So yesterday I fished the Pan-O-Prog tournament on Lake Marion for the 4th year in a row.  The 3rd time with Ryan Brant as my partner.  We took 3rd the previous two years and really had our sight on trying to win it this year.  Its hard to have a real solid game plan, because with 40 boats on this little lake, boat draw can really dictate how you start your tournament day.

I stepped up and drew boat #38 out of the bag, so that means we had to kind of wait and see what would be left for us to start on.  Most of our good areas were already covered up, so we made a quick 15 minute pass in a shallow area and I got one decent keeper on a 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten Jig.  We started down the lake and saw an opening on one of our deep weedlines.  I quickly boated another small keeper on the jig and lost another one that was pretty small as well.  I did not feel bad about losing that one, because we would need to get rid of him anyways.  We tried two more deep areas, Ryan got two more small keepers and a pike.

We then started running our shallow water and Ryan put a solid 2lb bass in the boat on a Smallie Beaver.  The next area, I boated our first 3lb class fish on a baby brushhog.  That was also our 6th fish, but really only one fish of the size you need to contend for the win on this lake.  The next shallow area produced another 3lb bass on the jig, seemed like we were getting some traction.  We then fished a mid-depth grass point and I got one close to 4lb on the texas rigged baby brushhog.  Now we had 3 really nice fish, 1 decent fish and 2 that we needed to cull.

We fished hard the rest of the day, culled twice, lost two good fish in shallow cover, but that does happen.  When you fish heavy cover, some will fish will elude you.  In the long run, we still had one really small fish and that hurts in this tournament.  Our best 6 fish weighed 16lbs even, I believe our big fish was 3.77lbs.  We ended up 8th, which we felt was pretty fortunate to even finish that high.  It ended up being the last money spot.  It was a little tougher then most years, some years 16lbs will not even get a check.  All the fish we caught either came on Tru-Tungsten jigs or Small creature bait Texas Rigs with Tru-Tungsten sinkers. 

Time to start preparing for this Saturday’s 2nd MN Bassmaster Weekend Series event on the Whitefish Chain north of Brainerd, MN.  Last year, I was on some really great fish that eluded me in the tournament, so I aim to track down this good fish this year and have a solid finish to move up in the Weekend Series standing, as I am in 8th right now.  I will be prefishing on Friday and fishing the tournament on Sunday.

Tight Lines,
Rich
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