Le Homme Dieu Chain – Bassmasters Weekend Series Tournament #1 – June 3rd, 2007 | Rich Lindgren's Bass Fishing & Bassin' Blog

Due to time constrains, I am going to combo my practice in with the tournament blog entry……

I got on the lake around 6:30pm Friday night and started checking some shallow areas that have produced for me in the past, some shallow cabbage, reeds & docks on Le Homme Dieu. I probably caught 10-15 fish, mostly on a white & chart chatterbait and a tx rigged Sweet Beaver. Most of them were small and barely keepers. I did have one good bite under a dock that felt heavy, I pulled on the fish and did not set. It was good just to get out and do a little bass fishing on Friday night, more serious practice tomorrow.

I got out around 7:30am Saturday morning, started out fishing a deep spot in LHD that I milked during last year’s event, and only caught a few shorts. I then hopped around to a few other deep spots and caught some keepers but nothing of much quality. So then I went to check some areas in Carlos that I had never fished before. I found some quality fish cruising the inside of the reeds and around the docks. Started to feel a bit better about things. I then checked an inside weedline in Little Darling and caught several fish and one nice one. I then check some shallow areas in Darling with little luck. I then ran a few areas in LHD on the way back to the access and it was time to load the boat for the meeting.

At the meeting I drew boat #32 and met my partner (Jerry from Rochester). We took off a few minutes after 7am and I had my first deep spot to myself, only caught small keepers in practice, but the spot has good potential. I tried my Vixen to start off, because they were crushing it the day before, but not even a swirl. I then switched to my Parrot DT6 which has been a staple for me on this lake. I loaded up on a good fish and lost it about 10 ft from the boat, it was a solid 2lb fish. My partner quickly caught a limit on a white/shad colored bomber crank. I then caught a small keeper on my DT6, then I switched to my favorite 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten jig and started fishing the break in 6-10ft and caught 3 keepers pretty quick, only one of them was decent.

We then hit the shallow area in Carlos and it was quite different, not much activity. I caught one small keeper on a texas rigged Sweet Beaver to fill my pathetic limit. I then fished up a little farther to where some wind was coming in on some docks and made two nice culls to start approaching a level of respectability. I ran some more docks that had similar wind in Carlos, but did not get any more keepers.

I then decided to try my inside weedline in Little Darling, several short fish, nothing that could help. I then ran some docks in Darling that had been good in the past but did not prefish this year. The first dock, I caught a fish around 2lbs and culled out my last squeaker. Felt good. I continued to run docks, switching between a weightless ring fry, texas rig beaver and TT Jig. Just as I broke off on a fish on my beaver, I looked to the left and saw a nice bass cruising the sand. So I quickly picked up my jig and pitched to it. It started swimming back towards the dock that we had just fished, so I swung the boat around and started following the bass & pitching it front of it. I continued to follow it under another dock out the other side until it positioned itself under a willow tree. Made one nice skip under there with my jig and she inhaled it, solid 3lb plus fish, that really helped. Made a few more culls, probably 1/2oz at a time. Then ran a few docks in Little Darling, one more small cull.

Fished a few docks near Bugaboo Bay and the day was over at 3:15pm. It was a funny bite through out the day, sometimes the fish would bite and I would miss them & I would pitch in under there 3 or 4 times before they would eat and I would get a hook into them. They also for the most part were positioned around really bad looking structure, it was little jet ski lifts and shallow isolated docks that held most of the fish. We really had to work over each dock to get the fish out of them.

My total weight ended up being 10.95 and was good for 13th out of 65, not too bad. Got a check and I am in the hunt for the top 8 for the year. All my keepers came on the Watermelon / Green Pumpkin Sweet Beaver texas rigged with 1/8oz. Tru-Tungsten sinker, force bead & smart peg or my 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten jig.

Well this will be the last post for about two weeks as I leave for Italy tomorrow. Should come back and preview my two club tournaments on Clearwater & Chisago, which I will not have time to prefish for either. On another note, my house sold, buyer wanted a quick close, so my boat maybe homeless for a couple months