West Central Fall Bass League - Long Lake

This past Saturday marked the final event of our Fall Bass League for 2009. The weather was actually very nice for a change with light winds and highs over 50 degrees. However the water temps were in the low 40's and that made for some very tough fishing on a shallow water lake such as Long. Most of the fish in the lake relate to reeds or shallow rocks so when the water gets cold they can be difficult to figure out. Out of the 5 teams fishing only 2 were able to bring a fish to the scales after 5 hours of fishing. 2nd place went to Tim & Grant with 1 fish for 4.85 lbs. 1st place went to my dad & I with 3 fish for 14.22 lbs. My dad also caught the big fish of the day which weighed in at 5.12 lbs. The win made it a clean sweep for us in October with wins in each of the 4 fall leagues held this month.

We started our day flipping reeds with jigs and soft plastics but after several stops in the first hour we had not had a bite. At this point I decided to try something a little different for the lake and I started throwing a Rapala X-Rap on steeper bare banks. I worked the bait with very small twitches and let it pause for as long as I could stand it. After about 5 minutes with the jerkbait I put a nice 4 1/4 lb bass in the boat. We continued to work this pattern for another hour or so but no luck. After catching one so quick I really thought that was going to be the deal but I guess not. After the jerkbait experiment it was back to the reeds for most of the rest of the day. We just kept working good areas as slowly as possible and eventually we ran across a small area of reeds that was holding some fish. My dad caught the first flipping fish on a black/blue craw tube. That one ended up being the big fish of the day. Less than 5 minutes later I missed a fish and then less than 5 minutes after that I had another one bite 4 times before I finally hooked it. I got it almost to the boat but it was just out of reach of the net when it came off. That fish was an easy 5 pounder and I was really worried that we let the win slip away right there. The last fish I caught came from the same area after we had let it rest for awhile. It weighed in at almost 5 lbs and was caught on a black/blue jig. I am kind of disappointed that we were not able to catch our 5 fish limit since we did have the opportunities but I won't complain too much with 3 fish weighing over 14 lbs and the win.

Since this was the last fall league of the year this is probably my last competitive fishing of the year as well. I'm hoping that November will be a lot more pleasant that October and that theres at least another month of fishing before the lakes freeze up but I won't be writing about those trips in the blog. I'll do a 2009 wrap up in several weeks once the boat is put away for the winter.