Forecast was to be very hot and little wind, it lived up to the prediction for heat but with less wind.  My partner Ryan drew boat #22 out of 40 for us.  We decided to start deep and make adjustments from their.  There were two boats positioning themselves on the deeper hard bottom area of where we wanted to start so we went straight for the inside turn that had some really healthy coontail clumps.  We fished around for about 45 minutes without a bite, we then went out on the edge of the two other boats and I was able to boat a nice 3lb fish on a Bluegill DT10.  I also had another bite on a C-Rig.  We then dashed into this the inside turn one more time and I immediately loaded the rod up on a 4lb fish that sucked down my ever reliable 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten jig.  We only had two fish in the well after 90 minutes but they were both nice fish.  After no more bites there we decided to try some shallower water.

We started running some docks that we had caught fish on the previous summer.  First pitch with my jig put another 3lb fish in the well.  Then Ryan got a small keeper on a Tru-Tungsten jig as well on the next dock.  Ryan then rolled a good fish that came unbuttoned and then I put another 3lb plus fish on the well to give us 5 fish.  We then worked a shallow point, nothing happening there.  We then hit the next stretch of docks where I got sawed off way underneath a pontoon on a lift, it was a big fish.   The next dock produced a 2lb fish to fill out a limit.  So we have 4 good fish and two small fish at around 10am.  We decide to keep running shallow water.  We try some slop with no luck.  Then another set of docks.  I catch a couple short fish and cull up a little on our smallest fish along with getting broke off twice with 20lb Fluoro, not good.  We run back to our first set of docks and Ryan has another good fish get off, we are just not being fortunate in converting the good bites.

We pondered and decided to check back on our deep spot, but there are still two boats there, so we pull into docks that are similar to our first stretch but that I had never done well on.  2nd dock yields a 3lb fish, nice cull on the jig again.  We run to another 3 dock stretch and I catch 2.5lb fish on a jig.  We have a solid limit, we figure somewhere near 18lbs.  We decide to finish out on the deep area.  Ryan catches a solid 2.75 fish on a drop shot and we cull about a 1/4lb.  We felt that we had a good bag, but knew we missed opportunities on 5 good fish today and were pretty confident it would cost us.

We weigh our fish, 6 fish 18.68lbs with a 3.96lb big fish that at the time put us in 2nd.  One more team weighed in later and bumped us to 3rd.  Winning weight was 19.64lbs, how frustrating to lose so many fish and come up that short.  Oh well, it was still a good tournament.  The Pan-O-Prog can be tricky with 40 boats on such a small lake, our primary plan was foiled by other boats that beat us there, but we adjusted well and made a nice finish.

Ryan is toying with fishing the Celebration Tournament on Marion on July 21, but I cannot as I will be up fishing the Weekend Series tournament on Whitefish Chain.  Tomorrow, I should have an entry from my trip to practice on the St. Croix with Mr. Veech and then club tournaments this weekend on Big Marine and St. Croix.

Tight Lines,
Rich
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