This year I did not have time to practice for my first club tournaments nor did I have my gear prepared like I would have like to. None the less I was excited to get out and do some open water bass fishing. I had fished Bone previously about 4 years ago and I had done well in that tournament, so my plan was to fish the memories to start and then adapt from there. Our club had decided to fish the tournament as a 4 fish limit with no culling to follow WI state rules. Also my partner had to leave at 11:30am to go to his college graduation.
7am came & my partner Corey Brant & I were boat # 5 out of 11. I was pretty sure if we could get into the boat canal on the north end of the lake, we could get some early bites in there. One of the other first 4 boats also went there, so we let them get in there a ways and then fished behind them. Corey & I each got two keepers and several short fish. I caught my two fish on a green pumpkin baby ring fry with a 1/8oz Tru-Tungsten sinker pegged about 18″ up the line. First fish was about 15″ and the other about 16″. Corey got his two on a 3/8oz jig and they were both just over 14″ bass. The other boat also caught several keepers. The action tailed off, so we tried some other areas.
We then moved to some points & islands to look for staging fish. I mainly threw a Matte Bluegill colored Ima Flit jerkabait and RedEye Shad in Metallic Tn Shad, which I think looks alot like a sunfish color. Caught several fish on each, but none of which I kept. Corey also caught a few short fish. 
I then decided we should try some docks, because past experiences on Bone I have noticed that the bass like to stage on the docks on this lake. The first dock we fished, I caught a 14″ on a 1/4oz Tru-Tungsten jig, I chose not to keep it. I then decided since Corey only had about 45 minutes left, that I would drive him around to the next few docks and I would throw a 3/16oz Secret Weapon Lure spinnerbait. In about 6-8 docks, he got 3 keepers, couple of them were 2.5lb plus fish to fill out his limit. We then packed up and headed back to the landing so that I could weigh him in. He finished with 4 fish for 8.7lbs and 2.9lbs was his big fish.
So I spent the rest of the day fishing docks with 1/4oz & 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten jigs in natural Watermelon & Green Pumpkin color combinations. I probably caught 10-15 more keepers and many more short fish. I did not actually keep my last fish until 2:45pm, when I finally got a fish close to 18″. It was really a blast, when you found the right stretch of docks, you could catch a bass on every dock and sometimes multiple fish. One dock, I actually caught 5 keepers and a couple shorts. My All-Charge unit was very important during this tournament as well. I put a lot of strain on my trolling motor batteries as I would burn from dock to dock on high often. On this day, more docks fished = more bass in the boat. So it was nice that every time that I fired up my outboard to move areas, my All-Charge unit would freshen up my deep cycle batteries.
Made it back to the weigh-in with a couple minutes to spare, many others had come in early as well, because they had their 4 fish. Overall the fishing was good for most. I ended up taking first with 4 fish for 9.6lbs and my big bass was 2.9lbs. Big bass weighed was 3.4lbs. Most of the better bags were also caught shallow, either around vegetation or docks. Overall I was pretty excited with the good start, even though I executed poorly and missed several fish and was hoping to duplicate on Deer lake Sunday, but I also knew that Deer can be much tougher.
Stop back to read about Deer, should have the post up soon!
Rich
RichLindgren.com
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