Wood & Trade Practice Day

Unlike previous years, I only made it to WI to practice one day for my first two club tournaments, so Sport & I split are day between the lakes. We spent about the first 5 hours on Trade & less then 2 hours on Wood. We got out around 8am on to Trade. We jumped around and fished a bunch of different areas in both Big & Little Trade lakes. Sport struck quickly with his new hand poured stick bait (senko) that he poured at home this winter while the rest of us were at the office

I went on to catch several fish in a row before Sport responded with another fish. The water temp was around 60 when we started the day and many smaller bays had much warmer water. In total between the two lakes, I caught 16 bass, 5 keepers and Sport caught 3 keepers total. He mentioned something about quality over quantity. The majority of my fish came on a baby ring fry, pic below.
I rigged it weightless with just a bead or two in front held in place with a bobber stop. I fished this on a spinning rod with 10lb flourocarbon. The beads add just a touch of weight for casting and a little extra flash and clicking noise. The other two baits that produced best were a small single colorago Secret Weapon Spinnerbait & a XCalibur xr50 Lipless crank in a craw pattern.

Couple things to note here, I did not employ a trailer hook on my spinnerbait while prefishing, but I will surely have one on during tournaments this weekend, and the red sure-set hook on the lipless crank seemed to help the fish take the bait well. Sport caught his two other fish on a jig & a regular size ring fry.

All our fish on both lakes came in water less then 6ft. We saw, John Atkins, Ron Smith & the Brant boys all over at Wood in the afternoon. Here is a picture of Atkins big practice fish at Wood Lake.
I could be mistaken, but it looks like a swimbait hanging next to his windshield on the left side of the picture…… Also, I think Ron helped John pulled an embedded hook out of his thumb that morning