MN BASS Federation Nation Tournament of Champions – Pokegama | Rich Lindgren's Bass Fishing & Bassin' Blog

I got back into Grand Rapids right before the pairings meeting after taking two days to work and skipping a day of practice. Gopher Bassmasters, my club, was the host club this year and ran our annual raffle and raised about $4,300 for local 2nd Harvest Food Bank & 4h-Club. My drew boat 44, my partner was Nick Madison from Golden Hook for day 1. We were greeted by a 3 hour fog delay on day 1.

The first area we hit was a stretch of docks, it yielded one 12″ fish for me and a nice 2lb fish for Nick out of a patch of reeds. We then hit two weedline areas and I caught a couple more small largemouth. I then hit a few other docks, where i was able to get a nice 3lb largemouth and then another good keeper on weightless ring frys. It was finally good to get a couple good fish in the box.

The next area was rock and weed area with a good drop off. After a few casts I hooked and landed a big smallie on a Baby Fork Creature. That did not yield any more bites, so I tried a 5″ Gulp Leech on a drop shot, on my first cast I caught a 3lb smallmouth. I was able to catch another nice smallie and Nick caught a 4lb smallmouth on a leech i hooked him up with. The bite quite, so we went to try some of Nick’s water.

The long and short of it, we tried some of his water and mine and caught no more fish that we could use. My total bag ended up being 15.34lbs anchored by my first smallie at 4.25lbs. That put me in 3rd place after day 1. I was very happy with the day, but a little irritated I could not get a cull in the last 2 hours of the tournament.

4.25 Smallmouth on left

Day 2 my partner was in 11th place coming into the day. To make a long story short, we both only managed 4 small fish each, fishing both our best water all day. We simply just did not get the bites. I am still scratching my head to what happened, the bite seemed so tough for us, yet other people caught plenty of fish. My 4 fish weight a little over 6lbs and I slid back to 28th place, well out of the top 12 that was my main goal. All i needed was 9lbs. I think this is the first time i ever caught less then 10lbs on this lake.