What a difference a day can make!!!  Crystal Lake was a bass bonanza and Marion was tougher than I have ever seen it.  The day started with light winds and bright blue skies.  After making about 10 casts with my carolina rigged Baby Brush Hog on my #1 deep hard bottom spot with a tap, I knew it was going to be a tough day.  It ended up being tougher than I could imagine.  I shortly there after lost a Carolina Rig & a Jig Worm to some northerns.  I covered the area with a DT6 as well, nothing.

With no additional action, we moved to another area with a nice inside turn on a weedline.  After a few minutes with nothing, I moved up on to the flat and threw a bluegill colored SWL Spinnerbait and brown/purple Swim Jig with no action.  My partner Dave tried a Bluegill Swim Blade with no takers.  We moved back out to the turn and I got a good bite, the rod loaded up nice and somehow the fish just came off.  It felt very good, probably a bass, could have been a pike.  I then tried a drop shot in the turn and caught a 10″ bass.  I started to follow the weedline down and pulled a nice 2lb fish out of a coontail clump on a texas rigged Fork Special Baby Ring Fry.  I dropped a buoy as I landed the fish.  We seined this area for about 15 minutes with no additional bites.  We worked this weedline all the way to the original starting area, caught one dink on a Parrot DT6.  I start working my starting area with a drop shot and quickly lose it to a pike.  I then picked up a another nice keeper on a Red Shad Yum Ribbontail Jig Worm and then a few casts later a northern ate that as well.  We continued working this area.  I tried a 4″ chompers worm, drop shot 3″ Fluke, 5″ Reaction Innovations Flirt Worm , mojo, and just about everything else with no bites.

I headed to the East side of the main lake to try some docks, fished about 15 docks without a tap.  I then dragged a carolina rig across a hard to soft bottom transition area, nothing!  I then worked a weed point and turn in the same area with no bites, my partner said he got slammed on his senko, but came up empty.  We then headed into a shallow area with weedy docks, pads and weed mats.  I caught a short fish under a dock, a couple more shorts out of the weed hole.  I could see some keeper fish cruising up in the sand, but could not get any cooperation at all.  We headed back out to my #1 spot hoping for the fish to turn on and tried a variety of lures without any bites again.  We hopped around to a few other weedlines and got no more fish and time ran out.  What a brutal day of fishing.   I think it has been about 6 years since I did not catch my limit in a MN tournament, ouch!  Ryan in our club, was the only guy to get his limit, 10.1lbs fishing shallow around bluegill beds with a Ring Fry.  One one guy had 4 fish and everyone else had between 0 and 2 fish, my total was 2 fish for 4.1 and that landed me in 6th out of 16 anglers.  I think prior knowledge of the lake hurt me, because I kept thinking those deep fish would bite.  Had I had no previous experience, I would have most likely junked fish my way around the visible areas and done better.

See Tourney Results

Rich
www.richlindgren.com
basstournament.blogspot.com

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