Monday morning greeted us with very light winds and a calm LIttle and Big Bay de Nocs to run around on.  We spent just a few minutes checking some pencil reeds between Escanaba and Gladstone, not even a bite.  It was time to check the fish in Big Bay de Noc that we found late Sunday.  When we got there it did not take long for me to catch a beautiful 4lbs smallmouth on a Tru-Tungsten Depth Shad.  Tim ended up catching a 4 and 5lb bass on small spinnerbait, then we got the heck out of there, 3 quick fish for 14lbs and we saw plenty more there.

We spent the rest of the day covering water looking for more of the same type structure and cover, we did best on spinnerbaits, jerkbaits and swimbaits.  I alternated between a 13/16oz Golden Shiner Secret Weapon Lures spinnerbait, Ima Flit in Chartreuse Shad, 6″ BassTrix in BlueBack Herring and the best bait for me was the 5″ Optimum Baby Line Thru Swimbait in Ayu.  Both Tim and I would have had around 20lbs for our best 5 and found several stretches with lots of fish.

Nice Baby LIne Thru Swimbait Smallie!

Tuesday, I decided because of the short day and the big water, I needed to find some fish closer to Escanaba.  I took one of our Jr. anglers out to help find fish for me and them.  I caught 2 nice keepers on my Ima Flit in the morning on a Little Bay rock shoal.  We then tried the east side from Black Bottoms down towards Peninsula Point with very little success.  From there we ran down to Ford River area, we found several shallow rock, weed and sand areas holding quality keeper fish, most of those fish fell for 4″ Green Pumpkin Mizmo tubes, we each would have had a decent limit on Tuesday afternoon.

Swimbait does not seem so big now…..

Now it was time to get in, get the boat ready and head to the pairings meeting.  Based on the last 2 days of practice, I was pretty excited about what the tournament may bring….

Rich
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