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.
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