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.

Going into the pairings meeting, I knew I would be using my boat, as I was a guaranteed boater.  I ended up drawing boat # 5 the first day and my partners was Noah from Bass Seekers.  Based on the wind forecast for the two days and that I was sharing my Boy Bay spot with another club member, I decided to fish my Steamboat fish the first day and save my Boy fish for Day 2.

We headed out across the lake and not many of the early boats seem to go the direction we did.  We arrived at the first area and I pitched my 1/2oz Black & Blue Jig into he cane grass and as I was letting the trolling motor down, one already had the jig and fish # 1 was in the boat, my 3rd pitch yielded fish #2 as well.  My partner soon caught a nice fish as well.  I ended up culling before 8am on the first patch of reeds and cane.  We hit two more reed patches and one produced a cull for me and the next produced to nice fish for my partner.  I also hit some bog areas, but they did not produce.  One thing to point, myself and other club members did something a little different with our jigs.  We used real pork chunks all week, I know you are probably thinking, didn’t people stop using pork in the 80’s…..   We used it for two reasons, one the fish seem to like it and the 2nd is that once you put in on, you never needed to fix or replace the trailer, which means more flips and more time with your jig on the water, which when fishing rice, means more fish!!!!   At Reeds in Walker, I found a sweet pork chunk that looks like a super chunk and the fish loved it.  It was an Uncle Josh Phantom Craw (Black with Blue Claws).  Every fish that I weigh the first day came on a Tru-Tungsten jig with tipped with a pork chunk and several of my other club members caught their fish on the same or similar combos.
    

I then made a stop by a dock that I had located that had several fish on it a few days ago.  Only one problem, my trolling motor had almost no juice at 10am……  But i did end up getting a 3.5lb plus fish of that dock, so my bag was starting to take shape.  It turns out one of my batteries went south almost instantly.  Fortunately my All Charge unit saved the rest of my day, as when I would run from spot to spot it would add a little juice the one battery I had, so I managed to limp around the rest of the day.  We were able to fish, just not as efficiently as if we had full power.  We spent the rest of the day around the rice in the north end of Steamboat Bay.  I was catching lots of fish on cane toads and jigs, but I was not finding big enough fish to help me.  Finally I plucked a nice fish from the rice on the jig that went close to 4lbs.  I knew at that point I had a solid bag, I knew it would not be the biggest bag, but would keep me in the mix for making a Top 12 spot.  We fished hard for a couple more hours, but neither of us could any more big bites that would help our bags.

The wind had picked up, but we made the long run back with 3 minutes to spare.
My total weight was 5 fish for 16.26lbs, my big fish was around 3.8lbs.  I think that put me in 21st or 22nd after day 1.  My partner weighed around 12lbs.  The leaded was Nick Gross from Granite City with 21.04lbs, so I was aways back from him, but I was only 1.14lbs out of 12th and that is where I wanted to be, in the Top 12, because the Top 12 advance to 2008 Divisionals.  It was a real whackfest the first day, it seemed everyone had a limit that wen 13-15lbs.  Well, after the leaderboard wall tallied it was time to get home and start troubleshooting battery problems and get ready for day two.

It would take too long to break down every day of practice in to a separate entry.  So I will bundle all the practice into one entry and then each tournament day will get their own entry.  And then maybe I will be caught up through my Bass Weekend Series tournament by Friday.  This would be the start of 9 straight days of bass fishing

I left my house in Lakeville before 5am on Saturday morning, picked up my dad and we launched on Boy Bay. It was a windy first day, but we went right to the spot where I had caught 19lbs last year in a club tournament and my fellow club member Dave Ham was there and so were the bass.  We spent the rest of the day checking other areas and looking for new stuff in Boy Bay.  The best baits were texas rigged plastics, cane toads, & Stanley Ribbits.

Day two I spent in Steamboat area, found some new stuff as well as checked some old stuff.  Most of my bites came around reeds that day.  Stick’Em Lures Salty Sinkers & Tru-Tungsten Jigs were the ticket, and 1/2oz Black & Blue was the best by far.  In the evening I jumped in Ryan Brant’s boat with Josh, and the three of us went looking for Frog fish and we found them.  We probably had 20-30 blowups in 2hrs, we tried not to hook to many of them, being the tourney was a few days away.  I did the best on a white Optimum Furbit frog.

Here is a largemouth that fell for the Salty Sinker
Day 3, Josh Douglas & I launched near Brevik to add to the Boy bay water I had found, we started the morning by running to Horseshoe bay, that is where the tournament would launch from.  We looked for areas to fish on the way back to Headquarters.  I did catch a really nice smallie on the south shore, but only found one. 

Here is a my nice random smallie from Practice
 We also found a couple nice stretches of rice in Headquarters bay where we had several bites on jigs and a SWL BuzzR Bait Midnight Snack.  I also checked my best area in Boy and they were still there.

Day 4, was back to Steamboat.  Josh & I ran up the Steamboat river to Steamboat lake, we caught a few fish up there, but both agreed it was not worth the run.  We then found some Rice points in the upper end of steamboat that had good numbers and quality.  Check a few more things, found a nice marina where we got a big bite and kind of called it a day.  Tru-Tungsten jigs did the best again today.

Overall, I felt good about my practice, I had fish going on both ends of the lake, I could fish areas no matter the wind and had a good mix of types of spots.  I was going to wait until after the pairings meeting to finalize my tournament game plan.

Got on the water around 7:30am, tried a few points on the mouths of some cuts with a few bites but no fish.  Then moved to a wing dam, caught a near 3lb smallie right away on topwater as well as a couple largemouth.  We then ran some backwater, had a few blow ups and caught some northerns, not real impressed.  Went to the next backwater area, caught some solid fish on the black Furbit in the slop.

We then ran some other areas, had some boils but no hook-ups.  We ended the day on a eel grass line where we did real well on soft plastics, overall, a productive day. Added some areas and eliminated some water.

Its the end of the week, I am packing for Leech tonight and leaving very early tomorrow morning, probably no blog entries between now and Sept 10th.  I will be fishing the MNBF TOC on Leech and the 4th Weekend Series tournament on Pools 4 & 5, so two tournaments and 9 straight days of fishing!!!!

Tight Lines,