All posts by hellabass

Tournament Info

My 2010 Pan-O-Prog Review

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….

 

Tournament Info

Tough Practice

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!

Announcements

Important Law Change for Minnesota Fisherman and Boaters

Starting today, July 1st, 2010, if you have your drain plug in, while transporting your boat on any roadway in Minnesota, you could be subject to a $250.00 fine

Regulations on transport of water

As of July 1, 2010, the following regulations, apply to the transportation of water by boaters from all waters in the state (violations are misdemeanors):

  • a person leaving waters of the state must drain boating-related equipment holding water and live wells and bilges by removing the drain plug before transporting the watercraft and associated equipment on public roads; and
  • drain plugs, bailers, valves, or other devices used to control the draining of water from ballast tanks, bilges, and live wells must be removed or opened while transporting watercraft on a public road (marine sanitary systems and portable bait containers are excluded from this requirement).

This law is to help prevent spread of aquatic invasive species, particularly zebra mussels.  I always do this, I think its a good practice, plus you don’t want that extra water sitting in your boat anyways.  Hope this heads up saves a few of you $250!

Rich


Fun Fishing

Got out for a little fun fishing

Did some fun fishing this weekend on local lakes, overall fishing was not that awesome.  The highliights would be getting first frog fish of the year on a Bluegrass colored Mad Maxx frog and today jacked a nice 20.5″ Largemouth on a 3/8oz Green Pumpkin Brown Tru-Tungsten jig with Sweet Beaver trailer.  I think the beaver on a jig does an awesome job of giving a profile of a big sunfish or craw at the same time.

Fish were scattered, some shallow, some deep, some patrolling bluegill beds. Caught them on inside weedlines, pads, docks, outside weedlines, hard bottom.   Either way it was good to get out and spend some time learning with the my new side imaging unit.

Well with the long holiday weekend approaching, I see more fishing in the immediate future!


Announcements, FLW Tour

FLW Announces 2011 Tour Schedule

Just a few days after the Bassmaster Elite Series released their schedule, FLW has released theirs.  Kudos to them for some creative marketing, making it look like they are expanding to 10 tourneys, when all they really did is rename the Eastern Series to the Opens and called Tour events Majors.

The 2011 FLW Tour season is listed below and can be viewed atFLWOutdoors.com.

2011 FLW Tour Schedule
Date Fishery Location Tournament
Feb. 2-5 Lake Okeechobee Clewiston, FL – FLW Tour Open
March 2-5 Falcon Lake Zapata,TX – FLW Tour Major
March 23-26 Lake Hartwell Greenville, SC – FLW Tour Major
April 13-16 Lake Chickamauga Chattanooga,TN – FLW Tour Major
May 4-7 Table Rock Lake Branson, MO -.FLW Tour Major
May 18-21 Red River Shreveport, LA – FLW Tour Major
June 1-4 Potomac River National Harbor, MD – FLW Tour Open
June 15-18 Kentucky Lake Murray, KY – FLW Tour Major
Aug. 11-14 Lake Ouachita Hot Springs,AR – Forrest Wood Cup
Sept. 14-17 Lake Champlain Plattsburgh,NY – FLW Tour Open
Oct. 19-22 Lake Guntersville Guntersville, AL – FLW Tour Open

The prestigious Angler of the Year title for 2011 will be determined over the 10 events. The top 30 pros and co-anglers from the FLW Tour Majors will qualify for the 2011 Forrest Wood Cup, which will consist of 58 pros and co-anglers. In 2012, the top 35 pros and co-anglers from the FLW Tour Majors, along with the top five from the 2011 FLW Tour Opens, will qualify for the 2012 Forrest Wood Cup.

The full field will compete the first two days of each FLW Tour event.On day three, the top 75 pros and co-anglers will compete with the co-angler winner being crowned based on cumulative weight from all 3 days. Day four will feature the top five pro anglers with the winner determined by cumulative weight from all four days.

Pro anglers will compete for up to $125,000 and co-anglers will be vying for up to $25,000 in each tournament. With a full field, the paybacks will be $10,000 through 50th place on the pro side and $1,000 on the co-angler side.

Once again in 2011, there are 3 conflicts between BASS & FLW at the Tour level, so no 2 tour pros in 2011!

Fantasy Bass Fishing Corner, FLW Tour

Guntersville FLW Fantasy Fishing Picks

I finished the ESPN BASS Fantasy season super strong, moved into 7th over all out of thousands and thousands of participants.  Looks like I won prizes from ESPN and other leagues I was in, now I hope to finish FLW Fantasy strong as well.

Conflicting schedules, we were not able to put together a podcast show for this week, so here are my FLW picks for this week!
Randal Tharp winning with 78lbs
David Dudley
Andy Morgan
Stetson Blaylock
Greg Pugh
Michael Bennet
Scott Canterbury
Bryan Thrift
Brent Ehrler
Shin Fukae

Little local flavor, some studs and some young guns!

Stay tuned, think I am going fishing Friday and Saturday this week!

Announcements, BASS Tour

2011 Bassmasters Elite Series Tour Schedule

BASS recently released their 2011 Elite Series Bassmasters Schedule:

2011 BassmasterElite Series Schedule

Date
March 10-13
March 17-20
April 6-9*
April 14-17
May 5-8
May 12-15
June 9-12
June 16-19 		Event
Sunshine Showdown
Citrus Slam
Alabama Charge
Battle on the Bayou
Pride of Georgia
Carolina Clash
Diamond Drive
Dixie Duel 		Fishery
Harris Chain
St. Johns River
Pickwick Lake
Toledo Bend
West Point Lake
Lake Murray
Arkansas River
Wheeler Lake 		Host City
Tavares, FL
Palatka, FL
Florence, AL
Many, LA
LaGrange, GA
Columbia, SC
Little Rock, AR
Decatur, AL

*Wednesday-Saturday event

The Florida whiners will be happy, Pickwick should be a sight fishing event.  Toledo Bend and West Point should be good as first time Elite events.  I actually fished West Point awhile back, interested to see the Pros there.  Interestingly enough no Kentucky, Guntersville or West Texas fisheries, good to see they mix it up a little, but once again the lack of Northern venues is a major Buzz Kill!


Bass Fishing Podcasts, BASS Tour, Fantasy Bass Fishing Corner

Sooner Run Fantasy Picks?

Well here is a great interview with Mark Zona about Sooner Run Bassmaster elite series picks for Arkansas river.

Hope you enjoyed the listen, as just a few hours ago, BASS moved this event to Fort Gibson lake just up the road because of high dangerous waters.  So 1 day of practice on Fort Gibson and it’s go time!
So now I go with:
Skeet & KVD because nobody fishes faster, better and reads conditions better than these two
Edwin Evers has some BFL experience here and some good finishes, plus he is fishing hot
Biffle because he lives across the street
Butcher, same reasons as Evers

Well, good luck to all the Elites and your fantasy rosters, but I think the best pure fishermen will rise to the top on this one!

Bass Fishing Podcasts, Fantasy Bass Fishing Corner, Humor, Multimedia

Catching up a bit

Things are hectic here at the Lindgren household with a new 1 week old addition to the family.  Welcome my daughter Reese to the world,  I am officially outnumbered for the long haul, with another daughter added to the mix.  So not much fishing and not much computer time.  Might even be another week or so before I let another line, maybe take my oldest daughter bluegill fishing on Father’s day…..

On the bright side, my ESPN BASS Fantasy Fishing team is rocking, as this week, I had KVD, Evers & Butcher all in top 3 at Kentucky Lake, which surged me to 37th in the world with one tourney to go.  So who knows, if I can pick the perfect last tourney on the Sooner Run, maybe I can be standing next to Zona on set telling you how I did it, probably a long shot, but you have to think big!

ESPN recently announced, it will stop the ESPN Outdoors block starting in 2011 and only air Bassmasters Elite Series events, thus no more World’s Greatest Fishing Show with Mark Zone on ESPN2 starting next year.  So this  is a great time to check out the second half of the Mark Zona interview we did previously.  Mark talks about “Crappie Fishing”, World’s Greatest Fishing Show, Minnesota Smallmouth fishing, Lake Vermillion, Mille Lacs and much more.

Zona is an awesome interview.  Hope you enjoy!  We have been stuck on 111 email subscribers for awhile, if you like reading this blog, enter your email in the upper left of the side bar and you will get entties emailed to your inbox or if you are savvy, add the RSS feed.


Bass Fishing Podcasts, Fun Fishing

Bass Opener 2010 Recap

Another bass opener has come and gone, I had big hopes and expectations for my trip to Pelican Lake.  I had heard so much good about this lake.  I went out fishing with buddy John Haynes, hoping to get some good footage for a future episode of All About Bass.  Things started a bit slow, we found some fish loosely relating to inside weed edges and pockets in amount cattails, picking these fish off with weightless ring frys rigged on 4/0 Mihatchii OWG Super Strong Hook as primary bait.

As they day progress, fish seemed tighter to the abundant wood cover and more precise casting was required, by the time the sun was directly over head, I switched to a Okeechobee Craw colored Sweet Beaver rigged with a 1/4oz Tru-Tungsten sinker so I could get a vertical presentation next to the wood and that seemed to be the ticket, as the fish did not seem interesting in moving to come get our baits any longer.

In the end, numbers were pretty good, the boat landed 25 plus bass, but only a couple solid 3 pound fish were our biggest.  None of the giants that this lake is know for showed themselves for our boat.  The thick matted spring cabbage made fishing some what challenging.

For an audio recap of the trip, take a listen to the following podcast:

Tight Lines,
Rich