This past Sunday fished the Gopher Fall Classic, it has been a fun tournament the past few years. It is a random draw team tourney. It also is always close to home and mystery draw with no practice, usually makes for an exciting event. Last year, my partner Dennis & I had a banner day weighing 6 fish for 29lbs. Watch a quick video of our 29lb bag!
This year, I drew Paul Coffey, neither of us had been on this West Metro Lake before, but had heard a few good things, so we were excited. We started the day by side scanning an area we thought looked right from map and looking at the shore. We quickly found a patch of rocks. After about 15 minutes, I loaded up on a nice 3.75lb fish on a Carolina Rigged Game Hawg. We tried the spot a bit longer, but decided to head shallow. With the lake not being huge, we wanted to the first to some of the shallow fish before others got the idea as well.
I doubled up on a good fish on the first dock but came unbuttoned. We kept at it and it did not take long to fill our 6 fish limit with 2-3lb fish. I was also fishing a buzzbait and a Phenix vibrating jig over the grass. I picked up our 7th fish on the Phenix jig and it was easily over 4lbs. We continued to hunt & peck along shallow cover, picking up a few upgrades here and there. One of the last docks we hit, Paul nailed another 4lbr on a ring fry.
We then headed back to our deep spot, thinking the warming air and sun would position the fish out there. Paul got a 3.5 & a 4.5lbr on a football jig to end our day.
Our total ended up being 23.98lbs for 6 fish and our big fish was only 4.49lbs, so we got to 24lbs the old fashion way, all 4lbrs. We caught around 25 keepers for the day. I hope to fish the Simply Fishing Marine tournament this Saturday as well.
Oh yeah, I think the Switch has Flipped!