Last Weekend Club Tournament Recaps

This past weekend, I had two Gopher Bassmasters club tournaments on Big & LIttle Green Lakes on Saturday, and Sunday we fished the Chisago/Lindstrom chain. I was able to briefly practice the weekend before on Green.

My partner Art & I started in a little shallow water pocket that had lots of pads, wood & other grass. We were both able to get a limit from this area by a little after 8am. I caught 2 of my better sized fish on a frog and on Kizew Gill Super K swim jig, the rest of the limit was filled with a tube & a weightless Green Pumpkin Ring Fry. Art caught all 5 of his fish on a 8″ Green Pumpkin Fork Worm on a 1/8oz texas rig. The rest of the day, we pecked around docks, bluegill beds and other shallow cover, where I was able to cull 3 times, twice on the Ring Fry and once on a 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten Jig. My final weight was 14.32lbs with a big fish of 3.82lbs. It was good enough for 2nd place. Art had around 7lbs and that put him in 6th out of the 28 anglers. Final standings here.

Green Lake Largemouth

Sunday brought Chisago & Lindstrom, which is an excellent bass fishery. Because of catch & release regulations, this tournament would be a paper/measurement tournament. My partner Steve had a chance to briefly practice, we quickly discovered the two areas he found were places I had previously fished and intended to fish during the tournament. After catching a few small keepers on our first weedline in Chisago, we moved and the 2nd spot produced nothing. We decided to try a shallow stretch where I had caught several of my bigger fish 2 years ago in a club tournament. I was able to quickly get a limit and Steve got two more fish all on Ring Fry’s and other soft plastics; but i was only able to get one good fish at 17″. We jumped across the bay to look for more of the same, I saw one nice fish cruising and saw another on a bed. I caught that fish which was almost 16″ pretty quickly on a drop shot.

Steve and I made a decision to go deep in hopes of finding some bigger fish, that is where we went wrong. We never got on anything substantial, we both struggled to get one more keeper each. Although the tourney was won deep, with 20.1lbs, we could not locate the fish in the short time of the tournament afternoon. Turns out we should have stayed shallow, as most of the rest of the field recorded very solid catches 15-18lbs doing what we did early. My final weight was 12.84lbs, which is good on many lakes, is not good on Chisago, finished 11th. It bothers me that i left a shallow bite and missed out on it, that is usually my deal. Oh well, lesson learned. It’s good to learn these lessons in club tournaments, instead of money tournaments