Sorry for the delay in updates but its been a busy couple of weeks with very limited internet access. I've been home for a few days now relaxing so I hope to get everything updated by tomorrow at the latest.
As many who read this blog probably already know I finished 2nd out of 149 anglers in the Minnesota B.A.S.S. Federation Tournament of Champions. I've fished these events for a lot of years now and had been right on the doorstep many times but just could not close the deal. This year I was finally able to break through into the top 12 and almost took 1st place in the process. The TOC is a 2 day format where you are paired with another competitor each day. You are allow to weigh in 4 fish each of the 2 days and no culling is allowed. I was able to weigh in 4 fish each day giving me 8 fish for 20.53 lbs. First place was less than a pound ahead of me with 8 fish weighing 21.17 lbs. I also had 2nd big bass of the tournament with a 4.54 lb beauty. Here's how I did it.
On day 1 I was paired with another angler who had only gotten a day of practice fishing in so he was willing to let me go to my water for pretty much the whole day. My best fishing in practice was in pool 5 so I decided to lock down there first thing in the morning. Locking through the dams is an interesting process. It generally takes about half an hour but barge traffic gets priority over any other watercraft. I ran from takeoff about 10 miles down to the lock and sure enough a barge is sitting right there. I figured that it would take about an hour for the barge to get through so instead of just waiting I pulled over to an island to fish while we waited. The bank was mostly rocky but there was a little opening with slop on one part of the bank. Right when we got to that area my partner caught a short fish in the slop so I slowed down and really worked that area thoroughly. A little while later a good keeper blew up on my frog and I had it halfway to the boat before it just fell off. I don't know how it came off like that but it was not the start I wanted. After fishing for about an hour in that spot my partner says to me the boat is filling up with water. I look back and sure enough the floor of the cockpit was covered in water. I could also see the barge was done and they were ready to let the other boats through the lock. I didn't know what to do now. I got the bilge pumps running and we pumped all the water out pretty quick but I thought the plug might be out of the boat. If the plug was out I didn't know if I wanted to lock through but on the other hand I didn't want to waste time running all the way back to the launch to put the plug back in. I decided to lock through anyway and keep the bilge pumps running much of the day if I had to. When we got in the lock I realized it wasn't the plug but the overflow valves on the livewell were all plugged up with weeds. When I left the fill pump on there was nowhere for the water to go but into the boat. Once I figured that out it calmed me down a bunch and I knew I could just fill the livewells and then turn the pumps to recirculate only and we would be fine.
After getting through the lock I ran another 6-7 miles to my starting area. It was a series of channels inside an island. Most of the water was really shallow but the best area had a 25 foot deep hole in it. The cover was coontail and duckweed mats with giant lily pads mixed in. I pulled in to the channel, turned the corner and was happy to see we were alone in there. On my partners very first cast he had a good blowup but missed it. Less than 5 minutes later I had my first blowup and connected with that 4.54 lb bass. What a way to start the day!!! After that fast action to start I figured it was on in there and we would clean up and go back to the ramp early. Unfortunately it was the exact opposite. After catching that big one it just slowed down. It wasn't completely dead because we were getting blowups on our frogs but nothing would connect. I'm sure most of the fish hitting were pike but I know some of the were bass too but they just wouldn't eat it. After fishing a couple hundred yards my partner finally put his first keeper in the boat. Then I moved to the other side of the channel and we didn't catch a thing. Next I fished some of the adjoining channels and still wasn't able to get anything. I then worked back over the stretch where I caught the big one and my partner was able to get his 2nd keeper but I was still stuck with only 1 fish after almost half the day was gone. I knew I had to do something different so we picked up and moved.
The next stop was the east side of the island that we had been fishing inside of. The cover was a lot different with much less slop and more trees and eel grass. The first tree we got to I pitched my Strike King Flippin Tube in there and caught a small keeper. Then a little while later I caught a solid keeper pitching the tube in a little line of eel grass. Now things were starting to come together since I only needed one more fish and there was plenty of time to go. A few hundred yards down the bank it got a lot more sloppy and I started throwing the frog again and soon had another quality keeper in the boat to fill my limit. We are allowed to catch five bass and weigh in the four best ones but I was just happy to have four so I told my partner he could have the front of the boat the rest of the day. We kept fishing the same general area but he wasn't able to come up with anything so I told him theres one other spot I wanted to fish and he'd be in front with a good chance to catch one. When I went to start the motor the electronics shut off and the motor barely cranked but it did finally start. This is not good I'm thinking to myself but at least it was running so I told him I didn't want to risk the motor not starting so we would have to head back to the lock. When we were running back there was a barge going the same direction as us so maybe it was a good thing we headed back when we did. The lock was actually open and ready to go when we got there so I went right in and just left the motor running because I didn't want to be stuck in the lock with a dead battery trying to scramble around to get out of there. I guess that half hour of idling recharged the battery pretty well because we never had another problem the rest of the day.
After getting back through the lock there was still about 2 hours of fishing time left. That is the great part of being in the 4th flight. We didn't have to weigh in until 4:30 pm and first flight had to weigh in at 3:00 pm. The problem was like I said earlier I didn't have very good fishing in pool 4 and thats where we would be for the next 2 hours. There was one area near a marina where my dad had caught one over 3 lbs in practice so thats where we went. It was more of the same with duckweed and those big giant pads. Again I let my partner run the trolling motor and we fished pretty slowly and thoroughly in the area but just weren't getting any bites at all. We had fished almost all of it when he got a blowup and missed it and then a little while later I caught my 5th keeper of the day on the frog. After I put 5 fish in the livewell it meant I could no longer make a cast so I sat down and took a little break for the last half hour of the day. I can't say I've ever done that in a tournament before! Unfortuantely for him he was unable to catch anything else in that time and it was time to head back to the weigh in.
When we got to the weigh in I chose the biggest 4 of my 5 fish in the livewell and brought them to the weigh in stage. When I pulled the big one out I was pleseantly surprised to see that it was even bigger than I thought it was when I caught it. That's always a bonus because they usually seem to shrink on you. My 4 fish for day 1 ended up weighing 11.15 lbs which put me in 7th place after everyone had weighed in. That was solidly inside the top 12 cut but there were a lot of good weights and almost anyone within the top 50 had a legitimate chance to move up on the 2nd day. There is also a team competition and our 4 man West Central Bassmasters team held the lead for the day with about 37 lbs.
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