Big Bass Bonanza - Horseshoe Chain & WC Bass League - Week 2

Sorry for the delay guys but I've been spending too much time fishing (Is that even possible?) and not enough time writing. In this post I'll recap the Big Bass Bonanza tournament on the Horseshoe Chain that was held on June 5th as well as the 2nd week of the West Central Bass League held on June 8th and 9th.

Big Bass Bonanza - Horseshoe Chain

Even though the Horseshoe Chain is relatively close to my house it is not a body of water I have fished much over the years. I really only started fishing it after joining the Big Bass Bonanza circuit several years ago because it is pretty much an annual stop on that trail. In the past it was a real struggle just to put an 8 fish limit in the boat and in previous visits we finished around the middle of the pack. This year was different though as we were able to find an area of the Chain that we had never fished before and was very productive for us. My dad and I ended up weighing an 8 fish limit for 19.98 lbs and I also caught the big bass of the tournament which weighed in at 5.08 lbs. The winning weight was 21.58 lbs so we were not too far off the pace.

For the most part our practice was pretty tough but we located a large weedy spawning bay that held a lot of quality fish both on beds and cruising around in the shallows. Practice is cut off on Tuesday before the Sunday tournament though and I had a feeling there would be a major change in the conditions come tournament day. As we pulled into the bay for our first stop of the morning I was right. The weeds had really grown up and the water was much more stained. My hope was that with the number of fish in there in practice there would at least still be a few hanging around. In the first hour we were able to put 5 fish in the boat but only one of them was in the 2 3/4 lb range that we were looking for. Most of those fish came on a watermelon LFT Magic Shad. Even though we were catching fish pretty steadily the size was not there so it was off to the next stop.

Our next area was a tree lined bank that we had actually not caught anything on in practice but had seen several big bass cruising along with a ton of sunfish. My hope was that the sunnies would still be there and they were. Right away I saw a cleared out area of sunfish beds and a big bass just lazily cruising around the beds. The fish actually seemed very comfortable and not spooky and all so I just let the boat kind of drift a short distance away while continuing to cast into the beds. After the boat was far enough away that I couldn't actually see the fish anymore there was a light tick on my watermelon LFT Magic Shad and I horsed that 5.08 lb beauty right into the net with hardly any fight at all. After that we continued down the bank and were able to add another 2 lb fish from under a tree but that was it.

The next stop was a rocky area that had a large number of quality smallmouth on beds in practice. Of course with the changing conditions they were pretty much all gone but there was a 2 1/2 pounder left which I was quickly able to put in the boat with a sand Strike King KVD tube rigged on a dropshot. That fish gave us our limit and it was still pretty early in the morning. I knew we had about 20 lbs at that point which normally is a pretty good weight for the Chain but I knew we needed a few more quality fish to contend for the win. Unfortunately nothing else really happened for us the rest of the day. With about an hour left in the day we returned to our starting bay and were able to locate a fish on a bed that was nearly 4 lbs. I didn't know for sure at the time but I had a feeling that could be the winning fish. Needless to say we fished it for the remainder of the day. She was really spooky but with time running out she really seemed to be getting more agitated but of course the clock ticked down and we were forced to leave her in the water. That was a really frustrating way to end the day but at the same time coming away from the first event with a 4th place finish and big bass feels pretty good!

West Central Bass League - Diamond Lake

Despite the extremely windy conditions yet again we had 18 teams competing on the 2nd night of bass league on Diamond Lake. With the conditions I actually expected a lot fewer teams but for the most part it sounds like a lot of fish were caught although the quality was down somewhat for Diamond. Here are the results:

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 10.64 lbs

2nd - Jeff & Kris - 3 - 9.66 lbs

3rd - Grant & April King - 3 - 8.85 lbs

4th - Joe & Ron - 3 - 8.25 lbs

5th - Paul & Pete - 3 - 7.58 lbs

Big Bass - Andy Nitchals - 4.37 lbs

Make it 3 in a row for Team Nitchals! It has been an awesome start to the league season for us and hopefully it will continue all year long. We started our night on a protected stretch of docks but almost immediately it didn't feel right to me so we switched to fishing the large number of reed beds Diamond contains. For the most part though they were exposed to the strong wind which made for really tough fishing. We bounced around to several reed areas and were not able to find any concentrations of fish but every once in awhile were able to catch a 3 lb class fish. Towards the end of the night the wind had calmed enough that we could get to another stretch of docks that has been productive for us and with half an hour to go in the night I caught that 4.37 pounder to put us over the top. The big fish and one of our other keepers came on a watermelon homemade jig and my dad added one weigh fish on a watermelon Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver.

West Central Bass League - Solomon Lake

We again had 18 teams fishing on Thursday night on Solomon Lake. While it was still pretty windy it was nothing compared to the previous night. Solomon has a reputation for kicking out a lot of quality bass in the 3-5 lb range but I had been out there several times and was unable to put any quality in the boat. I was really wondering what kind of weights would show up at the end of the night and while the overall weights were maybe a little bit lower the top bags were all very strong. Here are the results:

1st - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 11.87 lbs

2nd - Jared & Tonya - 3 - 11.84 lbs

3rd - Joe & Ron - 3 - 10.42 lbs

4th - Ross & Daryl - 3 - 10.21 lbs

5th - Dean & JD - 3 - 9.48 lbs

Big Bass - Jay & Willie - 5.78 lbs

Make it 4 in a row for us! This one was the toughest challenge yet though even though our average fish was nearly 4 lbs. Our league nights run from 6 pm to 9 pm and at 8 pm we only had 2 fish in the boat. One of them was almost 4 lbs but the other was just a 14 inch rat. We had already fished a number of different areas but nothing was working for us. This is a lake that has a reputation for turning on right at dusk though so I tried not to worry too much and hoped the fishing would get better in the last hour. It certainly did! We were able to catch quite a few fish in the last hour including 2 in the 3 lb range to give us a pretty good bag. At 8:55 pm only 5 minutes before check in I caught our big fish of the night that weighed in at 4.91 lbs and push our pretty good bag to a great bag. It turns out that Tonya & Jared had caught their big fish that went nearly 5 1/2 lbs on their very last cast but we had just enough weight to edge them out by .03 lbs! All of our weigh fish for the evening came on a black/blue Berkely HAVOC Pit Boss fished in the reeds and bullrushes.

It has been an amazing run so far this season! It is still very early though but hopefully it keeps up. In my next post I'll recap the West Central Bassmasters state qualifier tournaments we held over the past weekend. I won't go into the details here but they also went quite well for me.