B.A.S.S. Northern Divisional - Bays de Noc

2010 marked my 2nd consecutive trip to the Northern Divisional after years of coming close but failing to qualify through the Minnesota TOC. Normally the Divisional rotates between the 8 states but for political reasons it returned to Bays de Noc for another year. On the one hand I was disappointed because I did terrible there last year and would have liked to compete on a new body of water but on the other hand last year gave me a lot of experience that hopefully would be useful to me this year. In the end I ended up doing quite a bit better than last year but still stunk it up. Over the course of the 3 day tournament I ended up weighing in 8 bass for 23 lbs 8 oz. This put me in 76th place out of 112 anglers. The 12 man Minnesota team did not fare much better as a whole. We finished in 6th place last year but this year we ended up dropping one spot to 7th.

My troubles started off right away in the morning on Day 1 when I remarked to my partner, "I have never had boat problems on a tournament day. I'm sure that just jinxed us." Right after I said that I checked the kill switch one last time and sure enough it didn't work. A wire had pulled free and there was no way to get it repaired as the blast off had started. Fortunately the Minnesota team had a spare boat in the water and ready to go. After a mad scramble to get our gear in the other boat we ended up blasting off only a couple minutes after the last boat had left. I was only able to grab a handful of rods and tackle though and also had none of my waypoints in the new boat. It was great to only lose a few minutes of time though as we started off on about a 25 mile run to my first spot. My first area was a large flat hump with various high rocky spots on it. I thought I would be able to get on my preferred areas even without my waypoints but the cloud cover really hindered my ability to see the high spots. I was able to catch my 1 fish of the day in this area on a green pumpkin tube. It ended up weighing 4 lbs 12 oz so it was a really nice fish but I just didn't get any more of them. After that we ran around to some of my other areas and my partners spots but nothing would work for me. He was getting quite a few bites dragging a tube just like I was but I just wasn't getting bit for some reason. I guess the whole boat ordeal was messing with my mind more than it should have but whatever the case the whole day was just a disaster.

Day 2 ended up being much better for me as I was able to weigh in a 5 fish limit for 13 lbs 13 oz. That is not a huge limit by any means but it felt good to just get 5 fish in the box. My partner for the day wanted to spend his time in the same area that I started on the day before. That suited me just fine since it was my best area as well. We were the first boat to arrive but it was really slow for most of the morning. I was able to pick up a fish here and there though as I moved around the rocky areas on the hump. In the morning dragging a tube and drop shot extremely slowly was working the best but as the sun came out around noon the spinnerbait bite picked up considerably. By the end of the day I had caught around 10 fish with most of them coming on a spinnerbait in the afternoon.

The forecast for day 3 was for strong south winds which on Bays de Noc is the one direction you don't want to see. Any strong winds make it tough out there since it is such a large body of water but there is nothing blocking a wind from the south. With that forecast in mind the tournament director decided to limit the fishing waters to Little Bay de Noc only for the day. This upset many competitors since all of the best areas were off limits for the day. Personally I do not like the call either. I feel that the day should have been cancelled or we should have been allowed to fish the entire lake. Regardless of our feelings though we had to make the best of it. Neither my partner nor I had much going in the waters we were allowed to fish so we just went fishing basically. I ended up catching one really early on a spinnerbait and then didn't have a bite the rest of the day until we came back to the weigh in site. I was able to catch one more keeper on a drop shot right outside the harbor as we bounced around in the 5-6 foot waves that were coming in at that point. My 2 fish for the day weighed in at 4 lbs 15 oz and I was able to get some more big water driving time in as well. I never felt comfortable in big waves like that but after doing it 2 years in a row now I feel like I have gotten the hang of it. It's still not my idea of a good time but at least I don't feel like I'm going to die!

Even though my performance in this tournament was not very good I still had a great time over the week. Our 12 man team worked well together even though it didn't really show in the final standings and they were a great group of guys to hang out with. I was almost sad when the week came to an end. In any case I'll be trying to make the 2011 Northern Divisional once again when we have our MN State TOC on Lake Minnetonka on September 9-10.