Big Bass Bonanza - Sauk Lake

This past Sunday was the first of four tournaments on the Big Bass Bonanza circuit. It was held on Sauk Lake and after our practice my dad and I did not have the highest expectations coming into the event. We really struggled to get bites but at least when we did get a bite it was a good fish for the most part. We were able to narrow down our game plan to one general area of the lake that had several key spots in it but we were not on anything solid. Our whole goal was just to catch an eight fish limit in our eight hours of fishing time. As is often the case however practice is no indication of how the tournament will go and we were able to catch a solid limit weighing almost 23 lbs which was good for 5th place out of the 37 teams competing. Heres how we did it.

Our general area was a large flat in 5 to 10 feet of water that was almost entirely covered with curly leaf pondweed. This is a type of weed I generally do not like fishing in because it seems very difficult to catch fish out of for some reason. On Sauk though the fish were in there so that is where we fished. For our first stop I pulled up to one of our weighpoints near a shoreline point. Within 5 minutes I had a fish close to 3 lbs in the boat on a chrome sexy shad Strike King Red Eye Shad. After working that area shallow I pulled out deeper to the inside corner of the point and popped another fish close to 3 lbs on a watermelon Picasso Jig. We continued to work around the flat but the fishing slowed for awhile until we made our way to what proved to be our best spot for the day.

This area was still on the same flat but had a different feature that the fish were holding on. It was a ridge that came up to about 5 feet with 8 feet of water on either side of it. There were weeds on either side as well but on the very top of it was a bare area. We just worked back and forth keeping the boat in deeper water and casting up to the top of it. We were able to fill out our 8 fish limit by 9:30 in the morning which was way faster than we ever could have expected. Most of the fish were in the 2 - 2 1/2 lb range but I was able to put 2 in the boat in the 3 3/4 lb range. All of those fish came on the watermelon jig and a black/blue flack Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver dragged slowly across the ridge.

After filling our limit we fished the ridge awhile longer but it really slowed down so we started moving around more. We tried a few docks and trees and were able to get a small upgrade. We also tried another large weedy flat but struck out there. Towards the end of the day we made our way back to the ridge but again it was very slow. I eventually caught another solid fish on the jig and upgraded about a 1/2 lb but it was the only fish we caught there that time and it was time to head in.