After overnight rain showers the weather for tournament day was exactly what we were looking for. It was mostly sunny with just light winds which were the conditions we felt our fish would bite best under. The we on this day was not my dad and I like the rest of our tournaments. My dad was out of town for the weekend so I called on my old fishing buddy Lafe. We used to fish a lot together but we hadn't fished a tournament together for several years. It was actually a lot of fun being back in the boat with him on tournament day.
We started off fishing a cabbage bed in about 5-6 feet of water. On tuesday the week before I found a bunch of smallies using those weeds but tournament day they had all disappeared. Our next stop was a shallow rocky flat and that didn't produce at all either. By this time it was about 8:00 am and we had no fish but neither of us was too concerned since our primary pattern didn't really start working until after 8:00.
Our next stop was much more productive and we put 4 smallies in the boat in about half an hour throwing spinnerbaits on the edge of a flat in about 10-12 feet of water. This is actually what we did pretty much the rest of the day. We just ran around the lake hitting different flats in that same depth of water with the spinnerbait. We had our 5 fish limit pretty quickly afterwards and just continued to upgrade little by little throughout the day. We had probably close to 15 lbs when something crazy happened that I don't recall having happened before to me. I saw a giant smallie following my spinnerbait all the way to the boat. Once it got close it kind of started to slide back deeper but instead of just letting it go I stuck my rod in the water and did the figure eight move that musky fishermen use for following fish. That smallie actually came back up and got my spinnerbait with about a foot of line off the tip of the rod. I set the hook and the fish flew out of the water and came off. It was over before it even started. Lafe and I both got a real good look at it and both agree it was an easy 4 pounder. That one really hurt. You just don't get many chances at fish in that class on Green Lake anymore. On the other hand I probably should never have hooked it in the first place. Those fish just don't hit that close to the boat usually. After that we knew at least a few big fish were in our areas so we just kept chucking the spinnerbait. I'd say we spent at least 90% of the day doing that.
After noon the spinnerbait bite really seemed to be tailing off. That is a little strange because mid day is usually best for that bite but for whatever reason it just wasn't working for us. We kept at it a little too long probably but with 45 minutes left in the day we finally decided we had to change it up. We pulled out the drop shot rigs and headed to a hump that tops off about 20 feet deep. We fished around a little bit and got to the south side of it in 25 feet and started seeing fish all over on the graph. Almost immediately when we got into that school Lafe set the hook on what turned out to be our biggest fish of the day. It weighed in at 3.45 lbs. After sorting and culling our fish we got back on the school but time was running out. I was still seeing fish all over the screen but they just wouldn't bite and it was time to head in.
Our 5 smallies ended up weighing in at 15.40 lbs. Quite a bit less than we were expecting based on practice but still a nice weight. It ended up being good enough for 5th place out of the 23 teams. 5th was also the last spot to get a check so at least we made our money back. The winners had a very nice bag with their 5 fish going 17.82 lbs. They also had big fish for the day at 4.17 lbs.
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