We had our first Jr Gopher Bassmaster Club event on O’dowd in Shakopee this past Sunday.  I was available to be a boat captain, and I always like to fish these when I can.  This tournament, we had one adult club member acting as captain and a jr. angler to form teams.  It was a shared 5 bass limit, but the catch was, that the adult angler could only weigh a maximum of 2 bass.  I drew Cody Sieben who is a very accomplished youth bass angler, he has 2 state titles to his credit along with many other wins and high finishes.

I had been on the lake once before earlier this spring, so we started near one of the island working topwater, I started with a Vixen and Cody a buzz frog.  Nothing happening, we try some adjacent vegetation and pads, one little dink on a ring fry.  We then moved to a small section of pads and I catch a solid 2lb fish on a floating frog and Cody gets a good one keeper on a green pumpkin jig.  We continue working shallow vegetation, trees, & docks.  Caught a couple shorts and missed a few decent bites.  We thought about trying some deeper weed edges, but being unfamiliar with the lake, we decided to stick with the frog.

Not long after we went to the other side of the lake and the frog bite started to pick up.  Cody & I each caught small keepers on frogs and then I jacked a very nice bass to cull out my smaller keeper.  I then had Cody step to the front of the boat and I ran the trolling motor while standing behind him.  It did not do me much good to pick of fish in front of him, because he still needed that 3rd fish.  So picked up my flipping stick and dropped a craw into the milfoil pockets while he worked the frog.  With about 15 minutes to go, Cody slammed the frog into a really nice bass and after a good fight he boated a 3lb plus fish.  We had time for a few more casts and we headed to the landing.

Our 5 fish total was 11.4lbs, which was 1.5lbs better then the next team.  My big fish was 3.6lbs and Cody’s weighed 3.2lbs.  Not too bad considering one of Cody’s was just a squeaker and would not have weighed a pound.  Had a good day, most of the kids caught fish.  Can’t wait to do it again!!!!

Rich
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