd - Ron & Joe 9.01 lbs

3rd - David & Lenny 8.32 lbs

Big Bass - Tim Stockland & Grant King 4.41 lbs

Our night was just a struggle to get anything going. From the results you can see that we never did find anything that worked for us. I guess I just want to forget this night because it's been a few weeks now and I really don't remember how we caught our fish. I believe we caught a few on soft plastics around the trees and docks. I also think we caught 1 weigh fish along a deep weedline on a jig. It doesn't really matter though since it was such a poor performance.

After this night I left for Michigan for 4 days of practice and the Northern Divisional which took place August 11-13 so I missed the league nights of August 11th on Green Lake and August 12th on Lake Calhoun. Since I did not fish those night I will not be reporting on them here. My next blog will detail my experience in Michigan for the Northern Divisional.

West Central Bass League - Eagle Lake

2010-08-20T17:18:00.002-05:00

Wednesday August 4th was our first visit to Eagle Lake for the West Central Bass League this year. The lake is known for kicking out some big fish and big bags in league nights past but it was nothing compared to this evening. Of the 18 teams fishing, 9 of them were able to bring in a 3 fish limit weighing over 9 pounds, with 4 of those bags topping 10 pounds. Here are the results.

1st - Paul & Pete 14.36 lbs

2nd - Grant King & Travis Lohre 12.22 lbs

3rd - Jeff & Jake 11.80 lbs

4th - Andy & Mike Nitchals 10.56 lbs

Big Bass - Paul & Pete 5.14 lbs

Since I am pretty backlogged on these blogs after my trip to Michigan these next few league reports are going to be short and to the point. For this night on Eagle there is not a whole lot to report anyway. We fished the way we always do on Eagle which is to find a stretch of docks that doesn't have any boats on it and go to work picking them apart. This is how most of the fish are caught in the lake and all of our weigh fish came by skipping Strike King Bleeding Bait tubes under and around the docks.

West Central Bass League - Green Lake

2010-08-01T17:40:00.003-05:00

Thursday July 29th was the first visit to Green Lake for league this year and it must have scared off most of the guys or something because only 9 teams showed up to fish despite the perfect weather conditions. I guess they are just intimidated by Green Lake! Maybe they were just the smart ones since the fishing was pretty difficult for the most part.

1st - Tim Stockland & Grant King 9.27 lbs

2nd - Paul & Troy 9.14 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike 7.36 lbs

Big Bass - Ross & Daryl 3.40 lbs

My dad and I were the beneficiaries of some bad fortune from our closest pursuers in the Team of the Year standings on this night. Their boat broke down about halfway through the night so they were unable to fish effectively for the full 3 hours and ended up finishing 4th for the night. I would have liked more of a cushion but at least we gained 1 point on them. At this point in the season we have a 2 point lead over 2nd place in the standings.

I hadn't been out on Green since our Big Bass Bonanza tournament several weeks ago so the plan was to fish the same patterns and hope they still worked and if not try to figure something out with the remaining time. For the most part those areas and patterns held up but the size was just a little bit smaller than it had been. It also hurt that I lost several nice bass that would have helped our weight a bunch. I don't think they would have been enough to win but you never know. We caught all of our weigh fish on tubes fished around milfoil, sand and rocks.

West Central Bass League - Lake Calhoun

2010-08-01T17:28:00.002-05:00

Wednesday July 28th was the first visit to Calhoun for the West Central Bass League this year. The lake is known for producing tons of small fish but can also produce some very nice bags as well. On this particular night it was somewhere in between as all 19 teams competing were able to bring in a 3 fish limit. Even though it is only a 3 fish limit that is pretty rare. The weights at the top were also very tight but all in the 9 lb range which is not great for this lake.

1st - Paul & Pete 9.41 lbs

2nd - Travis & Tristan 9.37 lbs

3rd - Ron & Joe 9.27 lbs

4th - Ron & Dave 8.48 lbs

Big Bass - Troy & Chad 3.97 lbs

My dad and I were only able to manage an 8th place finish with 6.98 lbs. This continues our slide in the month of July. We are still holding on to the Team of the Year standings lead but the gap has closed to 4 points over Ron & Joe who are on fire right now. We will need to pick it up if we are going to hold them off the rest of the year.

Our fishing on Calhoun was about what I was expecting. We ended up catching a lot of fish but most of them were under 2 lbs. I think the 3 that we weighed in were the only 3 fish we caught that were over 2 lbs but as you can tell from the weight they were not much over 2 lbs. We ended up moving around quite a bit in search of an area with big fish but nothing ever materialized. Our 3 weigh fish did end up coming in 3 different types of areas as well. The first came on a tube under an overhanging tree. The second came on a Chigger Craw flipped into heavy milfoil near deeper water and the third one came on a jig flipped in the reeds. It ended up being a pretty fun night just catching a lot of fish in a variety of ways but we really needed a few bigger bites. Hopefully they will be coming in the next few weeks.

West Central Bass League - Long Lake

2010-07-28T16:04:00.002-05:00

Thursday July 22nd was the 2nd stop on Long Lake for the league and as expected for this time of year on Long the fishing was extremely tough. Out of the 13 teams only 2 were able to bring in a 3 fish limit and 7 of the teams zeroed. The 2 teams who did catch limits reported only catching 3 fish apiece so it wasn't like they were whacking them either but the fish they did catch ended up being very nice. Even though very few fish were caught the average weight ended up being an astounding 4.10 lbs!

1st - Ron & Joe 12.73 lbs

2nd - Tim & Grant 12.60 lbs

3rd - Jim & Dwight 8.34 lbs

4th - Andy & Mike 7.54 lbs

Big Bass - Ross & Daryl 5.16 lbs

Just like everyone else we had an extremely tough night although we were able to get 3 bites and put 2 of them in the boat to squeak into the money in 4th place. One of our fish came early in the evening on a black/blue punch skirt rig flipped in the reeds. Our 2nd fish didn't come until about 10 minutes before check in. That one came on a black/blue tube from under an overhanging tree.

Sorry for the delay and shortness of these last two blogs. I have been in Michigan for the past several days doing some pre-practice for the upcoming BASS Federation Northern Divisionals on Bays de Noc so I haven't had the time I usually do for these things. Things will be back to normal at this point for a couple weeks at least.

West Central Bass League - Lake Andrew

2010-07-28T15:48:00.002-05:00

Wednesday July 21st was the 2nd visit to Lake Andrew for the West Central Bass League. This time we had 21 boats fishing which is a great turnout but also a lot of boats for such a small lake. It may have been a little crowded on the water but the weights for the evening were the best in a few years for the lake. My dad and I did not share in the success though as we managed to catch a 3 fish limit for 6.78 lbs which was good for 6th place for the night.

1st - Travis & Tristan 10.15 lbs

2nd - Paul & Pete 9.44 lbs

3rd - Ron & Joe 9.13 lbs

4th - Jeff & Todd 8.47 lbs

Big Bass - Jeff & Todd 4.43 lbs

Our fishing started off very slow but picked up later in the evening as we found a school of bass hanging in the thickest coontail area we could find. That is basically what we did for the whole evening. We just kept fishing different weedline areas looking for a school of big fish which we were never able to find. The bass we did end up catching were all about 2 1/4 lbs and all came on watermelon jigs in the heavy coontail.

West Central Bass League - Lake Johanna

2010-07-16T17:32:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was the 2nd stop at Lake Johanna for the West Central Bass League. Earlier in the year a 3 fish bag weighing nearly 13 lbs was weighed in but on this night nothing came close to that. There were some very nice bags brought in though. Unfortunately my dad and I were not one of them as we ended up with only 2 fish for 5.77 lbs. That was good for 7th place out of the 14 teams competing. Here are the rest of the results.

1st - Ron & Joe 9.86 lbs

2nd - John & Jacob 9.77 lbs

3rd - Tim & Grant 9.76 lbs

4th - Jim & John 9.65 lbs

Big Bass - John & Jacob 4.15 lbs

There really isn't much to say about our fishing for the night since we didn't catch much at all. We spent most of our time for the night in one small area of reeds that we knew was holding at least a few fish. I missed a couple of bites but never got a hook in either fish and my dad had 2 fish on that he lost so we did have our chances at getting a 3 fish limit but it just didn't happen for us. The 2 fish that we did weigh both came on a black/blue homemade punch skirt rig.

West Central Bass League - Lake Florida

2010-07-16T17:17:00.002-05:00

The West Central Bass League returned to Lake Florida on Wednesday July 14th. We had fished there several weeks earlier on a Thursday night and the fishing was pretty tough for the most part. It was nothing compared to what we faced on this night though. Out of the 18 teams competing there were 6 zeros and another 6 boats only had 2 fish. There were still some nice fish caught though as usual.

1st - Ron & Joe 9.67 lbs

2nd - Andy & Mike 9.51 lbs

3rd - Kelly & Scott 8.30 lbs

4th - Brad & Wayne 5.20 lbs

Big Bass - Ron & Joe 4.08 lbs

After the top 3 the weights really dropped off as you can see. Fortunately we were able to find some fish and actually have a fun night of fishing. Our first stop was deep water area with scattered weeds and a few rocks. We ended up staying on this spot for the first hour. The action was very slow but after that hour we had 3 fish in the boat with one of them being 3 3/4 lbs and another close to 3 lbs.

Our next stop was another deep area with similar features to the first. We ended up spending the entire second hour in this location and the action was much faster. We probably ended up catching 15 keepers in the hour if not more. Most of the fish were 2 lbs or under but we were able to cull up a few times with fish in the 3 lb range.

Our final hour was spent bouncing around several other deep weed areas with little success. I was able to catch another fish close to 3 lbs on one of the spots but at that point it was not big enough to help us. All of our weigh fish for the night ended up coming on watermelon jigs or watermelon texas-rigged finesse worms.

Big Bass Bonanza - Green Lake

2010-07-15T15:06:00.002-05:00

Sunday July 11th marked the 3rd of 5 events on the Big Bass Bonanza circuit this season. The tournament was held on Green Lake near Spicer and drew 34 teams. This number was a little lower than I expected but Green Lake has been extremely tough this year and I think that may have kept a few teams from showing up. Despite threats of thunderstorms and wind the fishing conditions were very nice for the day but true to it's nature this year the fishing was extremely tough. Even the teams who ended up finishing well reported a tough bite. The winning bag went to Nick and Paul with an 8 fish limit for 22.15 lbs. 2nd place went to my dad and I with 8 fish for 21.95 lbs. 3rd went to the team of Moore and Moore with 20.96 lbs and they also had the big bass of the day with a 5.12 lb largemouth. I do not have official results so these are all from memory but I believe they are correct.

Like the other top finishers we also had a tough day overall. Our morning started off well but in the last 4 hours of the day we were only able to cull 1 time. We basically had a two pronged approach to this event after our practice period was over. We had found some good fish shallow in milfoil beds and also deep on humps.

We started the morning running various milfoil beds that we had located in practice and over the past several years. Our primary lure was a texas rigged tube that we threw around the edges and also right into the thick stuff. This pattern allowed us to fill our limit by about 9 am. That limit was mostly just small largemouth but also included 3 bass in the 3 lb or better range.

After fishing our best areas the action seemed to slow for us up shallow so we decided to head out to deep water in search of a few big smallies. We had gotten bit on several humps in the 20-30 foot depth range in practice and felt like this would be a good compliment to our shallow water pattern. Our first two stops out deep paid off nicely with 4 smallies in the 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 lb range on drop-shot rigged finesse worms. We continued to run this pattern in several more locations but the action was completely dead in all the other areas we tried. Since the deep water bite wasn't working for us anymore we headed back shallow but that was also very slow for the rest of the afternoon. I was able to upgrade with another 3 lb largemouth from the milfoil at about 1 pm but that was the only cull we made and one of the few fish we caught in the last 4 hours of the tournament.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with our performance in this tournament. Coming so close to a win but not quite getting there was pretty heartbreaking but that's how it goes. I really feel with the lake fishing as tough as it was that I should have been able to win the event but it wasn't meant to be. It really would have been nice to have a better afternoon or at least caught 1 more good fish to put us over the top but I don't think I would change anything about how we fished. It just didn't happen for us that day.

West Central Bass League - Diamond Lake

2010-07-12T16:19:00.002-05:00

Thursday July 8th was our first visit to Diamond Lake for the West Central Bass League. Diamond can be a really good big fish lake or it can be tough as nails. This night it showed it's ugly side as only 3 of the 14 teams were able to bring in a 3 fish limit for the night. 6 of the 14 teams were not able to catch a single keeper. Out of the 14 boats fishing a total of 17 bass were brought to the scales. That is some tough fishing!

1st - Ron & Joe 8.71 lbs

2nd - Ron & Dave 7.05 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike 6.45 lbs

4th - John & Jacob 5.21 lbs (2 fish)

Big Bass - Ron & Joe 3.37 lbs

We were one of the 3 teams to catch a 3 fish limit but for the most part our night was uneventful. We only ended up getting 4 bites but one of them was a fish that my dad missed and I was able to follow up with a quick cast to catch it. So really we only had 3 keeper fish bite all night long. Our first fish came after fishing for over an hour. I caught it off a dock on a black/blue Strike King Bleeding Bait tube. After that we went over an hour again without a bite. At this point I figured just having 1 keeper would possibly get us some good points but I was still getting worried. At around 8:30 my dad missed a fish in a weed mat and I was able to throw my tube right back and get it. My next cast was to the next dock and I was able to add our final keeper on the tube. So after 1 bite in 2 1/2 hours we had 2 fish in the boat in about 2 minutes. It was another great ending to a tough night!

West Central Bass League - Norway Lake

2010-07-12T15:55:00.002-05:00

Wednesday July 7th marked our 2nd visit to Norway lake this season for the West Central Bass League. We had 22 boats competing and most teams were able to bring in their 3 fish limit. The weights were about normal though for the past few years as most of the bags were very small. There were a few exceptions though as the top several teams brought in very nice bags for Norway Lake.

1st - Brad & Wayne 11.06 lbs

2nd - Andy & Mike 9.29 lbs

3rd - Jim & Brad 9.06 lbs

4th - John & Jacob 8.76 lbs

Big Bass - Brad & Wayne 4.74 lbs

As usual we started and spent the majority of our night in Games Lake. We fished several spots out deep and were able to catch around a dozen fish for the night on a variety of lures. The biggest fish came on Rapala DT 16 crankbaits and Berkley 10" Power Worms. We were not able to find many quality fish over in Games though as our biggest fish was just a little under 3 lbs. With about 15 minutes to go I decided to head back to Norway Lake and fish one spot in the reeds for the last 10 minutes of the night. With about 5 minutes before check in I boated a nice bass that went just a little over 4 lbs on a Berkley Chigger Craw. I don't know why I decided to move to a spot that I only had 10 minutes to fish but it paid off! That fish gave us an additional 2 lbs and moved us up from out of the money and into 2nd place. What an exciting way to end the night!

West Central Bass League - Nest Lake

2010-07-02T17:20:00.002-05:00

We had 15 boats competing last night on Nest Lake for the West Central Bass League. Once again we had strong winds that hampered the fishing for some but for others the fish really turned on and some really big bags were brought to the scales.

1st Ron & Joe 11.91 lbs

2nd Brad & Wayne 11.25 lbs

3rd Andy & Mike 11.17 lbs

4th Paul & Troy 9.38 lbs

Big Bass - Dean & JD 4.77 lbs

For a 3 fish limit you can see that the weights this evening were very strong. Most of the top teams reported catching a lot of nice fish as well. My dad and I were not one of those teams though. I think we only ended up boating 7 fish for the evening but 6 of them were 3 lbs or better and I'll take quality over quantity any day!

Our evening started on another down note as I lost a smallie over 3 lbs in the first 5 minutes of fishing. I won't blame that one on my injury though since I was feeling much better. I had it on a drop shot with a small light wire hook so usually those things stick and fish don't get off but this one just jumped and came off for some reason. That seems to be how my year is going so far. The rest of the night was just a grind as we rotated through our usual areas with very little success. As I said though when we did get a bite it ended up being a good one. Towards the end of the night we had a little flurry and I put a largemouth close to 4 1/2 lbs in the boat on a KVD tube. At this point I knew we had close to 11 lbs so despite the tough night I felt we had a good shot at the win. It wasn't meant to be though as not 1 but 2 teams brought bigger bags to the scales. Man these guys are tough out here!

West Central Bass League - Lake Koronis

2010-07-02T16:59:00.002-05:00

We had our lowest turnout of the year for Wednesdays on June 30th. I think the strong winds as well as the fact that it was Koronis kept many teams from showing up. Koronis can be a great lake but since it is a little further away than most of our league lakes some people just don't have as much experience on that body of water. Even though the turnout was lower we still had 18 boats competing on what turned out to be a pretty tough night. Koronis is noted for pretty good smallmouth fishing but only 2 made it to the scales that evening and they were both brought in by my dad and I. Here are the results.

1st Ron & Joe 8.18 lbs

2nd Andy & Mike Nitchals 7.98 lbs

3rd Paul & Pete 6.61 lbs

4th Kelly & Scott 6.54 lbs

Big Bass Mike Nitchals 4.44 lbs (Smallmouth)

Before I start the fishing report I have to start making my excuse for why we lost this evening. Earlier in the day my dad and I stopped off at a lake on the way to Koronis for a few hours of fun fishing. As I was loading the boat I slipped off the trailer and crushed my chest against the winch. I didn't break anything but I was in quite a bit of pain for the rest of the evening. I didn't do any damage to my arms but the chest pain ended up affecting my hooksets later in the evening and I was not able to get much power which resulted in me losing 3 good fish. Any one of those 3 would have been enough to give us the win but that's just the way it goes I guess. I have loaded and unloading my boat 100s and 100s of times since 2005 and never had any issues like that. I guess it was due to happen someday!

Besides the lost fish our fishing for the night was very slow. We started on one of our favorite stretches of docks and trees but didn't have a bite. After that it was off to one of our favorite deep weedline areas. It was out in the wind though and extremely difficult to position the boat but we did put one small keeper in the boat on a watermelon jig. After having a tough time for largemouth we stopped on a small rocky area for smallies. Almost immediately I had a good one on but since I had a terrible hookset it pulled off right away. I never saw the fish but I know it was a good one. It seemed like the smallies might have been biting so our next stop was an area mixed with rocks and weeds. I opted for a spinnerbait this time thinking that the way smallies hit a spinnerbait I would not need a very good hookset to get them to the boat. I was wrong! I had a good one close to 3 lbs crush my spinnerbait but halfway to the boat it jumped off. My dad also lost a decent smallie on this area. Our night was going from bad to worse in a hurry!

Our next stop was another shallow rocky area in search of smallies. This time my dad connected with the big fish of the night on a KVD tube. A short while later I added a small largemouth from the same area that also came on a tube. At this point we at least had our limit and the one big one so we were feeling a lot better. The rest of the night we bounced around and I missed one more good one under a dock but we were not able to boat any fish until our last stop of the night. With about 10 minutes until check in we pulled onto a shallow weedy ridge and I was able to add a 2 lb smallie that culled out one of those tiny largemouth. With as bad as my execution was I knew we had blown the win but I didn't realize it would end up being as close as it did. That makes it hurt even more!

West Central Bassmasters State Qualifier - Lake Osakis

2010-06-30T12:50:00.002-05:00

Sunday June 27th was our final qualifier event to determine which of our club members would go to the MN State Tournament of Champions. Unlike most of my other tournaments this is an individual event and we had 15 guys competing in this one. Going in it sounded like everyone had a very tough time in practice and extremely strong winds on tournament day did not help matters. I am not going to post the full results like I did last time but I will give some of the details. The winner on the day weighed in a 5 fish limit for 10.80 lbs and I came in 2nd with 10.02 lbs. After that no other bag topped 9 lbs. The big fish for the day was caught by my dad and it weighed 3.77 lbs. With my 2nd place finish I was able to move into the top spot for the club this year! This means that I will be the guaranteed boater from our club at the state tourney! It is always nice to be assured that you will be able to use your own boat.

Here is the list of state qualifiers from our club this year:

1st - Andy Nitchals

2nd - Brian Krause

3rd - Mike Nitchals

4th - Dean Drexler

5th - Grant King

6th - Joe Patock

Alternate - David Christinsen

This is a strong group of fishermen. Many of them have qualified for state multiple times and it should allow us to have a good showing. Besides my personal accomplishments at the state tourney over the past 2 years our club has also been the top club in the state in that portion of the event those 2 years. I see no reason why we can't keep that crown!

I had the same experience as the others in the club who had a tough time during practice. My dad and I spent about 9 hours on the lake the week before and caught about 10 fish. That doesn't sound too bad but they were all small except for 1 and also there really was no rhyme or reason to where we would get a bite. One area of reeds on the north end of the lake seemed to be a little bit better though so that is where I decided to start. Almost immediately I had a small keeper in the boat and a short time later my dad boated the big bass of the day. This got me feeling pretty good about the area and I decided to spend a good chunk of the morning without ever picking up the trolling motor. After fishing through the reeds and adding another small keeper, the cover turned to slop near the bank. I picked up a Zoom Horny Toad, which I almost never throw, and fired it up next to shore. As soon as it hit the water my biggest fish of the day was all over it. He got buried in the slop and I just skied it into the boat. That fish went right at 3 lbs and I was feeling pretty good about my chances if I could just fill my limit. After that we worked back through the reeds again with no action until I came to a few docks where I added another small keeper on a Strike King tube and my limit fish a short while later from a small reed pocket. By now it was 10:30 in the morning and I had not started the big motor since blastoff. For me that is very unusual but on this day it was effective. At that point I felt it was time to check some other stuff and the day got really slow. I didn't have another bite until 1:30 in the afternoon. That fish came on a black/blue jig pitched into the reeds and allowed me to cull up slightly.

This was an unusual tournament for me in that I spent so much time without moving and also the number of lures it took to get my limit. Most of the time if you aren't dialed into to just a couple of baits it means that you are struggling pretty bad. This tournament my 5 weigh fish came on 5 different lures. They were a Chigger Craw, Sweet Beaver, Horny Toad, jig and tx-rigged tube. I will say I felt like I was struggling out there but at the end of the day it turned out to be much better than I expected!

WCB/Green Mill Summer Classic - Green Lake

2010-06-30T12:10:00.002-05:00

Saturday June 26th marked the first of two events my Federation Nation club, the West Central Bassmasters, and Green Mill Restaurant will be holding this year on Green Lake in Spicer Minnesota. We had 33 teams show up from all over the state to compete on one of the premier tournament lakes in Minnesota. Although it is one of the best lakes in the state, this year it had been fishing tougher than I have ever seen it and many teams struggled to catch quality fish. There are always a few who figure it out though and some very nice bags were brought to the scales. With 33 teams competing, 6 spots were paid. Big bass of the day also earned a check.

1st - John & Jacob Zvorak 6 fish 18.89 lbs

2nd - Seth Fieder & Austin Felix 6 fish 18.58 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals 6 fish 17.68 lbs

4th - Matt & Verney Klemm 6 fish 17.50 lbs

5th - Jason Dudek & Jason Holmer 6 fish 16.90 lbs

6th - Paul Shimek & John Lindgren 6 fish 15.33 lbs

Big Bass - Matt & Verney Klemm 4.28 lbs

As you can see the weights at the top were pretty tight together as is usually the case on Green Lake but after that they began to tail off quite quickly. Only half the field was able to weigh in over a 2 lb. average which shows just how tough the lake is fishing right now. Another interesting note is the number of largemouth weighed in. Traditionally this has been a smallmouth lake and that is what most people fish for but in this tournament 70 largemouth were weighed compared to 88 smallmouth weighed. That is getting pretty close to a 50/50 mix. The big bass for the day was also a largemouth which is almost always the case in recent years.

My next tournament on Green is coming up July 11th on the Big Bass Bonanza circuit so in this post I cannot be very detailed with my fishing report. It looks like it is going to be hot for the next 2 weeks though so the fish will be moving and probably doing some completely different things by then but I still don't want to reveal too much. After the BBB tournament I will maybe get more detailed about the patterns and spots used for both tourneys.

So what can I say about this event? I guess there are a few things that I can reveal. It is pretty well known, amongst many in the area, that I enjoy fishing deep on Green. That was not the case this year though. I was not able to find any deep water areas I had confidence in for the tournament. All of the fish we caught came from water 10 feet deep or less. As far as what type of areas we were fishing in the shallow water I won't say but we fished a variety of spots. There were a couple keys subtleties that seemed to make a big difference though.

I will also say that one lure really produced much better than any others for us and that was a tube. We rigged it a variety of ways and worked them in several different ways as well. We did end up catching probably around 35-40 fish on the day and the vast majority of them came on a tube. Another interesting note is that the majority of the fish we caught were largemouth. We still caught around 15 smallies but I don't ever remember catching so many largemouth on a tournament day, especially since we were not necessarily targeting largemouths specifically. Our final bag ended up consisting of 3 smallies and 3 largemouths which is probably more largemouth than I have weighed in out of all my other tournaments out there combined.

Well I've probably said too much already but I hope that was an interesting read and still sufficiently vague.

West Central Bass League - Lake Florida

2010-06-25T15:11:00.000-05:00

We fished Lake Florida for the first time this year for league June 17th. The reports coming into the event were that Lake Florida was really tough this year and from the little bit of time I put on the water I had to agree. Maybe that was the reason the turnout was so low with only 14 boats competing. The fishing, numbers wise, turned out to be better than I expected but as usual for the lake in recent years the weights were pretty small in general. Here are the results.

1st Andy & Mike (Me) 3 fish 9.94 lbs

2nd Tim Stockland & Grant King 3 fish 7.03 lbs

3rd Paul & Troy 3 fish 7.03 lbs

4th Ron & Joe 3 fish 6.48 lbs

Big Bass Andy Nitchals 3.49 lbs

As you can see there was a tie for second place in total weight but Tim & Grant won the tiebreaker by having a larger fish than Paul & Troy.

Writing this blog has become a little trickier for me in recent years as the readership has expanded. I generally have no problem talking about what worked and where but in certain instances I think I need dial back on the details. This is one of those instances. So even though I will not be very detailed in this report, I will not lie or try to deceive anyone on my blog.

My dad and I ended up having a very good night on what I was expecting to be a tough lake. We ended up catching maybe 15 or more keepers for the night and not to rub it in too much but we threw back 3 fish that would have also won handily. Maybe we should be allowed to weigh in 2 limits for a night? I'm just joking about that but we did have a fun night fishing the way I like to fish. All I am going to say about where we caught them is that they were deep. Our 3 weigh fish came on a variety of lures. We had one each on a Brush Hog, jig, and finesse worm rigged on a drop shot. We caught fish on several other lures as well but they didn't come to the scales.

West Central Bass League - Solomon Lake

2010-06-25T15:01:00.000-05:00

The West Central Bass League returned to Lake Solomon on Wednesday June 16th. We had fished there the opening week on Thursday night and fishing was pretty good for most of the teams. It was the exact opposite this time as only 7 of the 24 teams competing were able to bring in a 3 fish limit. The winning weight was also the smallest that I can ever remember on Solomon. My dad and I really struggled for most of the evening but we did manage to bring in a 3 fish limit for 7.86 lbs which was good for 6th place. Here are the rest of the results.

1st David & Lenny 3 fish 8.80 lbs

2nd Ron & Joe 3 fish 8.77 lbs

3rd Paul & Pete 3 fish 8.26 lbs

4th Bill & Todd 3 fish 8.19 lbs

Big Bass Bill & Todd 4.47 lbs

As I said earlier we struggled for most of the night. We only had about a 20 minute period where we caught any fish at all so there really isn't much to tell in this report. I ended up catching 4 keepers in that 20 minutes by flipping a black/red flake Berkley Chigger Craw to the reeds. We must have hit that stretch before anyone else or something because the fish were biting pretty good for a little while at least. The rest of the night was just a struggle as we bounced around the lake searching for a bite that never came.

Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Ida

2010-06-23T16:16:00.000-05:00

The second of five events on the BBB trail took place this past Sunday, June 20th on Lake Ida just north of Alexandria. There were 36 teams competing which was up slightly from the opening event a few weeks earlier. This is probably due to Ida being a much better fishing lake than the Horseshoe chain although the average size of the bass out there is pretty small. With 36 teams they ended up paying back 6 spots and my dad and I finished just out of the money in 7th place. We had an 8 fish limit for 16.70 lbs. With such a low weight I was pretty shocked to even be that close. The winning bag for the day was just over 24 lbs of smallmouth but 2nd place dropped all the way down to 17.81 lbs. The big bass for the day was a 3.96 lb largemouth.

Our practice for Ida was pretty tough overall and was interrupted by boat issues that cut our time short. Catching fish is never a problem on the lake but finding above average fish was extremely difficult even though an above average fish is only 2 lbs. We had located 2 areas that seemed to be holding more of the 2 lb fish at opposite ends of the lake. With that in mind we decided to start close to the launch site and get fishing quickly. The action started fast with a fish on my first cast but it wasn't a keeper. Several more short fish followed and we began to realize something had changed. We stuck around awhile longer and ended up adding 4 keepers but they were all small.

After that it was down to the other end of the lake to try our other "good" spot. This ended up being the same thing. A lot of small fish but the 2 pounders were gone. We did put our 8 fish limit together by about 8:30 am but we knew they would all have to be culled if we had any shot in this event. We fished around awhile longer but just couldn't find the right size so we decided to go to an area that only had small fish in practice. It was another stretch of deep weed line that has actually produced for us over the years but didn't seem to have the quality this year. For whatever reason the small fish in practice turned into 2 to 2 1/2 lb fish on tournament day though and we upgraded 7 times along that one weedline.

After the action slowed we went running docks and reeds for most of the afternoon looking for one big bite that would put us ahead of the rest of the field who we were sure would have limits of 2 lb fish. I was able to add 1 upgrade to our limit with a fish close to 2 lbs off of a dock but the big bite never came. After seeing the weights at the weigh in we realized that we messed up by leaving our honeyhole looking for a big bite that we didn't even need. I am almost positive that if we had sat on that one area the rest of the day we would have been able to cull up into 2nd place. There was no shot at first since they blew it away but I really wish we stayed put and just ground up a few ounces at a time. Hindsight is always 20/20 though.

Our weigh in fish, with the exception of the dock fish, came on watermelon LFT Twitch worms rigged on a drop-shot, watermelon Brush Hogs, and watermelon jigs. The dock fish came on a green pumpkin Strike King KVD tube.

West Central Bass League - Lake Andrew

2010-06-18T17:38:00.000-05:00

After a record turnout the night before this Thursday had our lowest number of participants of the season. Strong winds and threats of severe thunderstorms kept most people home for the evening although it turned out to be not so bad after all. With only 13 boats fishing instead of the usual 20-25 it really opens a lake up to fish more areas. Those of us who did show up probably wished we had stayed home though after getting our butts handed to us by the winning team on what is traditionally a small fish lake. Here are the results.

1st - Superstars Tim Stockland & Grant King 3 fish 11.57 lbs

2nd - Paul & Troy 3 fish 7.70 lbs

3rd - Andy & Mike (My dad and I) 3 fish 7.09 lbs

4th - Scott & Al 3 fish 7.02 lbs

Big Bass - Tim & Grant 4.48 lbs

I'll keep this recap short and sweet since I went long on the last one and really there isn't a whole lot to say. We spent most of the night bouncing around various deep weedline areas in 10-12 feet of water. We did make two forays into the shallows but did not catch any that helped our limit. The fish we did catch were all about 2 1/4 lbs and they came on watermelon jigs and Brush Hogs.

Also I'd like to give a big THANKS to Lafe Swalin for letting us use his boat this week. Our boat broke down Tuesday morning and has been in the shop waiting for parts all week. Without his generosity we would not have been able to fish at all. Thank you Lafe!

West Central Bass League - Long Lake

2010-06-18T17:15:00.000-05:00

This past Wednesday saw another record turnout as 27 teams showed up to compete on Long Lake. The weather was beautiful and the lake is known for kicking out some big fish so that is probably what got everyone out. The lake definitely lived up to its reputation as a big fish lake that doesn't have a lot of fish as you will see from the stats. Only 38 bass were weighed but the total weight was 139.26 lbs which made for a 3.66 lb. per fish average. That is gigantic for Minnesota! I believe only 2 fish under 3 lbs. were weighed in for the night. I lost 2 fish at the boat that would have weighed a combined 10 lbs and we only ended up weighing in 2 fish for 6.35 lbs. This was still good enough for 10th place out of the 27 teams though. Here are the rest of the results.

1st - Chad & John 3 fish 12.34 lbs

2nd - Bill & Todd 3 fish 11.90 lbs

3rd - Tom & Bob 3 fish 10.22 lbs

4th - David & Lenny 3 fish 9.53 lbs

Big Bass - Chad & John 4.96 lbs

We started our night on one of the reed islands that we shared with another boat. It is not a large area and with 2 boats on it we covered it pretty quickly without a bite for either one of us. After that it was off to another area of reeds that also failed to produce. This time though I moved off the reeds slightly into open water where the first disaster struck. I was swimming a homemade black/blue punch skirt rig with a Berkley Chigger Craw when a 4 1/2 lb fish hit right at the boat. I didn't get a very good hookset so instead of waiting for the net I just tried to boat flip it but of course it fell off just as my dad was getting the net to it. That is not the way to start the night!

With so many boats on the water our next location was one we choose simply because there was no one there. It was another stretch of reeds that I rarely fish. It turned out to be a good choice though because we boated our 2 keepers there on the punch skirt rig and a watermelon craw tube. After getting those bites we really worked the general area thoroughly for our 3rd keeper but it never came.

The rest of the night was spent fishing used water although I tried to fish it differently than others would have. Most people will just fish around the edges of the reeds but we tried to get way back in them where a fish may not have seen a lure. Towards the end of the night we got way back behind a reed point that is usually too shallow to fish but with all the rain we were able to get way back to the back where my dad had 2 blow ups on his frog but wasn't able to connect. A short while later I had a giant well over 5 lbs crush my black Spro Bronze Eye frog. The fish was absolutely crazy! It was out of the water for at least half the fight until disaster struck once again. I had it right to the boat and almost in the net when it just fell off for no apparent reason. I kept it on through all the jumping but when it was at the boat it just pulled free.

I guess there are two ways of looking at the night. One is that we fished terrible and lost big fish. It really is a horrible feeling. On the other hand I feel like we fished a perfect tournament from a mental aspect. We were able to generate the bites to win and get big bass for the night on a night when many struggled to catch just 1 fish. That is how I should look at it I suppose but I still feel sick!

West Central Bassmasters State Qualifier - Lake Minnewaska

2010-06-17T15:34:00.000-05:00

Sunday June 13th marked the first West Central Bassmasters club event to determine which members will qualify for the Minnesota State Federation Tournament of Champions. It was held on Lake Minnewaska out of Starbuck Minnesota. We had 16 guys fishing, 12 of whom were trying to qualify for the state tourney. With 12 people trying we are allowed to send the top 6 to the state tourney. The conditions on Sunday were beautiful with light winds and cloudy skies with occasional rain showers. These are the type of conditions fish should bite well in but unfortunately for us it was just about the toughest I have ever seen the lake. Here are the results from the day's fishing:

June 13, 2010 Lake Minnewaska

Name # Fish Big Tot Wgt Place State Pts

Tim Stockland 5 3.50 10.51 1 12

Mike Nitchals 5 3.48 10.50 2 11

Andy Nitchals 5 3.96 10.24 3 10

Brian Krause 5 3.64 8.98 4 9

Dean Drexler 5 2.81 8.17 5 8

Paul Shimek 5 7.84 6

Joe Patock 5 7.59 7 7

Grant King 4 6.88 8 6

Ryan Brummond 5 2.32 6.73 9

Wayne Kitzmann 5 6.29 10

David Christinsen4 6.16 11 5

Jeff Wilke 5 5.48 12

Eric Tessmer 4 5.09 13 4

Solon Schaefer 4 4.68 14

Lenny Schaefer 3 2.89 15

Bill Neumann 2 2.83 16 3

Big Bass 3.96 Andy Nitchals

Before the tournament everyone I had talked to was complaining big time about the lake. Everyone is saying all the big fish were gone and the fishing was really tough out there. I spent about 6 hours on the lake the previous week and was able to compile 13-14 lbs pretty easily so I was really liking my chances going into the event. Of course practice and the actual tournament are much different things but I at least had confidence that I could get a few bigger bites than most of the field.

My plan was to fish weed lines in 8-14 feet of water and that is pretty much what I stuck to all day long. I did start on a rock and gravel area in about 4-6 feet of water where I was able to catch 2 quick smallmouth on watermelon/red flake Strike King Coffee Tubes but they were both only around 1 1/2 lbs. After that it was off to the weed lines for the rest of the day. I alternated between 1/2 oz and 3/4 oz watermelon jigs as well as a watermelon Brush Hog for most of my fishing. I just kept rotating through my old waypoints and some of the new areas I had found earlier in the week. I can't be too specific about the big fish of the day but I will say it came on a spot I found a couple years ago and every time I have fished it I have been able to catch at least one fish over 3 lbs off of it. It really seems like a consistent spot that doesn't receive a whole lot of pressure. That fish came on a 3/4 oz jig and if I hadn't caught that one I would have been really hurting since the rest of my limit was all small fish. I was just never able to get on the quality I had found earlier in the week although my dad, who was fishing with me, caught 2 fish in the 3- 3 1/2 lb range to enable him to finish 1 spot ahead of me. If only I had gotten one of those bites instead of him!

West Central Bass League - Norway Lake

2010-06-12T15:48:00.000-05:00

Thursday June 10th was the Norway Cup edition of the West Central Bass Leauge. Basically the Cup night is just double the entry fee and 2 big bass are paid instead of 1. Otherwise all the other rules are the same. We had 19 teams fishing on another cool, windy and misty night. As has been the case the past couple of years there were a ton of fish caught by most of the teams but for the most part they were all small. Norway generally has one of the lowest average weights per fish of any of our league lakes. 1st place went to my dad & I with 8.15 lbs for 3 fish. 2nd went to Paul & Troy with 7.64 lbs. In 3rd was John & Jacob with 7.55 lbs and 4th went to Brad & Wayne with 7.28 lbs. The big fish for the night was caught by Paul & Troy. It weighed in at 3.93 lbs.

Our fishing for the night was extremely slow compared to many in the field. Most teams fished shallow and caught a bunch of little fish but we did the opposite and stayed out deep all night looking for a couple of the right bites which we were eventually able to find. We really only had 2 10 to 15 minute periods of activity all night long. We were able to fire up a school and catch 3 or 4 pretty quick and then just like that it was over. That is just how it goes when you are hunting for those deep water fish sometimes. I would have liked the schools to have more fish but it ended up being enough. We threw a variety of classic deep water baits including jigs, football jigs, brush hogs, 10 inch worms and Rapala DT 16 crankbaits but the 3 fish we weighed in came on football jigs and cranks.

This makes it 2 wins for us in 4 events so far this season. Hopefully we can keep up the pace and win every other time or so but with the level of competition that will be impossible. We are going to be giving it our best shot though. My next tournament is a club event to qualify for the MN BASS Federation state tournament. It will be held tomorrow on Lake Minnewaska. I enjoy the lake and have really gained a lot of confidence out there in the past couple years so it should be a good tournament. I'll update on that one as soon as possible.

West Central Bass League - Lake Johanna

2010-06-12T15:23:00.000-05:00

We had another excellent turnout on Wednesday June 9th at Lake Johanna. 24 teams showed up to compete despite the cool and windy conditions. It seemed like a tale of two lakes while talking to the fishermen after the competition was done. Some teams reported catching a ton of fish while others including my dad and I struggled to get just a few bites. It sure seemed like one end of the lake was much more productive than the other. In any case the weights overall were pretty strong with 8 limits weighing over 9 lbs. 1st place went to Bruce & Cal with a monster 3 fish limit weighing 12.93 lbs which included the big bass of the night of 5.38 lbs. 2nd place went to Brian with 10.26 lbs. 3rd was T.J. & Isaiah with 9.98 lbs and 4th went Jeremy & Lee with 9.79 lbs. My dad & I finished 8th with 9.25 lbs.

As I mentioned earlier we had a tough time getting bites and only boated 5 fish for the evening. We did the same thing we always do on this lake which is fishing the reeds. We usually have a few boats around us in our starting area but on this night there were 5 other boats with us. It is not a large area so it was pretty crowded but we were able to start on the stretch we wanted and my dad put 2 fish in the boat within 20 minutes on a black/blue jig. After that we were out of fresh water so we began fishing used water and after about an hour we were able to pick up our limit fish also on the black/blue jig. At this point we decided to run to another area of reeds only to find that it had also been fished by several other boats. It was slow at first in the location too but as the sun got lower the fish pulled to the outside edge where I was able to upgrade twice with 3 lb fish on a Berkley Heavyweight Sink Worm.

Big Bass Bonanza - Horseshoe Chain

2010-06-07T21:55:00.000-05:00

The first event of five on the Big Bass Bonanza tournament circuit is in the books. It was held June 6th on the Horseshoe Chain of lakes near St. Cloud Minnesota. The tournament did not go as well as planned for my dad and I as we could only manage 14.07 lbs for our 8 fish limit. It was still not a total disaster though because even that small limit put us in 14th out of 32 teams. The winning team came in with 20.24 lbs and it took around 17.5 lbs to get a check. Obviously I would have liked to do a lot better than that but it wasn't a total bomb anyways. I also had the second biggest bass weighed in with a 4.18 lb smallmouth that just missed out on being the big bass of the day to a 4.26 lb largemouth. I believe big bass was worth $600 so coming so close but missing out hurt a little bit. You can also tell from doing the math that our other 7 fish weighed a combined 10 lbs. We just could not figure out how to get any more decent fish to bite despite having a fair practice period earlier in the week.

We started our day on an area with heavy vegetation in the form of curly leaf pond weed with a few pads mixed in hear and there. Normally I do not like fishing curly leaf since it rarely seems to hold bass for me but this area had a number of fish over 2 lbs during practice. We started by throwing frogs and flipping Sweet Beavers in the heavy cover but it didn't seem quite right. After longer than expected I had a blow up on the frog that missed but I was able to pick him up on a follow up cast but it was only barely over 12 inches. After that disaster struck. I had 3 fish hooked and almost all the way to the boat before they fell off for no apparent reason. The hooks were sharp as tacks and I really don't know why they came off. My dad then started getting bit on the frog but was never able to hook into any of them. Fortunately none of the lost or missed fish seemed to be the right size anyways. Unfortunately that meant our best area no longer seemed to hold the quality we needed.

After that we decided to go after smallmouth. They typically play a huge role in Horseshoe tournaments and we had found some good ones in practice. We had several spots within one general area of the lake and when we arrived there were boats on 2 of them. A third spot we had marked was vacant so we pulled in there and within 5 minutes I boated that 4.18 lb beauty on a watermelon/red flake Strike King Coffee tube. I really thought it was going to be on but that was the last good smallmouth we caught the rest of the day. After working the area thoroughly we slid up to a row of nearby docks where we caught a couple more small largemouth to get us closer to filling our limit. By that time the other boats had left and we fished the used water to catch a few more keeper smallies but nothing much over a pound.

The rest of the day was spent bouncing around between rocky smallmouth areas and dock/tree lined banks looking for a few more good fish which unfortunately never came. We were able to fill our limit with small largemouth but were just not able to find the right quality. I believe the winners were mainly fishing docks but we just didnt come across the right stretches I guess.

This tournament leaves me pretty unsatisfied. We are still in position to make the top 10 year end tournament so that is good and I'm not disappointed that we only caught small fish. We I don't like is the poor execution on the frog fish in the morning, even though I don't know what I could of done differently, and what I feel was semi-poor decision making on my part. I just didn't really feel it out there for whatever reason. Maybe it was because it was the first tournament of the year but it wasn't coming together in my head the way I would of liked. I'll chalk it up to being the first tournament and just move on. Even though it may seem like we weren't even close, just 2 more good bites would have moved us way up and into the money.

My next tournament is a West Central Bassmasters club event on Lake Minnewaska. This is the first of two events to determine which club members will go to the state tournament. I was out on Waska today and I probably shouldn't say anything but I will say I like what I see.

West Central Bass League - Solomon Lake

2010-06-04T16:52:00.001-05:00

The first night of the Thursday edition of the West Central Bassmasters league took place last night on Solomon Lake. Solomon is known as a lake that kicks out numbers of quality fish and it showed again last night. Quite a few teams struggled but the weights at the top of the leaderboard were very solid. With 18 teams competing 4 spots were paid. 1st place went to "Superstar" fishermen Grant King and Tim Stockland with a 3 fish limit weighing 10.50 lbs. 2nd place went to David & Daniel with 10.37 lbs. 3rd went to Todd & Jeff with 10.26 lbs and 4th went to Dean & JD with 9.78 lbs. There was a tie for big fish by David & Daniel and Todd & Jeff. Those fished weighed in at 4.19 lbs apiece. My dad and I were out of sync all night and ended up with 3 fish weighing 7.83 lbs which was good enough for 7th place.

We wanted to start our night on a point in a slough area but we had a poor start number and ended up following another boat into the slough. They headed straight for the point and we had to go to some secondary areas. They were still within view though and it turns out there were no fish left on the point anyway. There were no fish in our areas either so we quickly moved to the second stop which was a mix of bullrushes and reeds. I boated one close to 3 lbs on a black/red flake Berkley Chigger Craw on my first cast. We continued along the reeds and ended up catching close to 10 fish but nothing over 3 lbs. All of those fish came on Chigger Craws and hematoma Sweet Beavers. After the action slowed we moved to an area with several fallen trees where we upgraded slightly. At this point it was about half way through the night and we never boated another keeper the rest of the evening.

West Central Bass League - Nest Lake

2010-06-03T14:57:00.000-05:00

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!

Bass Fishing 2010

2010-06-01T20:00:00.000-05:00

Well the bass season has finally arrived here in Minnesota and I've been going non-stop since Saturday morning. Saturday and Sunday were pretty tough days for me but I did manage to find a few nice fish. The past two days have been spent practicing on the Horseshoe Chain for the first Big Bass Bonanza tournament of the year. However, I won't reveal anything about my practice at this point. Our West Central Bassmasters Bass League also begins tomorrow night and will continue every Wednesday and Thursday until the end of August. With all that in mind I figured it was time to share my final tournament schedule for 2010. There are a few conflicting dates that I haven't decided how to deal with yet and July is very light on events but overall it is a good mix of lakes and should be a great tournament season! I'll try to update my blog as soon as possible after each tournament and league night.

June

6th - Big Bass Bonanza - Horseshoe Chain

13th - West Central Bassmasters state qualifier - Lake Minnewaska

20th - Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Ida

26th - West Central Bassmasters Summer Classic (Open Tournament) - Green Lake Spicer

27th - West Central Bassmasters state qualifier - Lake Osakis

July

11th - Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Minnewaska

August

8th - Big Bass Bonanza - Green Lake Spicer

11th - 13th - B.A.S.S. Federation Nation Northern Divisional

22nd - Big Bass Bonanza - Sauk Lake

September

9th-10th - B.A.S.S. MN State Tournament of Champions - Lake Minnetonka

12th - Big Bass Bonanza Tournament of Champions - Pending Qualification

12th - West Central Bassmasters Fall Classic (Open Tournament) - Green Lake Spicer

I am excited about this one since there has never been a fall tournament on Green Lake.

Preliminary 2010 Tournament Schedule

2010-02-03T17:38:00.001-06:00

It's that time of year to start thinking about fishing. Maybe it's too early but I can't help it. I will be heading down to Alabama in about 2 weeks to watch the Bassmasters Classic and then do some fishing at Lake Guntersville and possibly Kentucky Lake on the way home if the conditions are suitable. So since I have fishing on the brain I've put together my tournament schedule for 2010.

June

6th - Big Bass Bonanza - Horseshoe Chain

12th - West Central Bassmasters state qualifier - Lake Minnewaska

13th - West Central Bassmasters state qualifier - Green Lake Spicer

20th - Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Ida

26th - West Central Bassmasters Summer Classic (Open Tournament) - Green Lake Spicer

July

11th - Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Minnewaska

August

B.A.S.S. Federation Nation Northern Divisional - Details are still sketchy on this but it will be sometime in August somewhere in Michigan. Get your act together B.A.S.S.!

8th - Big Bass Bonanza - Green Lake Spicer

22nd - Big Bass Bonanza - Sauk Lake

September

Big Bass Bonanza Tournament of Champions will be sometime in September I'm guessing. This is pending qualification but I plan to be in the top 10 at the end of the year.

9th-10th - B.A.S.S. MN State Tournament of Champions - Lake Minnetonka

12th - West Central Bassmasters Fall Classic (Open Tournament) - Green Lake Spicer

I am excited about this one since there has never been a fall tournament on Green Lake.

Besides these tournaments I will be fishing the local West Central Bassmasters League every Wednesday and Thursday night in June, July and August. I will also be fishing the West Central Bassmasters Fall League every Saturday in September and October.

After looking this schedule over I have to say I'm not loving it! June is going to be super busy and then in July there is practically nothing. I'll have to look into finding at least one more tournament for July. There is also an overabundance of Green Lake tournaments. This is my home water so thats cool but I don't like fishing the same lake over and over again. I'd like a little more variety but thats just how it worked out this year. At least the tournaments on Green Lake are at different times of the year and the primary patterns change quite a bit on this lake throughout the season.

End of the Year

2009-12-08T17:25:00.000-06:00

2009 isn't over yet but my fishing season is. Since I pretty much only fish for bass and don't do any ice fishing at all I won't be fishing for a few months anyway. We were able to make the season a lot longer than usual though with relatively warm temps all the way until December 1st. December 1st was the last day we got out on the water which is the latest I can remember being out in the boat. It was around 45 degrees for a high but the winds were pretty strong so we didn't last long but in about 2 hours of fishing we managed to boat 15 nice smallies by dragging tubes in 25-30 feet of water. 12 of the fish came from one little spot that we just kept making repeated casts to. They really group up big time this time of year so when you find them it can be really good.

2009 ended up being a pretty good year overall for my results. It was much better than 2008 thats for sure. There weren't as many highlights as I would have liked but there weren't very many low points either. We only managed 1 win for the season and that was in our smaller West Central Bassmasters tourny on Norway Lake. The fishing was extremely tough that day but we had a 15 minute flurry where we put basically all our weight for the day in the boat and it was enough to hold on for the win.

In our Big Bass Bonanza season we ended up 3rd in the team of the year standings with finishes of 2nd, 3rd, and 5th in 5 total events. Our other 2 finishes were in the top half of the field as well so it was a very consistant year. I just wish we could have won the tourny that we placed 2nd in. We were only about a quarter pound off the winning weight and we had the fish on to make up that ground but just didn't put them in the boat.

The Minnesota State Bass Federation Tournament of Champions was also another successful one for me as I ended up finishing in 3rd place after taking 2nd place last year. I finally feel like I'm competing the way I want to in this tournament. It took a lot of years to get to the point where I feel like I can compete for a top 12 spot every year and advance to the Divisional tournament. I'm not saying I will be in the top 12 every year, just that I feel I can make a run at it anyways.

Our Bass League results were only what I would consider to be so-so for the year although there were some high points as well. We did manage to tie for team of the year on Wednesday nights but Thursday was a disaster where we only managed to finish 5th. I know 5th doesn't sound that bad but its been a long time since we finished that low in the standings. We really don't put the time in on these lakes like we used to and I think that might have hurt a little bit. The competition also keeps getting stronger every year. In the fall portion of the League schedule we were able to do very well. We finished 2nd in the first 2 events and then won the final 4 events.

The biggest lowlight of the year was definitely my bomb at the Bassmaster Divisionals on Lake Michigan. I only managed to catch 1 fish a day over the 3 day competition and finished very close to the bottom of the pack. This was my worst tournament in several years. I may not win as many tournaments as I would like but I have been able to avoid the really bad tournaments for the most part until this one. One good thing about the trip though was that I caught my 2nd and 3rd biggest smallmouth of my life during practice. They weighed 5.60 lbs and 5.10 lbs on my scale in the boat so that was very exciting.

As I am writing this it is snowing and the lakes are freezing over. This is not my favorite time of the year at all but fortunately the plan is to head to Alabama for the Bassmasters Classic in February. That is less than 3 months from now so my winter will be a lot shorter than most Minnesota bass fishermen have to put up with.

See you on the water in 2010!

West Central Fall Bass League - Long Lake

2009-10-27T21:41:00.001-05:00

This past Saturday marked the final event of our Fall Bass League for 2009. The weather was actually very nice for a change with light winds and highs over 50 degrees. However the water temps were in the low 40's and that made for some very tough fishing on a shallow water lake such as Long. Most of the fish in the lake relate to reeds or shallow rocks so when the water gets cold they can be difficult to figure out. Out of the 5 teams fishing only 2 were able to bring a fish to the scales after 5 hours of fishing. 2nd place went to Tim & Grant with 1 fish for 4.85 lbs. 1st place went to my dad & I with 3 fish for 14.22 lbs. My dad also caught the big fish of the day which weighed in at 5.12 lbs. The win made it a clean sweep for us in October with wins in each of the 4 fall leagues held this month.

We started our day flipping reeds with jigs and soft plastics but after several stops in the first hour we had not had a bite. At this point I decided to try something a little different for the lake and I started throwing a Rapala X-Rap on steeper bare banks. I worked the bait with very small twitches and let it pause for as long as I could stand it. After about 5 minutes with the jerkbait I put a nice 4 1/4 lb bass in the boat. We continued to work this pattern for another hour or so but no luck. After catching one so quick I really thought that was going to be the deal but I guess not. After the jerkbait experiment it was back to the reeds for most of the rest of the day. We just kept working good areas as slowly as possible and eventually we ran across a small area of reeds that was holding some fish. My dad caught the first flipping fish on a black/blue craw tube. That one ended up being the big fish of the day. Less than 5 minutes later I missed a fish and then less than 5 minutes after that I had another one bite 4 times before I finally hooked it. I got it almost to the boat but it was just out of reach of the net when it came off. That fish was an easy 5 pounder and I was really worried that we let the win slip away right there. The last fish I caught came from the same area after we had let it rest for awhile. It weighed in at almost 5 lbs and was caught on a black/blue jig. I am kind of disappointed that we were not able to catch our 5 fish limit since we did have the opportunities but I won't complain too much with 3 fish weighing over 14 lbs and the win.

Since this was the last fall league of the year this is probably my last competitive fishing of the year as well. I'm hoping that November will be a lot more pleasant that October and that theres at least another month of fishing before the lakes freeze up but I won't be writing about those trips in the blog. I'll do a 2009 wrap up in several weeks once the boat is put away for the winter.

West Central Fall Bass League - Nest Lake

2009-10-19T17:52:00.000-05:00

Saturday October 17th was our 5th fall event this year after last weekend was cancelled due to bad weather. It's been an extremely cold October so far but Saturday's weather was not too bad with only a light breeze and highs near 45 degrees. The slightly warmer weather didn't heat up the fishing though as only 2 teams out of the 6 boats competing were able to bring a five fish limit to the scales. The 2 limits that were weighed were very nice bags though. My dad and I were able to take 1st place with 16.96 lbs and 2nd went to Tim and Grant with 15.01 lbs. My dad also caught the big bass of the day which weighed 4.99 lbs.

Even though we ended up winning we did not have a great day as far as catching a lot of fish. In fact we only boated 5 fish in the 5 hours of fishing time but they happened to be almost all good ones. Our day started extremely slowly and we didn't even have a bite for the first 2 1/2 hours. Then the next 1 1/2 hours is when we boated all of our fish. I guess we got to the right area at the right time because earlier in the day we were fishing a similar pattern with no luck. All 5 of our fish came on a watermelon jig fished on the weed edge in about 6 feet of water. It seemed like the best areas were where the weeds were the thickest.

West Central Fall Bass Leauge Tournament - Big Birch Lake

2009-10-06T21:36:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday is what we call the Fall Bass League Tournament. For the tournament there is a higher entry fee and a longer fishing day, otherwise all other league rules apply. We usually get a higher turnout for the Fall Tournament but this year the weather was very cold and rainy which I think kept many teams from showing up. With only 4 boats fishing it was a winner take all event and my dad and I were just able to squeak into 1st place with 11.10 lbs for our 5 fish limit. We edged out the 2nd place team of Brian & Mark who weighed in 10.90 lbs. The big fish for the day weighed in at 2.75 lbs.

With only 4 boats fishing a relatively good sized lake you would think there would be a lot of room to roam but as it turns out we ended up sharing our starting spot with another team in the event. The spot did not turn out to be nearly as good as I expected and after about an hour of fishing each boat only had 1 fish apiece. The fish I caught did end up being our largest of the day at just over 2 1/2 lbs. I caught that fish on my usual watermelon jig. After that we moved around at hit similar areas throughout the day. Our main pattern was keeping the boat in 15-20 feet of water and casting shallower to coontail beds. Our best area turned out to be one that we hadn't even fished in practice but it did fit the pattern and there seemed to be a lot of fish on it. I stuck with the jig most of the day and caught a fair number of fish but my dad threw a watermelon Brush Hog most of the day and that really seemed to be the ticket. He probably ended up outfishing me 2 to 1 from the back of the boat on the Brush Hog. He also ended up weighing probably all of our fish except for the first one I caught. In a team tournament though it doesn't matter who catches them as long as they get in the boat.

West Central Fall Bass League - Lake Ripley

2009-09-27T16:53:00.000-05:00

In my last post I said that I wanted to finish September strong with a win and yesterday at Lake Ripley that is just what we were able to do. Lake Ripley is not one of our normal league lakes but since we are fishing on Saturdays we are able to travel a little bit farther and add in some lakes we don't usually fish. Ripley can be a tough lake but it is also known to kick out some very big bass which is why we chose it. By all accounts most of the teams caught a lot of fish for the day but there were only 2 really big bags. As I said my dad & I took 1st place with 17.90 lbs for our 5 fish limit. We just edged out Jason & Wayne who weighed in 17.66 lbs. 3rd place went to Tim & Grant who had a limit for 12.33 lbs. I also caught the big bass of the day which was a 5.56 lb beauty.

Ripley is not a large lake and there really are not many options for catching fish. The week before I had gone out and found a number of quality fish in the one area of the lake that had reeds growing. This is where we concentrated our efforts for most of the day. At one point we fished a few docks where I was able to add 1 of our smaller keepers on a black/blue tube. Otherwise all our other keepers and most of the other fish we caught came by flipping black/red flake or black/blue flake Berkley Chigger Craws in the reeds. Since there is only one reed area there were quite a few boats around but there were a few things that seemed to get a few of the bigger bites. One of the keys I feel was leaving the bait in the water for a long time. A lot of times when flipping you make a few jigs and then pitch to the next spot but this time it seemed like leaving the bait in there for up to 30 seconds even got a lot more bites. Another key was getting way back inside the reeds instead of just fishing the edges like most other boats where doing. It also doesn't hurt when you catch a 5 1/2 lb bass just a few minutes after another boat had left an area so a little luck helps too.

West Central Fall Bass League - Diamond Lake

2009-09-25T16:50:00.001-05:00

September 19th was our 2nd fall league of the year. Diamond can be a great big fish lake and it can also be one of the toughest lakes around. On that day it showed its bad side with only 3 of the 8 teams fishing able to come in with a 5 fish limit. 1st place went to Ron & Joe yet again with 13.90 lbs. 2nd place was my dad & I with 11.03 lbs. The big fish for the day was a beauty weighing in at 5.26 lbs.

Like I said the fishing was extremely tough on Diamond. We did better than most though and were able to catch 7 small keepers and 2 shorts in our five hours of fishing. All of our fish with the exception of one, which I caught under a tree, came by flipping various soft plastics into the reeds. There weren't any secret spots or magic lures. We just moved around a lot and stayed persistant and were able to catch a fish here and there. I guess the one mistake we made was not going back through the area where I caught the tree fish. I believe the winners were fishing that pattern but I didn't make the right call and we stuck to the reeds for most of the day.

Tomorrow is our next fall league on Lake Ripley. The word is the fishing is extremely tough out there but we have had rain today so maybe that will change the bite. After fishing 4 events so far in September I'm very pleased with the results. There's been 2 3rd place finishes and then 2 2nd place finishes. Lake Ripley is the last event in September so hopefully we can move up and cap off the month with a win.

West Central Fall Bass League - Green Lake

2009-09-25T16:36:00.000-05:00

Our regular season nightly leagues are done with for the year but there is still plenty of fishing time left so we continue to run a league throughout the fall. These are held every Saturday with 5 hours of fishing time and a 5 fish limit. Our first of these events was held on September 12th on Green Lake. We chose Green as the first lake because it will be the last time smallmouths can be weighed before they go off limits during the fall. The fishing was relatively tough but there were several nice bags brought in. We had 10 boats fishing so 3 places were paid. 1st place went to Ron & Joe with 15.18 lbs, 2nd was my dad & I with 14.90 lbs and 3rd went to Dean & JD with 13.51 lbs. The big fish for the day was a 3.80 lb smallmouth.

My dad and I caught quite a few fish in the 5 hours of fishing time but many of them were just barely keepers. I don't think I can remember ever catching so many small fish on Green Lake. We were able to put 5 nice ones in the boat though on a variety of techniques. We basically went running and gunning hitting everything from 5 feet deep to 30 feet deep. Of the 5 we weighed 3 came in around 25 feet of water on a watermelon red flake finesse worm on a dropshot. The deep bite seemed very slow but when you got a bite it was a good one over 3 lbs. One of our other fish came on a tube near a middepth milfoil patch. It is just a tiny little patch of weeds in on the edge of a flat but it has been very good to us the last couple of years. This time we caught several fish around it but only one that ended up helping us. The last keeper we weighed came with about 5 minutes of fishing time left. We pulled up to a flat near the ramp that had a mix of rocks and milfoil. My dad was able to catch that 3 pounder on an old school Chug Bug. I was also able to catch a few fish there on a Spook but time ran out before we could get that one last good one to put us into first place.

Minnesota Bass Federation Nation TOC - Lake Pokegama

2009-09-23T19:23:00.000-05:00

As most of you know by now I had another great showing at the State Tournament of Champions. After finishing 2nd last year I backed it up with a 3rd place this year. It was a 2 day tournament held September 10-11 with a 5 fish limit each day. My 10 fish over the 2 days weighed in at 29.24 lbs which still trailed the winner by over 5 lbs but I'm not complaining one bit. I've been fishing these state tournaments for a long time now and finally feel like I'm getting a bit of consistancy so it feels pretty good. I'll break down the tournament by day.

Day 1

Day 1 started with heavy fog but little did we now how long the delay would actually last. It ended up being a repeat of Day 2 last year with an over 3 hour fog delay. The first boats didn't start blasting off until after 10 am and since I was in the 3rd flight I didn't blast off until nearly 10:30. Being in the 3rd flight was definately an advantage though since I didn't have to be in until an hour after the 1st flight weighed in. It also worked out very nicely since I caught several of my big fish in that last hour. In these tournaments you are paired with a fisherman from another club in the state and you each keep your own 5 fish limit. Most of the time I feel it's best to work as a team though to maximize each anglers potential. I had a great partner who was catching a lot of fish in practice and I had also found a number of good areas so even with the delay I wasn't too worried about catching a limit. We decided to start on my partner's water since it was very close to the blast off area and we could see that no one had stopped on it. On my very first cast I had a big smallie come up and slash at my Spook but it never hooked up. After that the action was dead. We moved a couple hundred yards to his next area where I was able to pick up a small keeper on a watermelon red flake finesse worm but that was the only fish there. My partner then wanted to go to my water so we headed to what I felt was my best area. There were a couple small weedy humps near the mouth of a bay where I knew some good largemouth were living. I was able to pick up 2 more keepers there on my trusty watermelon jig with one of them being a good solid 3 pounder. The action wasn't nearly as fast as I was expecting though and we ended up leaving with only 3 keepers apiece. After that we ran some more of his water. All of his spots were basically the same thing. They were sharp drops where we kept the boat in 20-30 feet of water and casted up onto the break. The first one we hit I was able to put a 3 lb smallie in the boat on an olive colored X-Rap. We then ran a few more similar areas including one of his "backup" little fish spots but they were all completely void of fish. By this time it was getting later in the day and we were both short of our limits. Since none of his stuff was working we headed to another one of my areas which was a dropoff and inside corner on a large flat. Right away I started catching small keeper largemouth on my texas rigged finesse worm and had my limit. We continued down the edge and I ended up catching an unexpected bonus fish. I thought it was a largemouth area but I put another smallie in the boat that was close to 3 lbs on my finesse worm. That fish also had 8-10 other big smallies following it but we weren't able to trigger any of them. By this point we had about an hour and a half left to fish and I was feeling really good with 3 fish in the 3 lb range and 2 other solid keepers but my partner didn't have his limit yet and was getting worried. We decided to head to a spot that it turns out we had both found in practice. I knew there were some big fish there but I didn't know how many there turned out to be. I really wanted a limit before heading there because I just didn't what I could catch. It turns out that I had misjudged the area slightly and it was holding a number of big catchable fish. The area was a flat that tapered to a point with sharp drops on both sides. Again we kept the boat in about 20-30 feet of water and cast up on top of the flat. I ended up catching 2 more smallies on the X-Rap that were both over 3 lbs. One of those was around 3 1/2 lbs and actually came on my very last cast of the day. That's 2 years in a row now that I have done that in the state tournament. Those last 2 big fish pushed my limit for the day to 15.87 lbs and my partner had a solid 12 lbs. After day 1 I was sitting in 2nd place about 2 lbs behind the leader.

Day 2

Day 2 started partly cloudy so there would be no fog delay and a full 8 hours of fishing time. It was predicted to stay cloudy and windy most of the day so I wasn't sure what that would do to the fish. They seemed to bite pretty good the day before when it was calm and sunny and smallies generally seem to like the sun so I didn't know what would happen. Since I was in contention for the win my partner for the day pretty much gave me free reign to do what I wanted for pretty much the whole day. I think it was kind of a no brainer decision but I decided to start on the same spot I ended the 1st day. Almost immediately I caught a 3 lb smallie on the X-Rap and figured it was on but after almost 2 hours I was only able to put 1 more small fish in the boat. After that we went to the flat where I had found my bonus smallmouth since there were a lot of fish following it that we didn't catch the previous day. That area was kind of a bust though I did add one small keeper largemouth. Next we were off to the weedy humps. The previous day I threw a jig on them but after getting a tip from one of my club members I went with a watermelon red flake finesse worm on a dropshot. That was really the ticket and we ended up catching a number of fish in a relatively short amount of time. After culling a few times I was up to around 10 lbs and with my weight from the 1st day I knew I had made the top 12. It really takes a lot of pressure off when you know you have accomplished your goal for the tournament. That doesn't mean I was ready to quit fishing though. I was in a good position to win the tournament and I wanted it bad. By now I figured the fish on my started spot had rested enough so I headed back to that area. I fished it for another hour and was only able to catch 1 smallie on the X-Rap but it was nearly 4 lbs. That was the last fish I caught that helped me the rest of the day. For the last 3 hours of the tournament I kept rotating through areas I had found in practice and was able to catch a few smaller fish but nothing that went in the livewell. My 5 fish limit on day 2 weighed in at 13.37 lbs which dropped me from 2nd to 3rd but it's alright since I was definately not on the winning fish and like I said the main goal is just to be in the top 12. One other note from day 2 is that my dad ended up catching the biggest fish of the tournament that day. It was a giant smallmouth that weighed in at 5.67 lbs and was worth a nice chunk of change.

Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Osakis

2009-09-23T18:58:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay guys. I didn't quit writing the blog but I was out of town for a week for the state tournament and after that I guess I just wasn't in the writing mood. It's not because the fishing has been bad though. The results over my past four tournaments have been very solid although I haven't been able to pull out a win. There's a little preview for you I guess but first things first. September 6th was the Big Bass Bonanza Tournament of Champions. Only the top 10 teams in points at the end of the 4 regular season events were invited to fish this no entry fee championship. By virtue of our tie for 3rd place in the standings my dad and I were allowed to fish. Each team threw the name of a lake in a hat and Osakis was the one chosen. The fishing for us was pretty good and we ended up with a limit of 8 fish for about 20 1/4 lbs. This was good enough for 3rd place and a nice little payday.

The problem with Osakis is the vast amount of "dead" water. There are miles and miles of reeds but seemingly no fish in most of them. On the flipside to that is once you do find a fish there are usually a lot more in the area. After flipping those miles of reeds in practice we ended up with 2 main areas that held numbers of quality fish. On the tournament day only 1 of them ended up producing a lot of fish for us but the other one did give up 2 of our biggest fish. Flipping the reeds with jigs and soft plastics is basically what we did for pretty much the entire 8 hour tournament day. My dad also added 2 of our better keepers on a swimbait from the same reeds and later in the afternoon we hit one stretch of docks where I added another solid keeper on a tube. We didn't catch any big fish but we had 5 fish in the 2 1/2 - 3 lb range and the others weren't too much smaller. We spent most of the day within sight of the eventual winners but they were able to get a couple slightly bigger bites to push them up to 22 lbs and we just didn't get a few of those bites so that was kind of frustrating but overall it was a very good performance.

Immeditately after the weigh in at Osakis my dad and I headed up to Grand Rapids to begin practice for the Minnesota Bass Federation TOC on Lake Pokagema. Offical practice actually began the day before so we lost 2 days of practice but still had 2 more days to figure something out. This tournament is an individual tournament unlike most of our team tournaments so we would need to find enough fish for each of us to use over the 2 days of the tournament. I'll have the report of that tournament up soon.

West Central Bass League - Norway Lake

2009-08-30T17:19:00.001-05:00

Thursday August 27th was also the final night for the bass league this year. The format was exactly the same as on Wednesday but on this night we had the full 10 team field fishing. It was a great night for fishing but the fish just didn't really cooperate for the most part. Ron & Joe again figured it out the best and went back to back in winning both Classics this year. On Thursday they weighed 8.49 lbs. 2nd place went to John & Jacob with 6.05 lbs and 3rd went to Paul & Troy with 6.01 lbs. The big bass for the night weighed 3.37 lbs and the 2nd big bass was 2.98 lbs. They were both caught by Ron & Joe so they made a nice haul for the night and the week. My dad and I were only able to come up with 4.97 lbs which put us in a disappointing 7th place for the night. For whatever reason we fished extremely poorly on Thursdays this year even though we ended up being team of the year on Wednesdays.

As you can tell from our weight we really struggled. We have been getting a lot of rain recently and since we figured the water would be up we obviously wanted to head to Games Lake. We found out quickly that they had not gotten as much rain right around the lake since we were unable to get our boat through the channel since it was much too shallow. That threw a wrench in our plans right off the bat but we regrouped quickly. Our first stop was a stretch of docks and I ended up catching a keeper on my very first cast. I caught another keeper on the very next dock. After that we ran more docks but it was a very long time until we were able to catch our 3rd fish. All those fish came on a black/blue Bleeding Bait tube. After that we tried some reeds where I was able to catch our biggest fish of the night which weighed around 2 lbs. That fish also came on a black/blue tube. We then tried another stretch of reeds where things really went wrong. We had probably 3 bites apiece but neither one of us was able to hook up at all. I don't know how big any of the fish were but with the low weights it wouldn't have taken much to move up. I have no clue why we couldn't catch any of those bites but it just didn't happen and the night was over.

These were the last 2 nights of league for the summer but we will be running the fall league again. We run the fall league on Saturdays since it's starting to get too dark in the evening this time of year. We also fish for 5 hours with a 5 fish limit instead of 3 hours with a 3 fish limit. Otherwise the rules are basically the same. We will be running these every Saturday until the end of October or as long as the weather permits. My next 2 events before the fall league begins are the Big Bass Bonanza TOC which is being held next weekend on Lake Osakis and then the week after that we have the Minnesota BASS Federation TOC on Lake Pokegama.

West Central Bass Leage - Nest Lake

2009-08-30T17:05:00.000-05:00

Wednesday August 26th marked the final night of the West Central Bass League for the 2009 season. Only the top 10 in the points at the end of the year were invited to fish this final night. Each team then threw a lake name into a hat and Nest Lake was drawn. We ended up with only 9 teams fishing because of last minute circumstances that forced one team to drop out for the night. 1st place for the night went to Ron & Joe with 13.15 lbs which is the heaviest weight I can remember coming from Nest Lake. 2nd went to my dad & I with 11.75 lbs and 3rd went to Jeff & Kris with 10.45 lbs. The big bass for the night weighed 5.11 lbs and the 2nd big bass was caught by myself. It was a beautiful 4.48 lb smallmouth.

That big smallmouth was my first fish of the night and I caught it after fishing for less than 10 minutes. We fished a rocky area with green pumpkin tubes and watermelon worms rigged on a dropshot. After about 45 minutes we had 3 fish in the livewell so we headed to a few more areas around the lake. We tried several weedline areas for largemouths and several other rocky areas for smallies but the action was pretty slow with only a few fish that wouldn't help us. Eventually we went back to the starting area and it again was pretty slow but my dad was able to catch one about 3 1/2 lbs on a tube that upgraded our limit a little bit. Once again the action slowed so we bounced around the lake running and gunning looking for one more really big bite but we never caught another fish. I knew we had close to 12 lbs in the livewell so I was still feeling pretty confident since that would be the winning weight on Nest any other night except on this night.

West Central Bass League - Green Lake

2009-08-23T22:56:00.000-05:00

Just like Wednesday this past Thursday was the final regular season night for the league with the Classic to follow next week. We only had 10 teams show up to fish Green Lake on a cloudy, rainy and windy night. I don't blame most people for staying home because those are really the worst conditions for Green. The fish definately seem to bite better with a little bit of sun. The wind, if it's not too strong, is alright but the clouds and rain really seem to shut down the bite. That was reflected in the results for the night as most people reported struggling to catch fish. 1st place went to my dad & I with 7.73 lbs, 2nd was Paul & Pete with 7.71 lbs and 3rd went to Jim & John with 6.72 lbs. The big fish for the night was caught by my dad and it weighed 3.43 lbs. Wayne & Brad ended up holding on to the team of the year title with 189 points. They led pretty much the entire year and held off 2nd place by a mere 1 point. My dad and I ended up in 5th place for the standings which is the worst I can remember doing in forever.

Even though we ended up winning it was by no means easy. In fact we only caught 3 fish the entire night. We started on a shallow rock area that has been pretty good to us this year. It took awhile to get a bite but I finally put one in the boat on a green pumpkin Strike King KVD tube with a 1/2 oz weight. That fish was around 3 1/4 lbs so it was a very nice start to the night. After that we bounced around a few other shallow, mid-depth and deep areas with no success. After that we tried another deep area that only ever produces 1 fish but if you catch one there its a good one. That is where my dad caught the big fish of the night on a watermelon Lake Fork Tackle Trick Worm rigged on a drop shot in 26 feet of water. At this point it was 8 pm and we only had 2 fish. With an 8:45 pm check in there wasn't much time left. We tried a few more deep areas since we were seeing a lot of fish and bait but couldn't get anything to go. Finally I decided to run to the east side of the lake out in the wind. There is a tiny weedbed in about 12 feet of water that has had fish on it all year. We got over there with about 15 minutes to fish and I boated our final keeper on the KVD tube. It was only a little over 12 inches but it ended up being enough to seal the victory for the night.

West Central Bass League - Lake Koronis

2009-08-23T22:38:00.000-05:00

This past Wednesday marked the final regular season night of the year for the West Central Bass League. There is still 1 more night to fish but that is the Classic where only the top 10 teams are invited to fish. We only had 11 teams show up to fish on a rainy and tough night for Koronis. 1st place went to Ron & Joe with 9.85 lbs, 2nd was Bill & Todd with 7.64 lbs, and 3rd was Paul & Pete. My dad and I weighed 4.80 lbs which put us in 6th place for the night. The big fish for the night weighed 4.03 lbs. Since this was the last night the team of the year was decided as well. Two teams ended up tied with 186 points and after some controversy over the tiebreaker we have decided to have co-teams of the year. Those teams are my dad & myself and Paul & Pete.

Our fishing for the night was extremely tough. We actually started off pretty quickly by boating our limit in just over half an hour. All those fish came from docks and trees on a black/blue Strike King Bleeding Bait tube. Unfortunately that first limit was what we ended up weighing in. We did catch a few more fish from the docks and trees but nothing that would help us. After awhile we headed to a smallmouth area where I was throwing a big Super Spook and had several fish blowup on my bait but none of them would get hooked up. Finally I hooked into one and had it almost to the boat before it came off. That fish was probably around 2 1/2 lbs which ended up costing us the outright team of the year title since it would have moved us up several spots for the night. After the action slowed in the smallmouth area we bounced around the lake trying shallow and deep with absolutely no action at all.

B.A.S.S. Northern Divisional - Bays de Noc

2009-08-23T21:01:00.000-05:00

I guess I've put off writing this for about as long as I can but as most of you know by now I didn't fare very well out in Michigan. The tournament was held August 12-14 and my 3 day total was 3 fish for 8 lbs 13 oz. That put me in 94th place out of 113 anglers. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong but for the most part nothing really went right for me the entire week. I'll do a quick recap of the highlights few as they may be.

I arrived in Escanaba Michigan on Thursday the week before the tournament was to start. This gave me 5 full days of practice time before the actual tournament began. 5 days may seem like a lot but if I had it to do over again I'd want much more time. Not only did I struggle to find areas holding concentrations of fish but getting around on the water was difficult and time consuming. It would have been much nicer to have more time to pick and choose when and where to go out. With so much water to cover on a huge place like that 5 days really isn't a lot. But I'm not making excuses. Out of the 5 days of practice I only really had 1 good day where I thought I got onto something that would work for me in the tournament. That day was actually sunny and calm which was a rarity throughout the time I was there. I got onto a super shallow rock/sand pattern and was able to catch fish in most of the areas that seemed to have the right mix of bottom cover. I ended up getting around 20 bites that day but I shook most of them off. I did end up boating 5 of the bites I had and by my caculations would have had nearly 22 lbs for those 5 fish if it was a tournament day. Among those 5 fish were my 2nd and 3rd biggest smallmouth ever weighing in at 5.60 lbs and 5.10 lbs. Needless to say I was pretty excited about what I had found and thought I had a decent chance in the tournament even though the rest of my practice was not very good at all.

On day 1 of the tournament we again had calm conditions so I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I started on an area with the shallow rock/sand mix where I had caught my biggest fish. Right away things didn't seem right. The entire week we had been having south winds and the day before the tournament was a pretty strong north wind. With so much area of water the wind really moves alot of it around. The south winds had been blowing water in all week and the north wind blew it right back out. My already shallow area was now almost a foot shallower than it had been. I don't know for sure if that was the reason but the fish were entirely gone. I ran a few more miles down to my next similar spot and found the same thing. All the fish were gone except for one that we spotted. I made a few casts at it but was unable to get it to bite but my partner threw one cast at it and hooked and lost it. That fish looked to be between 4-5 lbs but it was the only fish in the area. After spending a few hours on my stuff we made the long run over to Big Bay de Noc. At least the lake was calm because it still took a little over 30 minutes running wide open to get to my partner's spot. That is by far the longest run I have ever made and when we got there it looked like it was going to be well worth it. Almost immediately I boated my 1 fish of the day. I caught it on a green pumpkin KVD tube and it weighed in at 4 lbs 1 oz. We continued fishing the area for several more hours and my partner boated 4 fish but I was never able to put another one in the boat.

Day 2 was again cloudy and with a fairly strong south wind. With the change in conditions I decided to start in the same areas again. I was just hoping something would move those big fish back in there or at least some keepers. That didn't happen and after a few hours I knew I needed to do something else. My backup area was a huge sand flat. There were high spots and grass patches on it but where I ended up catching my fish was a pipe that I hadn't even seen on my practice day there. We were just going along the sand and my partner says he thinks he saw a pipe running out across the lake. I turned the boat around and sure enough there was a pipe in the sand. Some of it was buried under the high spots but where the water was deeper it was exposed. We followed it for as far as we could and I eventually boated a 3 lb 4 oz smallie on a chartruese and white spinnerbait. After that it was off to his spots and that ended up being the only keeper I caught for the day.

On day 3 the wind was blowing right off the bat in the morning. My partner wanted to make the run to the Big Bay and I said we could go there because I didn't have anything going. Several of the boats ahead of us started in that direction but soon turned back around. Right as we were about to blast off my partner says not to make the long run. Now we were going to have a lot more time to fish instead of run but the problem was I didn't know where to catch any. I didn't want to go to the same areas first thing in the morning since that hadn't worked at all so instead we went to the pipe from the previous day. I struck out on the pipe but further down on a weed patch I boated my 1 keeper for the day on a green pumkin KVD tube. It was only a 14 incher, which is the minimum length, but it was a keeper. It actually ended up being my only claim to fame of the tournament since it weighed in at 1 lb 8 oz. which was the smallest fish weighed by any competitor all 3 days! After that we tried some of my partner's areas where he boated a small keeper but nothing for me. By now it was getting later in the day and I wanted to see if my big fish areas would be better at that time. Unfortunately the waves were huge by this time and it took forever to get there. Once we did get to the area I wasn't even able to fish it properly. I needed to be really shallow but the waves were so big if I got up real shallow the boat would have been bottoming out in the troughs. All the while the wind continued to build and by the time we were ready to head back to the weigh in the waves were consistant 6 footers with a few even bigger than that. It was the wildest water I have ever seen and honestly I'd rather not see it again. One boat actually got flipped over and they needed to be rescued by the Coast Guard. It wasn't my idea of fun thats for sure.

So all in all I'd have to say this was my worst tournament performance in years. I feel like I've gotten pretty consistent with my performances but this was a total bomb. If I had to do it all over again I'm not even sure what I would change. Obviously I needed to practice differently and probably spend more time over in the Big Bay since that is where many of the best bags came from even though the ride there and back would be treachorous. I basically fished like a rookie which at this level I was since it was my first time. Next time I make it back to the Divisionals I guarantee the same thing won't happen.

West Central Bass League - Lake Florida

2009-08-08T19:35:00.000-05:00

I am writing this from Michigan so I do not have the details with me and I am doing this from memory so it may not be completly accurate. This past Wednesday we had 18 teams fishing on a very tough night for Lake Florida. I do not remember who finished where so I will only be giving the weights. 1st place weighed 7.87 lbs, 2nd had 7.26 lbs, 3rd had 7.03 lbs and 4th weighed 6.93 lbs. The big bass for the night went 4.54 lbs. My dad and I only caught 2 keepers for 4.44 lbs. I'm not sure what place we finished but it was well back in the pack.

We spent the majority of our night out in deep water and that bite just wasn't happening. I ended up catching our 2 keepers in one area on a watermelon red flake Lake Fork Tackle Trick Worm. I also missed one other bite there that probably would have been our third keeper. Other than that we fished a few docks where we caught a few short fish but overall our night was very uneventful.

Michigan has been pretty uneventful as well. I'm not catching very many fish and it seems like they are really scattered. It's hard to find any areas where I feel like I can catch more than a couple fish. With a 3 day tournament I am going to have to find something more consistant if I am going to have any chance to do well. On a positive note I did catch a smallie that weighed almost 4 1/2 lbs and in that general area I saw half a dozen more that were all the same size. That won't be enuogh for the whole tournament but I feel like I can maybe at least pull one big one out of there each day. I still have 3 more days of practice left so hopefully I can figure something out. I'll keep posting updates when I have time.

Big Bass Bonanza - Clearwater Lake

2009-08-03T14:28:00.000-05:00

Sunday was the 4th and final event of the regular season on the Big Bass Bonanza circuit. 32 teams showed up to fish Clearwater Lake and most were able to weigh in their 8 fish limits. The fishing for most however was extremely tough as the bigger fish seemed to disappear. The weights were extremely low with just a little over 18 lbs taking 1st place. My dad and I weighed a disappointing 13.94 lbs for our 8 fish which put us in 15th place for the day. Coming into the day we were in 2nd place for the team of the year standings with a good shot to take over the top spot but with our poor showing we slipped one spot into a tie for 3rd. It's a little bit tough to take knowing that we had such a good chance at team of the year but I'm not going to get too down about it because I would still consider it to be a good season overall on the BBB trail. With our 3rd place in the standings we qualified for the Tournament of Champions which will be held on Lake Osakis in early September. I haven't fished Osakis very much and its been at least 6 years if not longer since I have been there so it will be interesting to see what we can figure out for the TOC. I enjoy going to new waters so it should be fun even though the lake doesn't have the best reputation.

This is the part of the blog where I talk about our fishing for the day but this time there isn't going to be much to tell. We started in an adjacent lake where we found 2 areas that were holding quality fish. They were both weedline areas and the fish were biting right away. We had our 8 fish in the boat in just about an hour using watermelon Brush Hogs and Lake Fork Tackle Trick Worms. After that our day was pretty much done. For the rest of the day I think we caught 5 more keepers with a couple that helped us upgrade by maybe half a pound. We kept rotating through areas where we had found them in practice or where we had caught them in the past but nothing seemed to work. One thing I found really strange was our complete inability to get a bite on a jig. In practice they were eating it pretty good but on tournament day the only jig bite I had was a northern. For whatever reason the fish just were not doing the same thing they were on our practice days. Obviously that means you have to adjust and we did but we just were not able to figure it out well enough on Sunday.

My next tournament will be the B.A.S.S. Northern Divisional on Bays De Noc in Michigan which will be held Aug 12-14. I qualified for the tournament by finishing 2nd in last years State Tournament of Champions. Unfortunately this means I will be missing 3 league nights and the West Central Bassmasters Summer Classic on Green Lake Aug 15th. Obviously the Divisional is a much more important tournament so I don't mind at all but it is going to make things very interesting at the end of the year for our leagues. I'm not sure what kind of internet access I will have out there so there may not be any updates for awhile. If I can get on a computer out there I will try to post updates on how it's going. Otherwise I'll do my full report when I get back home in a few weeks.

West Central Bass League - Green Lake

2009-07-31T16:13:00.000-05:00

This past Thursday was a new event for the bass league. The Norway Cup has been a long running night for bass league so this year we decided that Green Lake also deserved a special Cup night. The Cup events are basically the same as any other league night with the only differences being a higher entry fee and 2 big bass payouts instead of just 1. We had 15 teams fishing and many were rewarding with some excellent fishing. Most bass fishermen would agree that the fishing on Green has been "off" this year but it seems like its starting to turn around a little bit. 1st place went to John & Jacob with 10.51 lbs, 2nd was Ron & Joe with 9.86 lbs, 3rd went to Dean & John with 9.56 lbs and my dad & I took 4th with 9.23 lbs. The 2 big bass for the night weighed 4.32 lbs and 3.99 lbs.

We ended up having a very good night for numbers of fish and also were able to get better size than we have been able to any other time on Green this year. We actually weighed 3 fish that were all 3 lbs or a little more which is the first time we have caught 3 3 pounders on Green this year. We ended up catching probably about 15 fish in the 3 hours so it was a lot of fun. We started our night on the north side on a shallow rock area. I put a 3 pounder in the boat after about 15 minutes on a green pumpkin Strike King KVD tube with a 1/2 oz weight. We fished around for awhile after that but got no more strikes so we headed to the east side of the lake. We fished several different areas on the east side with a spinnerbait and tube and were able to catch several fish to fill out our limit and cull a couple times but still only had the 1 good fish. Next we headed to the south side near a milfoil patch that has been pretty good for us this year but instead of a good smallie my dad put a 6-7 lb walleye in the boat. After that we headed back to our starting area to work it over again. This time the fish were biting a little bit better and we caught several fish with one of them being another 3 lb fish on a Strike King tube. With time running out we made one final move to another milfoil patch near the access. I brought the boat off plane and checked the time. It was 8:54 pm so there was very little time to fish but we were only about 30 seconds from the ramp so there was time to catch one more and thats what I did. I cast my tube right in the middle of the milfoil and got kind of hung up in it. As soon as the bait popped free from the weeds another 3 lb smallie was on it and in the boat. That was yet another last cast fish for us this year and we made it back to the ramp with about a minute to spare.

West Central Bass League - Long Lake

2009-07-31T15:51:00.000-05:00

This past Wednesday the West Central Bass League headed back to Long Lake just north of Willmar. We had fished out there a few weeks ago and the weedgrowth was so thick it made moving around very difficult. This time a lot of those weeds had died back but the lake now has a large amount of that bright green slimy stuff growing everywhere. The fish didn't seem to mind though as we had the largest weights of the year weighed in. There were 18 boats fishing and only 36 fish weighed in so the numbers weren't great but the average size of thoese 36 bass weighed an astounding 3.86 lbs. 1st place went to David & Lenny with 3 bass weighing 15.29 lbs, 2nd place went to Ron & Dave with 13.06 lbs, 3rd went to Ron & Joe with 12.80 lbs and 4th went to Brandon & Evan with 12.21 lbs. There were also 3 more bags over 10 lbs who finished out of the money. The big bass for the night weighed 5.47 lbs. My dad and I struggled to catch just 1 fish for 3.73 lbs and 14th place.

There really isn't much to tell about our night. We had 2 bites the entire night and only boated one of them. My dad caught our one keeper on a black Spro frog in the reeds. My only bite came on a watermelon Berkley Chigger Craw but as soon as I set the hook the fish was already buried in the reeds and I had no chance to get him out. We spent most of our night flipping which was apparently the wrong thing to have done that night as it seems most of the big bags came on moving baits like spinnerbaits and topwater. Last year we caught our heaviest 3 fish league bag ever weighing over 16 lbs on Long Lake but this year after our 2 events we only weighed 3 fish total. We just never figured them out this year but thats fishing I guess.

Green Mill Tournament - Green Lake

2009-07-26T18:09:00.000-05:00

About a month ago the guys in our club started hearing talk of a tournament that was being held by Green Mill Restaurant in Willmar. They ended up approaching us in the club for help with running the tournament and using our equipment for the weigh in. 14 teams ended up fishing with about half the teams from our bass club and the other half being employees or friends of Green Mill. The wind blew extremely hard all day and the fish didn't bite as well as everyone would have hoped but it seemed like everyone had a good time and there is already talk of running another one next year. 1st place weighed in a 5 fish limit of largemouth weighing 15.07 lbs. 2nd place weighed in 5 smallmouth for 13.99 lbs. My dad and I finished in 3rd with a limit of smallies weighing 13.67 lbs. The big bass for the day was a 5.11 lb largemouth caught by the winning team.

We started our day on a milfoil patch near an inside corner on the south side of the lake. The waves were already coming in pretty good right away in the morning so we figured we needed to catch them before it got too windy to fish at all. We didn't end up catching any fish out of the milfoil but as we moved down the corner breakline we found the fish schooled up pretty good but the size wasn't what we had found earlier in the week. All those fish came on green pumpkin tubes in 8-10 feet of water. One thing I think helped trigger some of the bites was using a heavy 1/2 oz weight on the tube and really snapping it hard. That seemed to get more bites than just dragging the tube slowly along the bottom. After leaving the south side at around 9 am we had a very slow next few hours. We spent much of that time fishing deeper humps with drop shots but only managed 2 small fish. We also made an attempt to fish the south east section of the lake but the wind was blowing so hard we had waves coming over the front and back of the boat and it was just impossible to fish correctly in those kind of waves. At around noon we finally got into another little wad of fish on the north end of the lake. This time we were fishing much shallower around rocks in 5-6 feet of water but the heavy tube was still the bait of choice. I put 3 of our weigh fish in the boat in about 5 minutes and probably 20 minutes later my dad caught our big fish of the day which went 2.90 lbs on our handheld scale. After that flurry of activity the action died again and I don't think we caught another keeper in the last 1 1/2 hours.

West Central Bass League - Nest Lake

2009-07-26T17:55:00.000-05:00

We had 14 boats fish Nest Lake on Thursday night. The fishing again was tough for most and out of all the fish weighed I believe there were only 5 smallmouth brought to the scales which has got to be close to a record for the fewest brown fish weighed in on Nest. 1st place went to Scott & Al with 9.55 lbs, 2nd was Ron & Joe with 8.53 lbs, 3rd was John & Chad with 8.41 lbs and 4th went to my dad and I with 7.59 lbs. The big bass for the night weighed 3.77 lbs.

Our fishing for the night was extremely slow although I think our bag could have been much better if we hadn't missed a couple of bites. We targeted smallies for most of the night with tubes and drop shots and caught maybe 6 smallies. We also had a few weedbeds we wanted to check for largemouth but only were able to manage 2 of those that went around the 2 lb mark. With about 20 minutes left in the night we started throwing Super Spooks and the action really seemed to pick up although most of the fish just kept hitting at the bait but not actually getting hooked up. We were able to follow up with tubes and catch a few of those fish though. We ended up weighing in 2 of those smallmouth that we caught in the last 20 minutes and it ended up being the difference between getting in the money and being in 5th place.

West Central Bass League - Lake Johanna

2009-07-26T17:46:00.000-05:00

The bass league returned to Johanna this past Wednesday and 15 teams showed up to try to figure out the fish once again. Some teams reported the fishing to be very tough while others caught a lot of fish. The weights were not all that impressive as is the case on Johanna the last couple of years. There was 1 big bag brought in and that was by my dad and I. We took 1st place with 11.87 lbs for our 3. 2nd place went to Tim & Grant with 9.43 lbs, 3rd went to Dean & John with 9.06 lbs and 4th went to Troy & Chad with 8.96 lbs. My dad caught the big fish of the night and it weighed in at 5.40 lbs.

Last time on Johanna my dad and I really struggled and only managed to catch 4 fish and they all came in the last half hour. This time we decided to just go where we caught those fish and stay there the whole night. We got to our area and put the trolling motor down and never picked it back up until it was time to head in. We ended up having a pretty good night catching around 15 bass but only 3 of them were over 3 lbs. Fortunately in these events we only need to weigh 3 bass. All of our fish came on Lake Fork Craw Tubes and Strike King Flippin Tubes in a variety of colors that we pitched to reed beds.

West Central Bass League - Norway Lake

2009-07-17T14:18:00.000-05:00

Thursday was another cold windy day and as a result only 11 teams showed up to fish Norway Lake. This was our lowest turnout of the year but I don't blame them. I wish we could have stayed home too. 1st place went to Ron & Joe with 10.92 lbs, 2nd went to Brandon & Brent with 7.26 lbs, and 3rd was Brad & Wayne with 6.23 lbs. The big bass for the night went 3.95 lbs. My dad and I blanked which put us in a tie for 10th with another team who also zeroed.

Not only did we not catch a single keeper we didn't even have a single bite from a bass. I caught 2 northerns and those were the only 2 bites we had for the night. This is were I usually talk about the fishing but obviously there isn't much to tell. We fished the first 1 1/2 hours in Games and had nothing on the 5 spots we tried. The water is so low getting through the lakes that we had to make a decision about going back to Norway because if we did there would be no returning to Games. We did make the move back to Norway and fished a bunch of different stuff but got no bites doing anything there either.

West Central Bass League - Eagle Lake

2009-07-17T14:01:00.000-05:00

We were back on Eagle Lake this Wednesday. 14 teams showed up to compete which was the lowest turnout we have had on Wednesday this year. I think the strong winds coupled with the smallish lake kept at least a few people away. That is ok though on a lake like Eagle because space is at a premium with everyone fishing the same docks all night long. 1st place went to Paul & Pete with 10.67 lbs, 2nd was Ron & Joe with 9.80 lbs, 3rd was David & Lenny with 9.20 lbs and 4th went to Troy & Chad with 8.98 lbs. The big bass for the night went 4.06 lbs. My dad and I struggled and only caught 8.48 lbs for 6th place.

We fished docks for most of the night like everyone else and we had our 3 fish limit in about an hour but it just didn't seem like the docks were working as well as usual. At about 7:30 we ended up going offshore and found some very nice weedlines. There weren't many fish there but we did end up with one of our keepers out deep on a watermelon Brush Hog. I also caught a nice 19 inch walleye on a jig that I will be eating tonight. Our 2 other fish did come off of the docks on a green pumpkin tube and a watermelon jig.

Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Ida

2009-07-14T17:33:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday was the 3rd of 4 stops on the Big Bass Bonanza tournament circuit. Ida is a deep extremely clear lake that is known for huge numbers of bass. Catching fish on Ida is not a problem but what is difficult is finding the quality fish needed to win or do well in a tournament. Even though the average fish is well under 2 lbs it still takes around a 3 lb average to win and close to that to do well. After our practice I was just hoping to catch 16 lbs for our 8 fish and salvage a decent finish to keep us near the top in the team of the year standings. We ended up doing better than I expected and weighed a limit for 17.84 lbs which put us in 10th place out of 33 boats. Obviously this was by far our worst tournament of the year but I feel pretty good about it because it could have been a lot worse. I also feel we made good decisions on the water and fished a clean tournament to maximize the little we had going. The winners weighed 8 fish for 21.33 and 2nd place had 19.82 lbs. In the team of the year race we slipped from a 3 way tie for 1st to 2nd position but we are still in great position to make a charge at the team of the year. 1st place right now has 139 points but we are right behind with 136. There are also 2 teams with 135 points so the race is extremely tight.

Like I said earlier our practice was mediocre at best but we did have a few areas I thought we could catch 2 pounders on and maybe a few bigger than that. We started on an area where we caught our biggest fish in practice which wasn't even 3 lbs but there were also a few other decent fish around and if everything went right I felt like we could catch a limit of 2 pounders pretty quick and then try to figure out how to get a big bite the rest of the day. Of course that didn't happen even though we caught our limit in the first hour. The problem was the fish shrank and we didn't even have anything over 1 1/2 lbs let alone 2 lbs. After that hour it just seemed like the bigger fish weren't biting or had moved so we went to a few other areas to try to upgrade. We tried a few deep weedlines, shallow cabbage beds, reed beds and docks but only managed a few more small fish that helped by ounces not the pounds we needed.

By this point we had run through the 4 areas where we felt we had the best chance to do well and only had a small limit. With not much else to go to we headed back to our starting spot and hoped the fish had positioned better or were more willing to bite later in the morning. The spot really wasn't a spot but a long sharp breakline with sand on top and weeds growing right on the drop off. There were a few key areas along the drop off but really you could catch a fish anywhere along it. This time when we came back the eventual winners were sitting right on one of those little key spots. They were moving pretty slow and I know they are good fishermen so I knew something was going on and they were catching good fish. There was still plenty of area so we worked around and a few hundred yards north of them we finally started getting into some better fish. After working the area for a couple hours we had upgraded our bag to a little above the 16 lb range. All of those fish came on a watermelon Picasso jig with the small 2 1/2 inch Lake Fork Pig Claw trailer. The big key to the jig I feel was downsizing to lighter line and a smaller profile jig and trailer in the clear water. Usually if your looking for bigger fish you want to use bigger lures but in this case it was the exact opposite.

After the bite slowed in our primary area we had about an hour left in the day. The sun had started to come out so we decided to fish docks for the rest of the day. Dock fishing on Ida can be hit or miss but traditionally some of the biggest fish come from the docks and we have a few good stretches that we have relied on over the years. When we pulled in on our best docks there was already another boat there but they were far enough down that I was able to get the 10 docks I really wanted to fish. Almost immediately I caught one that went about 2 1/4 lbs and a few docks down I popped another that went 2 3/4 lbs. Both those fish were caught on a green pumpkin Strike King Bleeding Bait tube. Those were the last 2 fish we caught for the day but they were extremely important to our finish. The weights all the way down the board were very tight and without those 2 fish we would have finished much closer to the bottom of the pack than the 10th place we got.

The last stop on the Big Bass Bonanza trail is Clearwater Lake in early August. We fished it earlier in the year for one of our club state qualifier tournaments and didn't have a great day but I do like fishing on Clearwater. We have a fair amount of experience on the lake and even had a win on the Midwest Sportsman ciruit there a few years ago. I am definately not going to change the way I've been fishing just because of the points race. I go into every tournament with the goal to win and it will be no different for Clearwater. We will fish the way we feel is the best way to win the tournament based on our practice. Even if we wanted to fish conservatively it wouldn't make any sense because the points are so tight and the competition is so tough that if you stumble just a little bit theres a bunch of teams that will jump right past.

West Central Bass League - Long Lake

2009-07-10T18:13:00.000-05:00

We tied our best turnout of the year on Wednesday and Thursday this week we had our highest turnout with 16 teams fishing. Had they known how the lake was fishing many might have stayed home. It's not that the fishing is that bad on Long right now because it seems about normal for this time of year. The problem is the stringy weeds that are matted up in the shallow water pretty much around the entire lake. It makes it extremely difficult to move the boat around and fish effectively since you constantly have to clean off the trolling motor. But this is Long Lake so there were some good bags weighed in. Brad & Wayne took 1st place with 11.70 lbs, Paul & Terry took 2nd with 11.45 lbs, Dean & John took 3rd with 10.65 lbs, and Scott & Al were 4th with 10.10 lbs. My dad and I only weighed 2 fish for 5.91 lbs which put us in 7th place for the night. The big bass of the night went 4.85 lbs.

Thursday night was extremely disappointing for us as we turned in our worst performance of the season. I was hoping to weigh 3 fish every night of the year which I don't think we have ever done before. As easy as it might sound to just catch 3 fish in an evening, believe me it's not. What makes it worse though is we had the chances. If we only had 2 bites and caught 2 fish that would be one thing but we actually had 9 bites but only caught 2 of them. That kind of poor execution just won't get it done against this group of anglers. There really wasn't any reason for missing all those fish either. It was just one of those fluke things. As for the fish we did catch they both came by flipping the reeds with soft plastics which is pretty much what we did the entire night.

West Central Bass League - Norway Lake

2009-07-10T18:02:00.000-05:00

We had another great turnout for Wednesday night with 20 teams showing up to fish. This matches the highest turnout we have had on Wednesdays. Unfortunately for most the fishing wasn't very good and only 12 of the 20 teams were able to weigh in their 3 fish limit. For the most part the limits that were weighed in were on the small side too. There were a few exceptions though as John & Mary took 1st with 10.66 lbs. My dad & I were 2nd with 10.26 lbs, Scott & Kelly took 3rd with 7.48 lbs and Paul & Pete were 4th with 7.30 lbs. My dad caught the big bass of the night and it weighed in at 4.00 lbs.

Our fishing for the night was very slow. We didn't catch a fish for about the first hour of the night and the last 2 hours weren't that great either. I think we ended up catching 6 keepers on the night with 3 of them being very small and the other 3 being very nice ones. We headed to Games Lake as usual to fish the weedlines. We bounced around to several different areas to start with before finding the spot we were looking for. The first fish we caught there was my dad's 4 pounder so we just kind of hunkered down and fished that small area very thoroughly. After about 45 minutes to an hour we had 2 more good fish in the box and that was it for our night. All of our keepers came on watermelon Picasso jigs.

West Central Bass League - Lake Johanna

2009-07-05T19:35:00.000-05:00

Lake Johanna has a reputation as a big fish lake but the last few years in league have not really shown that at all. There are still nice average fish but the real big ones have seemed to disappear. That didn't stop 15 teams from trying to catch one of those Lake Johanna giants though. 1st place went to Paul & Pete with 10.67 lbs, 2nd was Ralph with 9.46 lbs, 3rd was Dean & John with 9.07 lbs and 4th went to John & Mary with 9.05 lbs. The big bass for the night went 4.41 lbs. My dad and I were able to salvage a 5th place finish with 8.60 lbs after struggling pretty much the entire night.

There isn't much to tell as far as the fishing goes for us. We had an extremely tough night. In fact we did not have a fish in the livewell until about 8:30 pm. With a 9:00 pm check in time that didn't leave much time to put something together. Fortunately the fish turned on a little bit at dusk and we were able to catch 4 fish in that time. We caught all our fish casting Yamamoto Senkos to the edges of a reed bed. Just like the previous night the last fish I caught was our big fish of the night and it weighed almost 4 lbs. That fish really moved us up in the standings for the night. Even though we were just out of the money the points will really help at the end of the year.

West Central Bass League - Lake Calhoun

2009-07-05T19:17:00.000-05:00

This past Wednesday 18 teams returned to Lake Calhoun. We had fished the lake a few weeks ago on Thursday night and the fishing was very good with 4 bags over 10 lbs weighed in. This week the fishing was quite a bit tougher as only one bag over 10 lbs was caught. Fortunately that bag was caught by my dad and I. We weighed in 10.74 lbs to take 1st place for the night. 2nd place went to Dean & JD with 9.61 lbs, 3rd was Jim & Dwight with 9.15 lbs, and 4th was Paul & Pete with 8.41 lbs. I caught the big bass of the night and it went 3.85 lbs.

The area where the winning bag was caught last time is an area we frequently share with the guys who won. On this night we had a better start number than them so I went straight to the sweet spot. Unfortunately it wasn't very sweet this night and we ended up leaving pretty quickly with just one small keeper in the box. Next we hit a few docks and I put one in the boat a little over 2 lbs. A few docks down my dad caught his big fish of the night that went about 3 1/4 lbs. The dock fish came on Strike King Bleeding Bait Tubes. We fished more docks and several other weedy areas but were just not able to catch much else at all let alone upgrade fish. Towards the end of the evening we moved back to our starting area but there was still nothing happening so I started moving the boat out from the bank. The lake is basically just a flat bottom with weeds covering pretty much the entire lake so I was just kind of moving around randomly looking for an area the fish were holding. With about 10 minutes to go we found it. There wasn't really any particular reason for the fish to be right in one spot like that but they were stacked up. In the last 10 minutes I think we caught 5 good keepers with 4 of them being 3 lbs or better. My dad's fish came on a watermelon Picasso jig and mine were all on a watermelon Strike King Bleeding Bait Flippin Tube. With about 3 minutes before 9 pm my dad said we need to go in but I made one last cast. I actually picked up the trolling motor and when I had that stowed I picked up on my rod and caught one last fish on the last cast. That one ended up being the 3.85 that was the big fish for the night. I just wish we stumbled onto them a little bit earlier because I think we really could have got a bunch of fish. As it was we caught what we needed and had a very exciting end to the night.

West Central Bassmasters Summer Classic - Norway Lake

2009-06-28T23:56:00.000-05:00

The Summer Classic on Norway Lake is 1 of 2 open events the West Central Bassmasters hold each summer. By open event I mean anyone is allowed to fish as opposed to our club tournaments where only club members fish. Our other event will be held in August on Green Lake and hopefully the turnout will be better than this one on Norway. Only 16 teams showed up to fish on Saturday which is down from last year, but this is the case with pretty much all the tournaments in Minnesota this year. I don't know why interest is down this year, maybe it's the economy, but that's just how it is. Just because there are less participants doesn't mean I want to win any less and that is just what my dad and I were able to do. We weighed in a 6 fish limit for 17.03 lbs to just barely edge out 2nd place. 2nd place went to Greg Jones & Scott Zypher with 16.65 lbs, 3rd was John & Jacob Zvorak with 13.84 lbs and 4th was Jim & Brad Hagedorn with 12.33 lbs. It's kind of interesting that 3 of the 4 teams in the money were father and son teams which is always good to see. The big bass for the day weighed 4.07 lbs and was caught by Greg & Scott. I was able to take the 2nd big bass money with a largemouth that weighed 3.50 lbs.

The recap of our fishing is going to be kind of brief because there really isn't all that much to tell. We headed to Games Lake first thing in the morning which is no secret to those who have fished with my us over the years. In practice we had located 2 schools of fish that seemed to be more concentrated than any other areas we could find. We only caught 1 fish in the 3 lb range in about 10 hours of practice time and that is where I wanted to start. Unfortunately 2 other boats were ahead of us and we were unable to get to the key area. We fished around them for awhile but after awhile we knew they weren't moving so we had to get out of there. At one point in the morning we pulled up to the other school we located in practice. It was a spot with a mix of weeds in 8-10 and a very defined edge to it. Right away my dad caught a sheephead and on my next cast I caught a bass close to 3 lbs. The wind was already blowing pretty hard at that point so I stayed on the trolling motor while my dad took care of the fish. My next cast after that I caught another good one. Then I caught another one and then another one. If I remember right I caught 4 fish in the 2-3 lb range in 6 casts. They were coming in so quick that at one point there were 3 fish laying in the cockpit area of our boat because my dad couldn't get them in the livewell that fast. After those 6 casts it slowed enough for my dad to get the fish in the livewell and catch one himself that went close to 3 lbs. Then a few minutes later I caught the 3.50 lb bass that was our big fish of the day. My fish all came on a watermelon Jig with a Strike King Denny Brauer 3x chunk and my dad's fish came on a watermelon Zoom Brush Hog. After about 10 minutes it was over. We obviously kept fishing the area but were only able to catch small fish that wouldn't help us. After awhile we moved to another weedline area and I caught one that upgraded our bag by about an ounce. Then we moved back to the sweet spot and about 50 yards away my dad was able to upgrade again by about 2 ounces with the Brush Hog. At this point it was around 9:00 in the morning and our fishing was basically done for the day. We tried various other spots including docks, reeds, milfoil, lily pads and more weedlines, but were hardly able to catch anything let alone anything that would help us. Out of our entire 8 hour tournament day we had most of our weight in 10 minutes and all of our weight in about a 45 minute period. It made for a pretty boring day but it doesn't matter when you catch them, just what they weigh at the end of the day.

West Central Bass League - Solomon Lake

2009-06-28T20:45:00.000-05:00

Our 5th stop on Thursday night brought us back to Solomon Lake. We had just fished the lake the previous Wednesday and this fishing was tough to say the least. That didn't stop 12 teams from trying their hand once again. Somewhat surprisingly the fishing was much better for many teams even though not much had changed as far as weather or water conditions. It was still a struggle for my dad and I though as we turned in our poorest performance of the season with a 6th place finish for our 8.51 lb limit. 1st place went to Jim & Brad with 11.64 lbs, 2nd was Tim & Grant with 11.09 lbs, and 3rd was Brad & Wayne with 10.29. The big fish for the night went 4.29 lbs. After 5 evenings Tim & Grant lead the team of the year race with 90 points. My dad and I are a close 2nd with 86 points.

There really isn't much to tell about our fishing for the night since we only caught 3 fish the whole night. The first bass was caught by my dad on a spinnerbait fished on a rocky area outside of the reeds. The second bass was also caught by my dad on a tube flipped into the reeds. Both of those fish were in the 3 3/4 lb range. I did not have a bite for 2 hours and 55 minutes. With 5 minutes to go before the end of the night I finally caught a fish on a blugill Yamamoto Senko near the reeds. It was just a small one but it was a relief to get our 3 fish limit in the boat and it saved us from dropping down even further in the standings.

West Central Bass League - Green Lake

2009-06-28T20:30:00.000-05:00

This past Wednesday was the 5th event of the summer for the West Central Bass League. This stop was at Green Lake in Spicer and 17 teams came out to catch some of the smallmouth Green Lake is famous for. Green Lake is an amazing fishery but the fish have become much harder to catch in recent years due to the heavy amount of pressure the bass now recieve. The weights this year have also gone down a bit but not substantially. 1st place for the night went to Paul & Pete with 3 fish for 9.25 lbs, 2nd was my dad & I with 8.34 lbs, 3rd was Dean & JD with 8.26 lbs, and 4th went to Jon & Jeff with 8.18. The 4 in the money weights were all comprised of smallmouth but the big bass for the night was a 3.70 lb largemouth. After 5 evenings my dad and I are leading the points with 87 despite not having a win yet. 2nd place is at 77 points but with most of the summer remaining many teams still have a shot to win the team of the year.

We started our night throwing chartruese and white spinnerbaits over flats in 6-10 feet of water. This is more of a summer pattern and it hasn't been working very well so far this year but we still spent the first hour trying it out in various places. It was pretty unsuccessful as after that first hour we had 3 fish but only one was a decent one in the 2 3/4 lb range. We spent the next hour fishing several deep humps in the 20-30 foot range with watermelon Lake Fork Twitch Worms on drop shot rigs. The first hump produced 2 smallies in the 2 3/4 lb range. The next hump was empty and then the 3rd area again produced 2 more smallies in the same size range. After that we went to the shallow rocks and tried topwater for the rest of the evening. I couldn't get anything to come up on my Spook so I switched to a green pumpkin tube as I approched a small milfoil patch. Almost immediately I hooked another smallie in the 2 3/4 lb class. The very next cast I caught our big fish of the night which went 2.90 lbs on our scale. It seems we had found a school of biting fish but by that time we had to head in and we made it back to the dock with less than a minute to go before 9:00 pm.

Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Minnewaska

2009-06-24T23:18:00.000-05:00

Lake Minnewaska was the 2nd stop of 4 events on the Big Bass Bonanza circuit. 43 teams showed up to fish so there was a slightly larger turnout than the first even on Sauk Lake. The conditions were really ideal for fishing. It was warm, calm and for most of the day there was just a light rain. The end of the day was a different story though. The rain started coming down harder and the wind really picked up blowing directly into the weigh in site. People beached their boats but then the waves were coming right over the back filling everyones boats with water. For the most part the bilge pumps worked fine but one boat filled up to the point that only the very top was out of the water. They were able to get it back on the trailer though. As for the fishing it went very well for my dad and I as we took 2nd place with 22.87 lbs for our 8 fish limit. We just missed out on first place as they weighed in 23.11 lbs. I was also able to catch the 2nd big bass of the tournment that weighed in at 4.30 lbs for some additional money. Heres how we did it.

We were one of the very last boats to blast off so we were worried about getting to our spots but when we pulled into the first one there was no one nearby at all. It was a gravel flat in 5-6 feet of water and we thew Super Spooks hoping to get a few smallmouth to come up. My dad and I each had one bite on the Spook but they barely touched it and neither one of us was able to hook up. We went back through the area with tubes and football jigs but had no bites that pass so it was off to the next spot.

The next area was a weedline in 10-14 feet of water. Almost immediately my dad caught our first fish of the day and it was a solid 2 3/4 lb fish. This was the spot I expected to catch our biggest fish on so we stuck around for quite awhile but the only other fish we caught was a big sheephead. After that we hit a few more spots including reeds, another deeper weedbed, and a shallow sandy flat but struck out on all three. Next we tried to run to another spot we had found in practice but the guys who run the tournament were fishing basically right on out waypoint so instead we pulled into another nearby weedline in 10 feet of water. Again my dad had a bite pretty quick but it got off after just a second or two. He said it was a good one so we worked the area over pretty thoroughly but didn't get anymore bites. By now 2 1/2 hours had gone by and we only had 1 fish in the livewell. I was starting to get worried but I wasn't going to panic just yet.

Our next stop was on another shallow gravel and rock flat. Again my dad was the first to hook up and he put a nice 2 1/2 lb smallie in the boat on a football jig. After netting his fish I picked my rod rigged with a green pumpkin KVD tube that I had left in the water and there was another smallie on the line. This one weighed in at about 2 lbs. So after 2 1/2 hours with 1 fish we had just put 2 in the boat in a matter of seconds. We worked the area over some more and I caught anther small keeper smallie and it was time to go. Our next stop was another gravel and rock flat and I put 3 more small keeper smallies in the boat in about 10 minutes on the green pumpkin tube. I switched back to the Spook and caught another small keeper so after struggling for the first part of the day it took no time at all to fill our limit even though I knew it was going to be nothing to brag about if we didn't upgrade substantially.

After filling our limit we knew we needed much bigger fish so we headed back to the big fish weedline. We would end up hitting this spot 4 times throughout the day but this was the last time we would catch any fish on it. Within 10 minutes of arriving I hooked into what turned out to be the 4.30 lb largemouth on a watermelon jig. Not 5 minutes later I caught one weighing about 3 3/4 lbs on the jig. After that the action was done. We worked the spot over well and right before we left my dad hooked into a really good fish only to find out it was about a 5 lb walleye. I was hoping to catch more fish in the area but still catching 2 that weighed around 8 lbs combined was exactly what we needed at that point.

After that we made another stop on our starting spot and those smallies still wouldn't go so we moved pretty quickly to a shallower weedline in about 7 feet of water. I picked up a 2 1/2 lb largemouth on the watermelon jig but there were no other fish there. At that point it seemed like the largemouths were biting better than they had been earlier in the morning so I decided to fish that watermelon jig on weedlines the rest of the day. We moved back to the area where my dad had lost the good one earlier in the day and I missed a bite. The fish had ripped the trailer off my jig but I wanted to get back out there quickly so I pitched the undressed jig right to the same spot and the fish still ate it up. That one went about 3 lbs. Next we were able to move over to the weedline that was occupied earlier in the morning since that boat had left. It was the same kind of spot with a weedline right about 10 feet deep. I picked up another solid fish in the 2 3/4 lb range on the watermelon jig. Then it was mine turn to lose one. It was the first bite all day that hit on the fall and for whatever reason I just didn't get a good hook in it. I never saw it but I would guess that was a fish in the same size range as the other one.

At this point we knew we had a really solid bag but we also knew we still had that 2 lb smallmouth that we needed to get rid of. We bounced around to several other areas including the big fish spot 2 more times but were unable to come up with anything that would help us. We had our 2 chances for first with those fish we lost but it just wasn't meant to be. Maybe they weren't even bass but I'm almost positive they were. It also would have been nice to catch a bigger smallmouth since we had caught some good ones in practice but they just weren't going that day. There were very few smallies weighed in by any of the teams. For the most part though, besides the first 2 1/2 hours, our plan from practice went about as smoothly as possible. Our 2nd place finish combined with our 5th place in the first event has us in a 3 way tie for Team of the Year with 2 event remaining. Hopefully we can keep this momentum going and compete for the top spot at the end of the year. Our next event will be July 12th on Lake Ida.