West Central Bassmasters State Qualifier - Green Lake

I haven't gotten around to writing about this one for a few days. The tournament was held Saturday June 28th on Green Lake. It was the final state qualifier for our club. I ended up finishing in 4th place on the day with 14.20 lbs for my 5 fish. That put me in 2nd place for the year, so I qualified for the state tournament in September. I really wanted to be 1st place since that is the guaranteed boater spot but 2nd is still not too bad. My dad also qualified for the state tournament in 5th place. The winning weight on the day was 14.88 lbs with 2nd being 14.76 lbs. The conditions were really bad with high winds and several periods of rain but those weights are still pretty low. Especially considering we are all locals with extensive time on the lake. I guess it's just fishing tough right now.

The day before the tournament we went out and marked as many good bed fish as we good find. Most were small but there were still a few good ones around. Unfortunately with the weather we couldn't really fish for all of them since the waves were just too big in some spots. A few other ones had left the bed since we found them but there were still a few that we ended up catching in the tournament. I caught 3 off beds that were all between 2 3/4 lbs and 3 lbs. They all came on a white Strike King KVD tube. I usually like using green pumpkin but they sure seemed to like the white a lot better that day. My other fish came on a spinnerbait and just casting a tube to a shallow rocky area. My dad had a few bed fish as well and he also caught one in 25 feet of water on a dropshot. That was the only keeper out deep in our boat.

I'm not going to do a full practice report like I have for the other Big Bass Bonanza tournaments since the practices for each event kind of ran into each other. I think we have spent 7 of the last 9 days out on Green. If anything Monday and Tuesday have been even worse than Saturday. I just can't seem to figure much out. Our deep bite seems almost totally dead and the shallow fish are getting done and moving out but they aren't there yet. Finding fish in the mid depth zone has been a chore too. There have been a few encouraging signs that our usually summer pattern is starting to happen but its been spotty. Even though I haven't caught a lot of fish I've seen enough fish following to win the tournament I think. Now we just have to figure out a way to turn those followers into biters and we should be ok. For the tournament we will probably fish shallow, deep, and in between, and just let whatever is working best that day dictate what we do. We have enough spots of each type that we should be able to move around a bit unless the winds are just too much. I just hope it stays hot and it gets that summer pattern going by Sunday. I'll report back after the tournament.

Kandi Lakes Bass League - Lake Johanna

We started the Thursday standings league with 9 teams but unfortunately a team had to drop out so we will be at 8 teams the rest of the year. That means we will change from paying 3 places to paying only 2 spots each Thursday night. That wasn't good for my dad and I last night since we finished in 3rd place with 9.76 lbs. 1st place had a little over 13 lbs for their 3 fish and 2nd had 10.76 lbs. The big fish for the night was 4.67 lbs which is also the big bass for the year so far. As far as the standings points go after 3 nights the leaders have 25 points and my dad and I are in 2nd with 23 points.

The fishing was pretty good last night especially compared to Wednesday night. We caught probably 30 or more bass but most were in the 2 1/2 lb range. We only managed to catch 3 fish over 3 lbs and thats what we weighed in. As far as the fishing it's no secret. Theres pretty much one thing to fish on Johanna and thats reeds. One key for us last night though was to fish little pockets inside the reed beds instead of just the outside edge. All of our weigh fish came from back inside the reeds like that. We used watermelon Strike King Craw Tubes and black/blue Picasso jigs for all our fish.

Kandi Lakes Bass League - Lake Andrew

We had another good turnout for Wednesday night league with 16 boats showing up to fish Lake Andrew. With 16 boats 4 places are paid. 1st place had 8.33 lbs, 2nd place had 6.98 lbs, 3rd place had 6.45 lbs, and my dad and I were 4th with 6.44 lbs. One hundredth of a pound difference. I guess thats just how it goes sometimes. Since one of the boats ahead of us did not enter the side pot we also took 3rd place in that for a little additional money. The big bass for the night was 3.12 lbs. That team also had another bass over 3 lbs, which were the only 3 pounders caught on the night. That was obviously the winning bag.

While the weights were typical for Lake Andrew the past few years I felt the fishing was anything but typical. There usually aren't any big bags weighed in on the lake but at least there are a lot of fish to be caught. That was not the case last night. In fact my dad and I didn't have a keeper in the boat until 8:10 pm. We went over 2 hours without catching a thing and with a 9 pm check in time there was very little time left to make something happen. We mostly fished deep because there are a lot of good weed line spots out there but we hit a bunch of them and came up empty on all of them. We even tried fishing shallow weeds and docks too with no success. The first keeper did end up coming from an inside corner of a deep weed line but there were no more fish so we ran up to the inlet and threw weightless Lake Fork Ring Fries and quickly put a limit in the boat. The fish had started to turn on a little bit I think. Our limit didn't weigh much though and after catching a few up in the bay the fish kept getting smaller and smaller. With about 5 minutes to go I said lets run to the spot where we caught our first keeper. We didn't have much time but as soon as we got there I caught one. Then my dad caught one. We ended up catching 6 or 7 fish in that last 5 minutes and culled out all of our other fish. For whatever reason those fish just turned on right at the last minute. I'm sure glad we made that move because otherwise we wouldn't have been in the money at all. I just wished I gave ourselves 10 minutes instead of just 5. I think we could have made a run at 2nd place anyway. All those fish came on a watermelon Picasso jig tipped with a Lake Fork Pig Claw.

Big Bass Bonanza - Lake Minnewaska

Well the Big Bass Bonanza on Lake Minnewaska was another disappointing tournament for us this year. We just can't seem to get it going yet but hopefully with the warmer weather we are having that will turn around soon. We ended up I believe in 23rd place out of 49 boats with 8 fish for 20.53 lbs. The winning weight was around 24 1/2 lbs. Based on our practice 20 lbs was a realistic day for us but if everything went perfect we could have been close to 24 lbs but obviously that didn't happen. We just didn't get any big bites or even solid bites at all. Our biggest fish was only a little over 3 lbs and all the rest were just 2 1/2 pounders. 7 of our fish were largemouths and 1 was a smallie. We just couldn't make any of our usual big smallmouth spots work for us.

Like I said in my practice report we found one area that seemed to have a group of quality fish so we started there. It was a weedline in about 10 feet of water, but the funny part was it wasn't good weeds at all, just stringy crap but the fish seemed to be using it. That was practice though and in the tournament we didn't catch anything. Next we tried another similar spot with no luck. After an hour we had no fish out deeper so we went to a reed patch and caught 6 fish in less than an hour on Strike King Flippin tubes and Wild Thangs. After that we pretty much bounced around to different areas the rest of the day. We probably hit 25 different spots and ended up catching a keeper fish here and there. Our spots were a wide range of things. We fished reeds, docks, shallow rock and gravel flats, shallow weed beds and deeper weed beds out to about 12 feet. All of our weigh fish came on various Strike King tube baits and Picasso Jigs tipped with Lake Fork Pig Claws.

Our next Big Bass Bonanza tournament is in 2 weeks on Green Lake. Hopefully we can turn it around since it is our home lake. We are going to be out there a lot too since our final West Central Bassmasters state qualifier tournament is there this coming weekend. We will probably be on Green Lake pretty much every day the next week and a half. Even though I know a ton of spots out there it can't hurt to fish it more. There is just so much to learn out there and that makes it fun.

KLBL - Nest Lake

I haven't been on Nest Lake since our West Central Bassmasters event several weeks ago. The fishing was awesome then but last night it was downright tough for us and several other teams. The water is a lot dirtier now and the weedgrowth is really exploding. There were still some nice fish brought in though. The winning weight was 12.46 lbs for 3 fish, 2nd was my dad and I with 9.80 lbs and 3rd was 8.72 lbs. The big fish was a 4.56 lb largemouth.

Like I said earlier the fishing was extremely tough for us. We decided to start on a spot we usually don't start on but has been very good to us the past few years. Unfortunately when we got there a boat was anchored crappie fishing directly on top of our waypoint. We fished around the general area for awhile but it wasn't happening. Then we moved to a deep spot that usually holds some really nice largemouth but we struck out again. Now I was starting to get a little worried. We then ran to a stretch of docks just to fill our limit. We ended up catching 3 pretty quickly on Bleeding bait tubes and Senkos but we only had 5 1/2 lbs at the most. After that we hit a few more areas that we like but couldn't get anything going. We noticed that the crappie fisherman was gone so we headed back to our starting spot and finally caught a nice smallmouth. I actually got my dropshot rig hung in a rock and when I finally got it to pop free I thought I was hung up again right away but it was a fish! I think it was down there looking at that violent shaking action and got triggered to bite. It seems like smallies do that a lot. We kept working the area with dropshots rigged with Lake Fork twitch worms and caught 2 more good smallies in the next 15 minutes and that was it for our fish catching. We hit some more areas but got nothing. We ended up catching only 3 nice fish all night in about a 20 minute period so getting 2nd place was a very pleasant surprise.

KLBL - Long Lake

We had our biggest turnout of the year on Long Lake tonight with 20 teams showing up. Most of the boats ended up weighing in their 3 fish but for the most part it sounded like the fishing was pretty tough. Even though it was kind of tough there were still a lot of big weights. I think 7 of the 20 teams weighed in over 10 lbs for their 3 fish. 1st had 12.48 lbs, 2nd had 12.20 lbs. 3rd had 11.98 lbs and 4th had 11.27 lbs. The big fish was 5.19 lbs.

Our night was really tough. We started on the small reed island and my dad caught about a 3 pounder almost right away. After that we didn't catch another fish for over an hour. I finally put a small keeper in the boat off pig farmers point but then it got slow again for us. We ran all over the place trying different things but nothing was really working. We then headed back to the south side and I started throwing a Spro Bronze Eye frog and almost right away had a blow up but the fish missed the bait. I quickly fired my frog back in there and it smashed it that time. It ended up being our biggest fish at 4.11 lbs. So now we finally had our limit and less then 5 minutes later my dad culled up with a 3 pounder on a Lake Fork Ring Fry. That was it for our night. We had 4 bites in 3 hours. Pretty slow. We ended up with 10.61 lbs which was good for 6th place and out of the money. However, 2 of the top 4 teams did not enter the optional sidepot so we did end up 4th place in the sidepot for a few bucks. Thanks guys for not entering!

Big Bass Bonanza Practice - Lake Minnewaska

It's Tuesday so today was the last day to practice for the BBB next Sunday. One word can be used to describe our practice period on Lake Minnewaska: FRUSTRATING! I won't go into too much detail since theres still a few days before the tournament but I can say a few things. First of all, we have several spots that we have caught good smallmouths on in the past but we cannot get bit on any of them. Our tournaments the past several years have been later in the summer but these are spots I thought the fish used year round. I guess one way to look at it though is that last year we never got bit on those smallmouth spots in practice either and we ended up catching several nice ones during the tournament. We actually should have won if it weren't for 2 giants that got off halfway to the boat. I hope those fish show up again this year.

Another problem with our practice is we couldn't find a big bite at all. Our biggest fish have been about 3 1/2 lbs. We've caught quite a few 2 1/2 lb to 3 1/2 lb fish but nothing bigger. If we're going to win this thing we are going to need several fish in that 4+ lb range. I think a limit of 3 lb to 3 1/2 lb fish will do very well in this tournament but the winner is going to have several fish over 4 lbs as well.

The worst part of practice was we caught fish everywhere. I know that sounds good right, but the problem is for us the fish seemed really scattered. I think the majority of the fish are just coming off the spawn and don't seem to be grouped up at all. We caught fish in 1 foot of water out to 20 feet of water and almost every depth in between. It also seemed like whenever we caught 1 good one there were no other fish with it or only little ones around. Finding a group of quality 2 1/2 lb to 3 1/2 lb fish was almost impossible. I think we may have one spot with a group like that but we didn't fish it real hard so we will have to wait until tournament day to be sure.

I know I've had pretty much only bad things to say but in reality we did pretty good for a practice on this lake. Usually our practices on Minnewaska are terrible and this time we at least caught a lot of pretty nice fish. So with all that in mind I think we have a tentative plan but it might change. Nothing ever stays the same in fishing anyway. We are probably going to start on that one group of fish and hit it as hard as we can. We'll keep fishing that as long as it kicks out nice fish. After that it's going to be KVD style, running and gunning all over the lake. We'll hit all the spots we caught a good fish in practice and a bunch of our old spots as well. We may end up hitting as many as 25-30 spots in the day. I don't know how other people will be fishing but for us this seems like the best way to box a limit of those 3 lb bass. Hopefully it will work out come Sunday.