My tourney partner Ryan Brant and I decided that it would be a good idea to reinvest some of our Pan-O-Prog tourney winnings into the Celebration Outdoors bass tournament 3 weeks after that event.  Didn’t really have time to prefish with the Weekend Series tourney in Wabasha.

Last minute, Ryan had to work, so his brother Corey jumped in the boat with me, no big deal, as Corey is quite the stick as well, he currently sits in 3rd place for Silverado points after 2 events.  We drew boat 12, and decided to start shallow like we did in Pan-O-Prog.  The first area yielded only a single short fish, but Corey quickly boated a 3lbr in our second spot with a Ring Fry using a Force Bead as weight.  We continued with the shallow pattern, I put two decent 2lb fish and a three rats in the well on a 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten jig .  During that stretch I got sawed off by a good fish and had another 3lb fish get the best of me and spit my jig. 
 
But now that we had our limit, we decided to test some deeper spots that had produced in the past, we were just about to leave our 2nd deep spot when Corey hooks up on a tube with a 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten sinker in about 13 feet of water and lands a nice 3lbs plus fish that culls are first rat.  Just as I was thinking it was time to move on again, i got picked up dragging my ring fry on a mojo rig , another 3lb fish to replace rat numero dos.  We tried quite a few more lures for quite some time and that deep spot would not yield another good bite for us.  Corey’s fish was hooked deep, so I got to use some of my livewell care tricks to ensure his livelyhood.

With about 30 minutes to go, we revisited an area where that 3lb fish had given me the slip, I pitched my jig in between a dock and boat lift.  As I started to lift my jig , a fish grabbed it and started to head for the lift.  When I set, my 17lb fluoro got cut off pretty clean, feeling pretty dejected as it seems there is always a good fish or two that do this late in the day that cost me money.  Grumbling under my breath, I grab a fresh jig from the deck of the boat and slap a used chuck on their quick and flip it under the front of the boat lift.  It did not take long to get picked up again, it did not take long to realize this would be the best fish of the day.  After a brief struggle, she was in the net, it was pretty obvious I had got my revenge on this fish, as it had 18″ of my line hanging from its mouth and the old jig was already in her stomach.  This tank was a huge cull over the 13 incher that was still in the well.  Corey got wrapped right after that and lost a good fish.  We hit a few more spots in the last few minutes, but could not improve on either of our 2lb fish.  In the back of our minds, we knew we had a good day, but know we had 3 missed opportunities during the day to probably crack the 20lb mark, which is not uncommon on Lake Marion.

That  4.66lb fish is in my left hand, could not keep his lips of my Tru-Tungsten jigs!

In the end, our 18.61lbs was more then enough and gave us a 2lb margin of victory, but my lake 4.66 fish was beat out for big fish by a 5.3lb beauty.  It was nice to get a win for this year, now I will probably turn my attention to Minnetonka in preparation for the Minnesota State Bass Federation Tournament of Champions in early September.

Hard to find time to blog with the new addition in the house.  I suppose I would have more time to blog if I fished less, but what would I blog about?

Last Sunday, I hoped to get down for some early practice on Mississippi River pool 4 near Wabasha, but things did not work out, so I just went to local Lake Marion for a few hours in the afternoon.  I hoped to find some new fish for the upcoming Celebration Outdoors tournament this coming Saturday, that did not really work out, caught a few decent fish, but I did not feel like I unlocked any new secrets by any means.

I did get down and practice both Thursday & Friday for my Bassmaster Weekend Series tourney this past weekend on Pool 4.  Both days were kind of short, only about 6 hours on the water each day.  Thursday was very windy and it rained for all but the last hour, I learned a little new water at the top of Big Lake, got one big bite and found a few fish close to the ramp that I felt could be a good back-up plan.  Friday I practiced with my dad, checked my Pepin fish, they were there but small and then loaded boat and headed to Wabasha, fortunately I found some good fish on one of my favorite eel grass lines. Checked a few more things, eliminated water after that more than anything.

My plan for race day was to get some solid keeper in the well on my grass line and then spend the afternoon on the upper end of Big Lake going for a big bite.  I got some smallmouth bites early on a bone colored Vixen topwater, then found better quality fish flipping the edge of the eel grass with a beaver bait on a 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten flipping weight with MiHatchii OWG hook .  My last two fish were probably my biggest and they both came on a Mad-Maxx frog in Busta Slime color.  The 2nd generation Tru-Tungsten frogs are unbelievably soft and durable, really hard to beat this frog.

In the end, I weighed 4 largies and a single smallmouth that went 13.93lbs, good enough for 5th place in a pretty good field.  This next weekend, another tourney on Lake Marion.

This past Saturday my buddy Ryan Brant and I fished the Lakeville Pan-O-Prog bass touranment  on little ol’ Lake Marion presented by the Gopher Bassmasters.  This was the first year the Gopher Bassmasters ran the Pan-O-Prog event, previously run for so many years by the Minnesota Pole Benders. 

I did get a chance to spend a little practice time out here the two weekends prior to the event.  Man it was brutal, I never caught a limit either day and only caught one deep fish.  I am kinda concerned all the weed spraying by the home owners on this lake is really taking its toll on the fishing.

Ryan & I drew boat #8 out of 40, we decided we would start shallow, because that is where we had the most bites and wanted to get to what few fresh biting fish there were, since we did not have any deep spots that we felt produced with any consistency.  Ryan quickly caught a nice keeper on a 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten jig  and I followed up by catching a quality fish on a Black Secret Weapon Lures buzzbait.  We then follwed up with 2 more nice jig fish all in about the first hour or so.  Nothing huge, but we were happy with our start.

Well things got really slow from there, about an hour later, I caught a 13″ keeper on a Tru-Tungsten jig , then we did not get our last keeper until about 45 minutes to go, I did have one other good bite that I rolled arounda  bluegill bed.  So in total, 7 keeper bites, 6 fish caught that total 14.58lbs, which on a tough bite was good enough for 3rd place.  Not pretty, but we stuck to our plan and ground out a nice check!

Check here for full results on this tourney!  Hats off to Gopher for funning an excellant tournament!  I am planning to take another crack at Lake Marion during the Celebration Church bass tournament in a couple weeks….

Spent two days practicing for upcoming Pan-O-Prog bass fishing tournament on Lake Marion, neither day went well.  Not sure if I got too caught up with my new side imaging unit, but I spent a very full day fishing on Monday, only caught 4 bass and a pike, plus a few more bites.  At least one of them was a good fish, I got this 19″ largemouth off one of my spot, which gives me a little confidence for Saturday.

It was good to get out, most of my holiday weekend was consumed with out of town guests.  At least this gives me one more fish for BP’s Blog Derby!  Guess I will have to work on fishing the moment on Saturday!

Hope you all had a safe and wonderful 4th of July weekend!