Well its that time of year again, its late September/Early October, time for the 3rd Annual Gopher Bassmasters Fall Classic.  This tournament is different then the usual club tournament, for a few reasons:
Its our only team tournament, the lake is drawn last minute, so no prefishing.  We also try to pick lakes with big fish potential.  The first two years, we fished Minnetonka & Medicine lake, neither one produced giant bags like we had hoped when we started the Fall Classic idea.  Coon Lake was the lake selected from the proverbial hat for 2007.  On a positive note, the Fall Classic has been good to me, as my team has won the first two and I had ideas in my winning the 3rd as Coon Lake is one of my favorites lakes in MN.

Its been a few years since I have fished Coon Lake, but I have had my share of success there.  I figured we could run and gun until we got on a pattern and I knew the lake well enough to keep it going from there.  I drew Ron Smith, he lives close to the lake, so we met at the landing.  We were boat #7 out of 9, we launched on the East side of the lake and we decided to start on the east side.  We found out early on that Golden Hook Bassmasters was having club tournament as well.

We started on a cattail point that has been historically good, not a tap, we then tried the adjacent reeds, hauled water there as well.  We then hopped to a cattail island where I got a big bite and broke my jig off, I had not retied from the river, not a good move.  We worked a few other areas with cattails, weed clumps and docks.  I ended up getting bit off twice and losing one small keeper that got me wrapped on some pads.  Things were tough, but Ron & I agreed if we stayed with it as the water warmed we thought the bite would get going.

Soon enough Ron scored a 12″ keeper on a tx-rigged Sweet Beaver.  I then caught two nice fish on consecutive docks, on a 1/2oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten Jig, one was close to 4lbs.  Both of these docks had a stiff breeze blowing on them, so we went in search of more windy docks.  I soon caught our 4th keeper swimming my jig around weed clumps between docks and then Ron got our 5th fish on a jig under a boat.  It felt good to get 5, now we could relax and fish for bigger bites.  We spent a little more time on the East side, couple small bites, but no fish in the boat.  At noon we headed for the West side of the lake.

We decided to stick with the docks.  One of my favorite stretches of docks had a fair amount of wind blowing on them, so we went there first.  There were boats already fishing these docks and others but we decided to fish them anyways.  I decided to change to a 3/8oz jig and dipped the pinchers of my chunk in chartreuse dye when we started here, hoping to give these fish a little different look. We caught 4 fish on about 12-15 docks right behind another boat, one was about 3lbs and another one around 4lbs were the highlights.  My hats off to Ron, as he had a sweet assist on that 3lb fish as it wrapped me good on a dock and he got his hands on it to land it.  At this point, I felt we had a decent chance of being in the hunt for this tournament, as we culled our two smaller fish on that stretch, now we had 2 big fish and 3 solid fish.  We ran across to some calm docks that are historically good, but there were boats all over them, so we fished a short stretch of windy docks on the other side.  I caught one close to 4lbs on a jig and Ron caught good keeper on a brushhog there.  Things were looking good.

Seems most of the boats had left on the docks we had just looked at, so we decided to see if they left us any.  On the 3rd and 4th docks I caught a 4.4lb and another one close to 4lbs on the 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Jig.  That did it, we had 5 really nice fish in the well.  Another boat swung in front of use, so we motored over near the landing and flipped some milfoil mats.  On about my 3rd flip with a watermelon chigger craw with 1oz red Tru-Tungsten Flipping weight I muscled a nice 2.5lb bass in the boat, he did not help but was fun!

We weighed in 2nd to last, there were several 10lb limits and 4.2lb bass weighed ahead of us.  Ron & I weighed 5 fish for 19.3lbs and a 4.4lb big fish.  What a way to end the club season and finally some fish that represent what the Fall Classic is supposed to be all about.  That big bag was good enough for first place and big bass.  It also makes back to back to back in the Fall Classic  

On a gear note, all those fish were caught on a 7′ Crucial MH Baitcasting rod, paired with a Shimano Castaic SF spooled with 20lb Fluorocarbon.  It felt good to pick up one of my favorite sticks and fish it all day long, put my head down and keep my favorite jig in the water.

Also, welcome email subscriber #46 to the Bassin’ Blog!!!!   Look forward to your comments.