Last weekend Josh Douglas & I fished the second event in the North American Bass Circuit series on the Madison Chain. We both towed our boats across Wisconsin on Thursday and practiced separate halves of the chain. I felt like I spent more time eliminating water then anything, but thankfully Josh was developing a solid flipping pattern on Monona.
I only caught one keeper in practice, saw a few more and pulled on some better bites, but Josh was pulling on tons of bites and getting quality when he did lean back on one. Check his report for the details.
We got to our best stretch and had it to ourselves, less wind and sun then in practice, but we gave it a go and got a few bites. The bites were fairly steady throughout the day, but they never materialized into fish in the box. Most results in torn baits with missing appendages or short fish. It was honestly baffling to have less then a 10% hook up rate even letting the fish swim off with your bait.
We only managed 3 fish for 7lbs and change, in retrospect, we probably should have tried finessing them off the edges, but the practice was so strong just the afternoon before and the bites were still there. The only way to really deal with these two sub-par tourneys is to take a lesson and move on.
So this weekend, bring on the Pan-O-Prog bass tournament on Lake Marion, aiming to make this my slump buster! Since I do not have anything pic worthy from Madison Chain, we will end with a pic of nice 3.5lb bass I got in practice from Lake Marion for the Prog.
