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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Well, almost time to jet out of work and get ready for some bass fishing this weekend.  Tomorrow Ryan & I try to take Lake Marion by storm and keep Shawn Frame & Jerry Hawke from going back to back to back.  We have not been out but one evening to practice and that was a couple weeks ago.  Let’s hope my fish on my hard bottom spot go this year or we are going to really have to scramble.  Weigh-in is at Casperson Park at 1pm, its worth going to, there are surely to be sever 20lb + bags again this year.  Bring refreshments, its going to be a hot one out there.

Then on Sunday Mr. Veech and I are going to practice the St. Croix river for a club tournament next weekend.  That is if he gets an okay from the boss at home :0
Practicing for a club tournament is kind of a novel idea, maybe I will have more time now that I have closed and moved from the home I just sold.

Rich
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Well, this tournament got off to a better start because I made it on time   This tournament our club decided to fish as a hole tournament, 5 holes, you draw a start position and rotate every 75 minutes and then 75 minutes of happy hour at the end.  I was hoping to draw holes 1 or 3 first, because those are really the only 2 holes I have any decent spots in.  My partner Chong drew hole #2 and going towards 3,4,5 for our rotation.  Also, Chisago is a immediate catch & release lake, so we are doing a paper tournament and then converting length to weight.

Chong had actually done a little prefishing, so we started in a slop corner that he had and I caught a quick fish on my Vixen, and one on a frog.  One at 13.75″ & the other 14.375″, not the size fish you need on this lake, but a start.  We kept on the move hopping around, trying to find some better fish and just caught a couple shorts.

On to hole #3, went to my 2nd favorite spot on the lake, no good weeds, ugh, the surprises you get when you do no practice.  I did manage one good 15.75″ keeper on a red shad jig worm, and we also caught several shorts and a walleye.  With about 15 minutes left, I hit another inside turn.  I caught a 16.75″ fish and Chong caught on just a little smaller, both on jig worms, then we had to move, obviously should not have wasted so much time on the spot before fishing memories.

On to hole #4, I know lots of good fish our caught deep in this area of the lake, don’t really know any of the spots, we spent the whole 75 minutes fishing deep with jig worms, cranks, carolina rig & jigs, never got a tap.

On to hole #5, we decided to try shallow, we got on a row of docks, shallow weeds and wood.  Chong quickly caught one close to 19″ on a texas-rigged ring fry, off a stump.  I then proceeded to boat 3 fish over 18″ off blue gill beds, the first one was under the back end of a dock next to a big set of beds, she fell for my 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten jig.  After that I came across a big school of gills all bunched up on beds so I made a pitch in there, the bluegills kind of scattered a bit, I saw a fish roll on it and point at my jig, twitched it once and she smoked it.  I then broke my jig off on a big fish that sawed my 20# Fluorocarbon on a boat lift.  The 3rd fish I saw in a weed hole patrolling some beds and I made a long pitch past her with a texas-rigged Sweet Beaver and it did not take long to temp her into eating.  Time ran out, but hole #5 was good, came in with less then a limit and left with a nice bag, my smallest fish 15.75″
 
Onto hole #1, we camped out for the first 50 minutes on weed point that is usually produces big fish, nothing happening, another case of not much good weeds there.  We then decided to try to duplicate the water we found in hole 5.   Chong missed a couple fish and I caught 16″ and 17.75″ fish to cull a couple times on my 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten jig.  With about 45 minutes left in happy hour we ran back to hole #5, caught a small keeper.  Running short on time, we headed back near the landing and fished some docks in the narrows.  I had a bite under a dock, missed and saw it.  I told Chong to throw under there, he hooked it, but it came unbuttoned right before the net.

I ended up eaking out first with 17.82lbs for 5 bass with a 3.96 big fish, Dave Ham was 2nd with 17.74.  That was a close one!  I also moved from 10th to 7th and I am lurking only about 3lbs out of 2nd place.  I am positioned well to make a run with 4 tournaments to go, 3 of which are on rivers.

Rich
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This tournament did not get off to a good start, I did not have time to rig up everything I wanted the night before and I was late getting to the landing because I did not get out prefishing and was not sure where it was and made a wrong turn.  So everything I caught was going to be docked 10%

We ran to the far end down by the private landing and started working an inside turn that I had caught fish on before.  I caught 3 quick fish on a bluegill colored Reaction Innovations Vixen, they all crushed it. 
After another 10-15 minutes with no bites on topwater, I tried my Parrot DT6 and then a white Secret Weapon Lure spinnerbait and whacked a nice keeper on that in about 5 casts and then caught a northern on it as well.  I decided to make one more pass through with my Tru-Tungsten jig and caught my 5th fish pretty quick.  Fished it out a little further had a couple hits on the jig, but did not convert.

I then told my partner John (a.k.a. Brushog) to run the boat on the weedline while I rigged some rods for some other areas and for potentially finding bigger fish, plus he had not had a bite yet.  He quickly had one on and lost it, then as I was almost done tying up he landed a keeper on a Texas rigged Green Pumpkin Super Hog.  I then picked up my Berkley Watermelon Red Flake shakey worm on a 1/8oz Shakedown head that I just rigged up and whacked a keeper that culled on my first cast.  John then got his 2nd and I got bit off, end of flurry.

We then moved across to a deep point, John caught a two nice keepers on his Super Hog and I caught small ones, just one of those things.  We then jumped to another cabbage turn down the lake, once again I caught small fish and John was able to catch 3 good keepers to fill out his limit and cull twice on a Lake Fork Baby Creature on a mojo rig.

With about an hour left, we moved to the west side of the lake and started fishing shallow.  I was able to cull 3 times, two out of the reeds and one on a dock, caught on soft plastics.  I weighed 8.5lbs, but got docked .9lbs for late and John weighed 9.9 and he was docked 1lb.  I think I ended up 12th out of 16, not so stellar, and would have only moved up a couple spots without the penalty.  I ended up slipping two spots from 8th to 10th for the year, needless to say, not what I was looking for, took 14lbs to win.  On the bright side, I fished clean, did not lose fish, just did not get the better bites, could have been better had I practiced and found better fish.

On the bright side, just like in May, I turned it around on Sunday after a tough Saturday.

Rich
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Due to time constrains, I am going to combo my practice in with the tournament blog entry……

I got on the lake around 6:30pm Friday night and started checking some shallow areas that have produced for me in the past, some shallow cabbage, reeds & docks on Le Homme Dieu.  I probably caught 10-15 fish, mostly on a white & chart chatterbait and a tx rigged Sweet Beaver.  Most of them were small and barely keepers.  I did have one good bite under a dock that felt heavy, I pulled on the fish and did not set.  It was good just to get out and do a little bass fishing on Friday night, more serious practice tomorrow.

I got out around 7:30am Saturday morning, started out fishing a deep spot in LHD that I milked during last year’s event, and only caught a few shorts.  I then hopped around to a few other deep spots and caught some keepers but nothing of much quality.  So then I went to check some areas in Carlos that I had never fished before.  I found some quality fish cruising the inside of the reeds and around the docks.  Started to feel a bit better about things.  I then checked an inside weedline in Little Darling and caught several fish and one nice one.  I then check some shallow areas in Darling with little luck.  I then ran a few areas in LHD on the way back to the access and it was time to load the boat for the meeting.

At the meeting I drew boat #32 and met my partner (Jerry from Rochester).  We took off a few minutes after 7am and I had my first deep spot to myself, only caught small keepers in practice, but the spot has good potential.   I tried my Vixen to start off, because they were crushing it the day before, but not even a swirl.  I then switched to my Parrot DT6 which has been a staple for me on this lake.  I loaded up on a good fish and lost it about 10 ft from the boat, it was a solid 2lb fish.  My partner quickly caught a limit on a white/shad colored bomber crank.  I then caught a small keeper on my DT6, then I switched to my favorite 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten jig and started fishing the break in 6-10ft and caught 3 keepers pretty quick, only one of them was decent.

We then hit the shallow area in Carlos and it was quite different, not much activity.  I caught one small keeper on a texas rigged Sweet Beaver to fill my pathetic limit.  I then fished up a little farther to where some wind was coming in on some docks and made two nice culls to start approaching a level of respectability.  I ran some more docks that had similar wind in Carlos, but did not get any more keepers.

I then decided to try my inside weedline in Little Darling, several short fish, nothing that could help.  I then ran some docks in Darling that had been good in the past but did not prefish this year.  The first dock, I caught a fish around 2lbs and culled out my last squeaker.  Felt good.  I continued to run docks, switching between a weightless ring fry, texas rig beaver and TT Jig.  Just as I broke off on a fish on my beaver, I looked to the left and saw a nice bass cruising the sand.  So I quickly picked up my jig and pitched to it.  It started swimming back towards the dock that we had just fished, so I swung the boat around and started following the bass & pitching it front of it.  I continued to follow it under another dock out the other side until it positioned itself under a willow tree.  Made one nice skip under there with my jig and she inhaled it, solid 3lb plus fish, that really helped.  Made a few more culls, probably 1/2oz at a time.  Then ran a few docks in Little Darling, one more small cull.
 
Fished a few docks near Bugaboo Bay and the day was over at 3:15pm.  It was a funny bite through out the day, sometimes the fish would bite and I would miss them & I would pitch in under there 3 or 4 times before they would eat and I would get a hook into them.   They also for the most part were positioned around really bad looking structure, it was little jet ski lifts and shallow isolated docks that held most of the fish.  We really had to work over each dock to get the fish out of them.

My total weight ended up being 10.95 and was good for 13th out of 65, not too bad.  Got a check and I am in the hunt for the top 8 for the year.  All my keepers came on the Watermelon / Green Pumpkin Sweet Beaver texas rigged with 1/8oz. Tru-Tungsten sinker, force bead & smart peg or my 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten jig.

Well this will be the last post for about two weeks as I leave for Italy tomorrow.  Should come back and preview my two club tournaments on Clearwater & Chisago, which I will not have time to prefish for either.  On another note, my house sold, buyer wanted a quick close, so my boat maybe homeless for a couple months

Rich
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Things have been super busy, anyways my father and I were out on the St. Croix on Memorial Day from about 8 – Noon and launched out of St. Croix Bluffs park.  I caught a smallmouth on my very first cast off a sandbar on a LC Sammy and my dad also got one on his first cast with a drop shot.  The long and short of it is that we did not find any areas that did not have bass, caught close to 25 and about 5-6 of them were above the 14″ keeper range.

We caught fish on topwater, cranks & plastics.  Most of my fish came on a Watermelon / Green Pumpkin Sweet Beaver texas rigged with 1/8oz. Tru-Tungsten sinker, force bead & smart peg shown below.  The tournament is not until July 15th, so lots can change, but it was good to see the water.

On another note, I took 13th out of 65 in the Weekend Series up on Le Homme Dieu chain of lakes, which was the last money spot   I hope to blog about my practice & tournament in more detail before I leave for Italy on Friday for 10 days.  Also, we are up to 35 email subscribers!!!

Rich
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