This past weekend the West Central Bassmasters held two tournaments to determine which of our members would qualify for the Minnesota State Tournament of Champions held on Lake Pokagema in September. 12 members were attempting to reach the state tournament but only 6 would be allowed to go. On Saturday we fished Clearwater Lake. The winner weighed in 5 fish for 13.48 lbs while I weighed a limit weighing in at 9.62 lbs which put me in 6th place for the day. On Sunday we fished the Le Homme Dieu Chain in Alexandria. 1st place there weighed 5 fish for 13.20 lbs. My 5 weighed in at 9.35 lbs which put me in 5th place for the day. Overall when the points were combined I qualified for the state tournament in 4th place. Here are the qualifiers in the order they finished:
1 - Joe Patock
2 - Ron Mehr
3 - Mike Nitchals
4 - Andy Nitchals
5 - Dean Drexler
6 - Scott Van Buren
I'm going to be pretty brief in describing my fishing for the days. For one thing we will be fishing another tournament on Clearwater later this summer so I don't want to give too much away, and also the days were pretty uneventful as you can see from the very low weights I weighed in. On Clearwater I fished several different areas of the lake but all of the areas had several things in common. I concentrated on depths of 6-12 feet that featured heavy weed growth in the form of milfoil, cabbage and other assorted weeds. All of my weigh fish came on watermelon Sweet Beavers and jigs pitched into the heavy cover.
On the Alex chain I started throwing a white Strike King spinnerbait on a large cabbage flat in 6-9 feet of water. I had my 5 fish limit in the boat quickly but the size was much smaller than I had found in practice as they probably weighed less than 6 lbs combined. It is still nice to have an early limit though since it kind of frees you up to fish more loose the rest of the day. I try not to worry about catching a limit and just go fishing but in a tournament if you don't have a limit in the box it can start messing with your mind sometimes. Thankfully I usually don't have a problem with worrying about things like that but it can happen. After realizing the quality wasn't what I was expecting in my starting area I moved shallow to docks, overhanging trees and reeds. I spent most of the rest of the day shallow with a few forays into deeper water. None of the deep stuff was very productive at all, but I was able to cull out all 5 of my original limit in the shallow water using watermelon Sweet Beavers and green pumkin red/green flake Bleeding Bait tubes.
Congatulations to all who made it and better luck next year to those who didn't.
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