Monday, September 12, 2011

West Central Bass League - Tournament of Champions Week

West Central Bass League TOC - Diamond Lake - August 31st

The top 10 teams, based on the final points in the TOY standings on Wednesday night were invited to fish the Tournament of Champions. Each team then threw their pick for a lake into a hat and Diamond Lake was drawn. Diamond used to be known as an extremely tough lake but also one that held giant fish. It has changed in recent years and the big fish are gone for the most part but it now kicks out huge numbers of fish. On this night most of the teams reported catching a lot of fish and some nice weights were brought in as well. Here are the results.

1st - Ron & Joe - 3 - 11.39 lbs
2nd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 3 - 10.55 lbs
3rd - Bill & Todd - 3 - 9.59 lbs

Big Bass #1 - Scott & Kelly - 4.41 lbs
Big Bass #2 - Ron & Joe - 3.92 lbs
Bill & Todd - 3.92 lbs

As you can see we finished 2nd to cap off a pretty good year on Wednesday nights in which we also finished 3rd in the TOY standings. For the final night on Diamond our plan was to primarily fish the docks and trees since that had been the main pattern all year on the lake. We did venture to the reeds a couple of times but were unable to get bit doing that although several other teams reported catching a lot of fish out of the reeds. We ended up catching a lot of fish on the docks though. All of our weigh fish came by pitching and skipping docks with various jigs and soft plastics.

West Central Bass League TOC - Norway Lake - September 1st

Just as on Wednesday nights the top 10 teams were invited to fish the Thursday night Tournament of Champions. We had fished Norway Lake on the last regular season night and by luck of the draw that is where the TOC was held. At least everyone in the field had been out the previous week so we all had a feel for the conditions. The fishing didn't end up being quite as good though. Here are the results.

1st - Ron & Joe - 3 - 9.39 lbs
2nd - Paul & Pete - 3 - 9.22 lbs
3rd - Andy & Mike Nitchals - 8.86 lbs

Big Bass #1 - Mike Nitchals - 3.85 lbs
Big Bass #2 - Ron & Joe - 3.70 lbs

We were able to end the Thursday night campaign which had us placing 2nd in the TOY standings on a solid note with one last in the money finish. As many readers know my preference is to fish in Games lake but that plan had not been working at all this year. The previous week we decided to abandon Games and Spend our time in Norway. We were able to produce a decent limit but at the end of the night we ended up culling all those fish out on a quick trip to Games. For the TOC there was no question that we would spend most of our time in Games. We were able to catch a pretty quick limit fishing deep with crankbaits and jigs but the fish were small and after awhile it slowed way down. We ended up running around a little bit but I knew we had to be back on our prime deep stuff at the end of the night. That is when my dad caught the big fish of the night on a Rapala DT 16 with about 20 minutes to go.

With the TOC's complete the summer West Central Bass League season is now over. The fishing is far from over though as the West Central Fall Bass League starts on September 10th and runs until the end of October. Since we run out of daylight on weeknights the Fall League is held every Saturday. This allows us to fish for 5 hours instead of just 3 which I enjoy because it gives a little more time to figure things out. Last year the fall fishing was extremely tough for the most part. Hopefully it will be a lot better this year!

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