Better late then never, but here is Day 2

Coming into this tourney I had a plan that if weather would cooperate, I would fish the river south of Wabasha the first day and then fish my Lake Pepin fish on day two.  As many of you know, wind can ruin a day bass fishing on big wide open Lake Pepin.  So day 1, I caught a good bag from the river and it seemed like the wind would cooperate for day 2, so my partner Paul & I were 4th boat out and we headed up past Lake City.

We were all by ourselves when we got to this little rock point.  We fished it hard with topwater.  I was able to catch two nice keepers on a Yellow Magic.  I then hooked a 3lb plus smallie on a bone colored Barely Legal Vixen, but I horsed it a bit near the boat and he got off.  About 5 minutes later, I hooked another nice smallie on the vixen, this time I took my time and we put her in the net.  We caught a few shorts, then moved to the next area.  My partner finally caught a nice keeper on a bone Pop-R, I caught some small fish, but nothing I wanted to keep.
 
Here are the pictures of the Yellow Magic as Promised, can be found at Basspro.com

The next area produced a nice 16″ smallie on the Yellow Magic.  I then hit a few isolated pieces of cover and my partner got a short bass and then I got a nice 16″ largemouth on a Green Pumpkin Candy Mizmo Big Boy Tube, that was before noon.  Felt good to get that 5th fish so early, we spent the rest of the day working our way down Pepin trying to get Paul some more fish.  He caught several shorts and then finally we got back around Wabasha and I made him throw my Yellow Magic and he quickly missed one and got another nice keeper smallie.  We had a few more bites after that, but nothing made it in the boat.

I was confident I had more then enough weight to maintain my position in the point standings but was note sure if I had enough to cash a check.  I could use a check to fund a trip to Nationals.  My total ended up being 5 fish for 12.27lbs, which kept me in 5th place for the two day event with 10 fish for 25.25lbs and got a decent check.  It also moved me up one slot for the year from 6th to 5th.  My father also managed to catch a last minute keeper to secure his trip to Nationals.  My club mate, Dave Ham held onto his 7th place spot to go to Nationals by putting together a nice 10lb bag after just 1 fish the first day.

Time to start planning, I thankful for my wife to be understanding and let me fish Nationals even though we are expecting an addition to the family come spring

Also, welcome to email subscribers #49 & 50 that have recently signed up, not a bad milestone to get 50 subscribers.  I am working on some discount codes for subscribers through my sponsors this winter, so keep your eyes peeled.

I did get out and prefish one more day for this tournament, but never got around to blogging about it, maybe because it was so lack luster  
I would have had two days, but my wonderful wife score great tickets for the Packers / Vikings game, what is a guy to do  
Quite a bit riding on this tournament, I currently stood 6th in the points for the year, the top 8 qualify for nationals and my margin over the 9th through 15th place was not that great.

Anyways, I got down to Wabasha around 3pm, which gave me about 2 hours to run around in the boat look at some water color and make a few casts.  In that short time, I was able to confirm that a couple key areas were not too muddy to fish and was able to get a couple rolls on a buzz frog back in a slop area.

I drew boat #27 out of 31 boats, total 33 boaters but they were short a few non-boater so a two sets of guys had to go boater / boater.  My partner was Pat Picciano, seemed like a good guy.  Since I got a late draw, I knew if anyone was going to go to my starting area there was no way to beat them, so we started on a quick main river rock area for about 15 minutes, caught a 13″ smallie on topwater and that was it.  We then arrived on our gravel / eel grass bar and nobody was there.  I started throwing a Yellow Magic popper and within a few casts I had a fish on.  Too bad it was a white bass, probably about 15-16″.  Pat & I proceeded to catch about 35-40 white bass and 4 smallies.  I got 3 with one about 3lbs, all on a Yellow Magic Popper, Pat got his on a Pop-R that I loaned him.

We then moved a long eel grass stretch where I had good largemouth going.  We worked the whole thing without a bite, then right at the end where it drops off, I caught about a 3lb largemouth on a green pumpkin Fork Craw.  That gave me 4 quality fish at about 11am, way better then last tournament.  I was pretty sure, one more quality bite would keep me in the points hunt and maybe even a check.  Pat & I bounced around for the next 3 hours, caught several fish, most of them on soft plastics, but the biggest was around 13.5″.

We finally made it back to the slop area that I visited the night before with about 45 minutes to go and I casted my white cane toad right into the area where I had a blow up the night before and one tried to crawl all over it, but he must of just had the tails.  I fixed my frog on the hook again, two casts later he crushed it and I winched that 2.25lb largemouth in!!!  What a relief, 5 fish.  I spent the next 30 minutes running around trying to get Pat another bite or two.  He did get a bite right next to the weigh in, but it was a short fish.

 

My total weight was 12.98lbs which put me in 5th place after Day 1, not too shabby.  In the money cut and a top 8 finish would control my own destiny for Nationals.  I going to try to get a picture of my Yellow Magic popper to post in day 2’s entry.  On the downside, my dad just needed to get one keeper to clinch his berth to Nationals and his bag was empty on Day 1.

Welcome email subscriber #47, I hope to get day 2’s entry up tomorrow.

Well its that time of year again, its late September/Early October, time for the 3rd Annual Gopher Bassmasters Fall Classic.  This tournament is different then the usual club tournament, for a few reasons:
Its our only team tournament, the lake is drawn last minute, so no prefishing.  We also try to pick lakes with big fish potential.  The first two years, we fished Minnetonka & Medicine lake, neither one produced giant bags like we had hoped when we started the Fall Classic idea.  Coon Lake was the lake selected from the proverbial hat for 2007.  On a positive note, the Fall Classic has been good to me, as my team has won the first two and I had ideas in my winning the 3rd as Coon Lake is one of my favorites lakes in MN.

Its been a few years since I have fished Coon Lake, but I have had my share of success there.  I figured we could run and gun until we got on a pattern and I knew the lake well enough to keep it going from there.  I drew Ron Smith, he lives close to the lake, so we met at the landing.  We were boat #7 out of 9, we launched on the East side of the lake and we decided to start on the east side.  We found out early on that Golden Hook Bassmasters was having club tournament as well.

We started on a cattail point that has been historically good, not a tap, we then tried the adjacent reeds, hauled water there as well.  We then hopped to a cattail island where I got a big bite and broke my jig off, I had not retied from the river, not a good move.  We worked a few other areas with cattails, weed clumps and docks.  I ended up getting bit off twice and losing one small keeper that got me wrapped on some pads.  Things were tough, but Ron & I agreed if we stayed with it as the water warmed we thought the bite would get going.

Soon enough Ron scored a 12″ keeper on a tx-rigged Sweet Beaver.  I then caught two nice fish on consecutive docks, on a 1/2oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten Jig, one was close to 4lbs.  Both of these docks had a stiff breeze blowing on them, so we went in search of more windy docks.  I soon caught our 4th keeper swimming my jig around weed clumps between docks and then Ron got our 5th fish on a jig under a boat.  It felt good to get 5, now we could relax and fish for bigger bites.  We spent a little more time on the East side, couple small bites, but no fish in the boat.  At noon we headed for the West side of the lake.

We decided to stick with the docks.  One of my favorite stretches of docks had a fair amount of wind blowing on them, so we went there first.  There were boats already fishing these docks and others but we decided to fish them anyways.  I decided to change to a 3/8oz jig and dipped the pinchers of my chunk in chartreuse dye when we started here, hoping to give these fish a little different look. We caught 4 fish on about 12-15 docks right behind another boat, one was about 3lbs and another one around 4lbs were the highlights.  My hats off to Ron, as he had a sweet assist on that 3lb fish as it wrapped me good on a dock and he got his hands on it to land it.  At this point, I felt we had a decent chance of being in the hunt for this tournament, as we culled our two smaller fish on that stretch, now we had 2 big fish and 3 solid fish.  We ran across to some calm docks that are historically good, but there were boats all over them, so we fished a short stretch of windy docks on the other side.  I caught one close to 4lbs on a jig and Ron caught good keeper on a brushhog there.  Things were looking good.

Seems most of the boats had left on the docks we had just looked at, so we decided to see if they left us any.  On the 3rd and 4th docks I caught a 4.4lb and another one close to 4lbs on the 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Jig.  That did it, we had 5 really nice fish in the well.  Another boat swung in front of use, so we motored over near the landing and flipped some milfoil mats.  On about my 3rd flip with a watermelon chigger craw with 1oz red Tru-Tungsten Flipping weight I muscled a nice 2.5lb bass in the boat, he did not help but was fun!

We weighed in 2nd to last, there were several 10lb limits and 4.2lb bass weighed ahead of us.  Ron & I weighed 5 fish for 19.3lbs and a 4.4lb big fish.  What a way to end the club season and finally some fish that represent what the Fall Classic is supposed to be all about.  That big bag was good enough for first place and big bass.  It also makes back to back to back in the Fall Classic  

On a gear note, all those fish were caught on a 7′ Crucial MH Baitcasting rod, paired with a Shimano Castaic SF spooled with 20lb Fluorocarbon.  It felt good to pick up one of my favorite sticks and fish it all day long, put my head down and keep my favorite jig in the water.

Also, welcome email subscriber #46 to the Bassin’ Blog!!!!   Look forward to your comments.

Woke up early to get my batteries figured out and ended swapping my battery for another guy’s battery in my club!  Thanks a bunch John!  Do to change of plans and wind issues, launch was delayed until 7:30am.   Because of my fortunate draw on day 1, I was boat #73 toady, which was dead last.  My partner & I made the long haul to Boy Bay, we were not in any hurry being last boat out.  I get to my starting area that I saved for today and there were two boats already there, one on each end.  I went to put my trolling motor down and noticed the head was dangling from the cables on the head.  Not the greatest start in the world, after about 10 minutes my partner & I got it pieced & taped back together where it would work.

I could feel myself being getting little unnerved by having two boats there and having trolling motor issues two days in a row.  Not to mention one of the boats there was my buddy’s 1st partner and asked him if he could go there, my buddy politely told him he rather not, but he went there anyways and the other boats was his son.  Very classy move.  All these things racing through my mind, I told myself just to settle down and work my jig like I did all week.  5 pitches later, 4lb plus fish in the boat!!!  Now I was starting to feel good, especially since it was a long cast from that guy’s boat and he got to see the whole thing.

My partner quickly boated a good fish and we worked this area with jigs for about 4 hours and I had put together a pretty solid limit on Tru-Tungsten jigs, I figured to have pretty close to yesterday’s weight, at 11:30am.  I caught only 7 total keepers, 5 on the 1/2oz Blk/Blue and 2 on the 3/8oz Sunfish jig.  Both were paired with the new Uncle Josh Phantom Craws that I had found a couple days prior at Reeds.  I noticed my partner changed his plastic chunk 3 or 4 times during the day, I never had to do any trailer maintenance all day, which mean my jig spent more time in the water.  I also knew that I had one pretty small fish, right at 2lbs and that if could get one more 2.5-3lb+ bite, it would be huge.

At about 1pm, we decided to start running some different water, we ran some docks in Boy Bay, then ran some rice in Headquarters.  I only ended up getting one more good bite, but I somehow missed it.  We saved an hour to run from Headquarters to Horseshoe bay where the weigh-in was.  I took about 30-35 minutes it fairly high seas.  We fished  the marine next to weigh-in, we each jacked a 4lb fish in the marine, too bad they were both northerns   Got us excited anyways……

I ended up being one of the last guys to weigh, my total was 5 fish for 15.62lbs with my big fish at 4.6lbs which was my first fish of the day.  The weights dropped of quite considerably on day 2 and my bag launched me from 22nd to 4th.  Top 12 is all that really matters, as now I have qualified for my 3rd Federation Nation Northern Divisional.  It is next August on Lake Winnebago near Oshkosh, WI.  My club, Gopher Bassmasters made a nice push on day 2, up to 6th place, just need a couple more fish to get some hardware.  Hats off to my buddy Ryan Brant who had a great 2nd day and moved to 13th from the middle of the pack.  That makes him the divisional alternate, so we need someone to run out of vacation next summer so he can go   You can find the full story and results here.