Overall, I had a pretty productive pre-practice and official practice, but there were days that I struggled and days that I really got good bites.  With that being said, I could see scenarios in my mind where I bust big bags and where I struggle to put together a decent limit.  Below are a few pictures of some good fish from official practice.

Got an early fish on Chart / Blue IMA Rock N vibe lipless crankbait

I tried to pull on this 19.25″ doozer on Sunday, but would not let go of my Football Jig & Burton Craw

  My day 1 boat draw was boat 30 and I headed to a 10-12 foot rock spot that I got some really nice bites on back to back casts in practice on Sunday.  After a few casts, I hooked up on a nearly 3lb fish, but that fish jumped off about a boat length away.  I then switched over to a 3/4oz Picasso Fantasy Football jig tipped with a Green Pumpkin Copper Flake Burton Craw.  I boated a 3lb plus fish and another solid keeper pretty quick. My partner got a nice keeper on a drop shot.  I got a few more bites on that, but they just weren’t eating it.  I then deadsticked a 4″ Baby Ring fry on a mojo ring while I tied up a 1/2oz football jig .  That small bait sitting dead still on the bottom was too much for a big ol’ pig to resist and my partner helped me net what I thought was a nice solid 4.5lb plus beauty.  I then put one more nice keeper in the boat on the mojo rig and decided to leave and conserve these fish for day 2.  I ran a handful more deep spots, but got no more fish or bites.  From there i dashed to some wind swept docks and put a nice 2.5lb fish in the boat on a Tru-Tungsten jig , that filled my limit.  Feeling pretty good with my bag, I decided to make the long idle back into some of the darker water to fish more boat docks.  During this long idle, I made a status update from my Blackberry Twitter App.  Long story short, we fished a bunch of shallow cover in the darker water, after catching lots of really small fish and my partner filling his limit, I finally got a couple good bites to give me two solid culls flipping a Beaver bait on a 1/2oz Tru-Tungsten flipping weight and MiHatchii 4/0 hook .  We then decided to roll the dice and tried for some bigger fish in Maxwell and North Arm, that gamble did not pay off.  I ended up the day in 1st place with 17.51lbs and 3rd biggest fish which ended up tipping the scales at 5.84lbs.

Fish on left was 5.84lbs, anchoring the 17.51lb bag

Overall my day 1, went pretty darn well and obviously pleased with my position after day 1, I tied up my lures at Lord Fletchers before I left, got home, ate some dinner, spent some time with family and fell asleep watching Vikes game againts Saints, mainly because i was up until after midnight the night before prepping tackle.

Day 2, i was boat 54, another boat in my flight started right next to me, I quickly caught a 2lb fish on that same football jig combo,but that was the only fish that spot coughed up and I spent a long time there with a bunch of different lures, trying to trigger some strikes.  I then went to the wind swept docks of day 1, worked them harder and longer with beaver and TT jigs until I got my 5th fish.  It was nice to have 5 fish, but in my mind these fish were only half the weight of day 1 and I in no way felt comfortable with that weight on Minnetonka.  My partner on day 2, picked up 2 keepers on that stretch of docks as well.  We bounced around trying a handful of things in that area, even revisiting the starting spot, still no go there.  Well, I felt it was time to head to that dirty water again, I also updated my struggles on Twitter in the channel on day 2.  Right when I started flipping my beaver combo into some dirty milfoil, I got a nice 2lb fish, that got rid of my smallest keeper.  I was thinking things may really go, but that was my only upgrade in the dirty water.  With about 2 hours ago, I ran to the east side of the lake, fishing Wayzata, St. Albans and around big island and never got bite.  As I idled into Fletchers from Crystal, I was feeling pretty bummed, as I was sure in my head that my weight was way too small to keep me in the top 12 and that I had a repeat disaster of last year’s TOC.

Turns out my fish, actually weighed 10.26lbs, not the 8-9lbs I had in my head, which at the time actually put me in 1st place with more then half the field weighed in.  I was actually shocked, that the field had struggled this much.  Not long after this, the Tournament Director flagged me down and asked me to take a walk with him.  I started to get an erie feeling, as this is not usually good news, well it was not, he informed me I was DQ’d for “non-emergency use of a communication device” for my Tweets that broadcasted to Facebook and were relayed to TD by a non-competitor Federation member.  Super sick feeling as I had to inform all my fellow anglers of the news as they all came up to me with smiles to congratulate my efforts.  Towards the end of the weigh-in, Nate Steinbauer of Baxter Bass Snatchers came in with a 17lb plus bag to match his first day catch and blow everybody’s doors off.  It was good to see somebody caught them like I figured every body would have on day 2.  I hung around, chatted and watch all the top 12 anglers and teams get their awards before I left.  It was also tough to watch the teams get their awards, as my club Gopher would have won the team title going away if it were not for my indiscretions.

In the end, tough lesson learned, but above is the X’s & O’s of my TOC, I may follow this up with a little more on the “Tweets” and the ruling, but we will keep that separate for now.  Besides, that would have been my 3rd runner up at the TOC, I don’t want to become the Aaron Martens of the Minnesota Bass Federation do I????

There is plenty of chatter on the internet if you want to find it already.

Day 3 greeted all anglers with morning wins and myself an 8lb deficit.  I decided to write off Big Bay de Noc and stick with Little Bay and south of Escanaba.  My plan was to try an area north and then head down to the Ford River area where I caught a quick 13lbs the day prior.  We had 5 foot waves right away at the mouth of the harbor.  We managed a few followers early, but could not convert them on spinnerbait and jerkbaits.  My partner had one area to try up there, caught a pike and had another follow.

By the time we got back down past the harbor, we were now looking at 6 foot plus waves, the interesting thing about this area of Lake Michigan, is we never had clean swells, they always had chop all over them and were breakers, which made running large waves particularly difficult.  It took us about 30 minutes to go the 8 miles, we were able to tuck in behind some shoals, which made the area very fishable.  Long story short, we never got any sun, and it turns out we needed that for these fish, 4 hours, a couple shorts and a few follows.  Sound like musky fishing

On the return trip, waves were exceeding 8 feet and we had no fish, what a great feeling.  We got back a little early and ducked into a pocket of water behind the harbor, I actually was able to catch a 15″ largemouth on a tube in a small clump of pads.  That was it, kind of a disappointing end of my tournament.  I ended up in 39th place and the team was 6th out of 8.

Congrats to Randy Wieczorek our National qualifier from Minnesota and Wes Haney, overall winner from WI.  Truthfully, anything less then a trip to nationals would have been disappointing.  Oh well, at least my boat did not end up like the pictures below, those large waves broke a lot of stuff on day 3.  This Wisconsin boat had its jackplate shear off while riding the waves back from Big Bay.

One other note, the America’s Best Value Inn (formerly Travelodge) of Escanaba was a great host to us tournament anglers, outlets all over the place outside, bag lunches for tournament days and spaghetti dinner on the final night, awesome to feel appreciated and welcomed as a tournament angler!

TIme to start preparing for TOC on Pokegama, so I can return to divisionals again and start this process over again.
Rich
RichLindgren.com 
Rich’s Bassin’ Forum
Bass Fishing Tackle Blog

Day 2 brought a little more wind, so we had a good 3-4 foot chop for my 23 mile run to my first area in Big Bay de Noc.  It took around 40 mins.  I had told myself the way to get back into the tourney was to bust a big bag with the swimbait.  The bite I found on Monday had turned into nothing but short fish and few follows.  We fished Big Bay until about noon and neither my partner or I had a keeper fish.  I decided it was time to hit the panic button and run to an area around Ford River that I had found fish around on Tuesday.  It took about 45 mins to get there.

When we got there, it did not take long before we found a large group of fish.  My partner caught a quick limit and I caught a nice limit on a SWL QuickStrike spinnerbait.  Being able to easily swap blades on my spinnerbait this week was a big deal, you really needed to burn your spinnerbaits, so matching smaller blades with heavier heads was the ticket for catching a lot of smallmouth.  I also caught a few nice fish on a Gobie colored Sweet Beaver.  With not much time left, I decided to give my Optimum Swimbait a whirl for a bigger fish.  It only took a few minutes to raise a big smallie that nosed my swimbait, I threw back with the Sweet Beaver and caught a nice 4lb smallmouth.  We each caught a few more fish, but nothing that helped, it was time to head back, we had about a 10 mile run north back to the harbor.
 
I ended up with 13lbs plus, but still lost ground to the team lead.  I was about 8lbs out, which is a lofty mountain, but it could happen if I could catch a decent bag, as many people caught 20lbs on day 1 and only weighed a single fish on day 2, so really anything could happen.  The fishing was pretty volatile through practice and the tournament thus far.

Rich
RichLindgren.com 
Rich’s Bassin’ Forum
Bass Fishing Tackle Blog