Sorry, this blog is about a month overdue. First off, the inaugural Classic Bass Champions Tour event was AMAZING! Classic Bass put on a great event and fishing an MLF (Major League Fishing) style tournament is a completely different kind of pressure over traditional 5 best bass style tournaments. It was also no coincidence they chose Mille Lacs Lake which was also recently recognized the worlds Best Bass Fishing Lake for 2017 by Bassmasters Magazine!
If you have never seen an MLF event on TV or on the Web, basically every legal keeper bass you catch counts, it is weighed by an in boat judge (thanks to Prior Lake HS Bass Club) and there is a live scoreboard all day through an app on your phone. The other really unique thing about this event, it was an invite only event, so to participate, you had to be selected.
Photo Highlights from Event
It was on honor just to be selected and I was super excited to fish against this field. You can see the results and field list here. I was able to get about 3 days of practice in for this event. My strategy was to check several parts of the lake so I would be prepared to fish multiple areas since they were likely to section up the lake for our event and to prepare for the wind. I also wanted to have baits I felt confident in so I wasn’t second guessing baits when I was looking for fish fast during the event. Because of the high winds and rough water, I didn’t set up my GoPro during the tournament, but you can check out my practice video which is very similar to how I caught them during the actual event.
The event ended up being split into morning and afternoon sessions, where we had to fish the East side of the lake during the first 4 hours and then after lunch (Thank Rocky Reef Resort for Lunch), we fished the west side of the lake for the final 4 hours.
The split caught me a little off guard based on the wind forecast, I made a big run across the lake only to find the area I planned to fish was completely blown out, I only caught two tiny keepers before getting tired of taking waves over the bow and stern of my boat. So I ducked into the closest protected water I could find and I hunkered down and made the best I could out of that area that I didn’t even practice. It turned out to be pretty productive, I was able to catch like 18 or 20 fish for about 43lbs which was good enough to be 3rd out of 24 for the first half. Here is an Instagram Video of the trip back to Rocky Reef at the end of the first half, water was a little rough.
In the second half, I got off to a slow start with only one 2lb fish in like 90 minutes. Finally, I got into an area where I got around some fish and it was calm enough to properly fish them, I made a big surge late to make it back to 3rd after falling out of the top 6 cut. Making the top 6 has qualified me for the Tournament of Champions where I get to fish for a Brand New Skeeter Boat in September. Watch this post tourney interview from Classic Bass as well for details on my day.
On the horizon, I am fishing the MN TBF TOC on Pokegama and back to Mille Lacs for the Minnesota BASS Nation TOC, so stay tuned for more posts and videos.
My first tournament of the year has come and gone, covering what went down in this blog. This is the first time I have ever fished an April tournament in MN or WI and not really fished this part of the Mississippi River in April. For those that hate reading, just jump right to my tournament recap video embedded below.
That being said I have fished several tournaments out of La Crosse including several BFLs. I was able to get two full days of practice the Thursday and Friday before the tournament and 2 hours on Wednesday night. From the time I launched my boat on Wednesday night to tournament morning, the water temps went from almost touching 60 degrees to 47-48 degrees in the area I started the tournament on.
In practice, I had decent success flipping a black blue tube rigged with a 1/4oz BassTEK Tungsten Flipping Weight as well as a 3/8oz Bladed Swim Jig paired with a Menace grub worked around wood and grass.
My Best Baits from Tournament & Practice
In the end, I could not find the current based staging fish and as cold as the water got, my slack water banks and flats became trash with the rapidly cooling water and it pushed the fish to people like Cade who smashed them! Check out his video to learn something about Mississippi River bass fishing.
Basically, during the tournament, my bites ended up being cut in a third from practice. I ended up 69th place out of 154. In the end, it was good to get the boat out and fish a derby early. On the down side, I caught a really nice head cold.
I really believe that the guys coming for the FLW Tour in a couple weeks will really catch them on the Mississippi River. The cold weather we had, will keep them fish from getting to Post Spawn for them, so they should have a lot of shallow biting fish to catch for their event. I think the weed flats around Stoddard and “The Box” will look and fish like the “Monkey Box” of Lake Okeechobee, other likely popular areas to fish will be Goose Island, Target Lake, & Lawrence Lake in Pool 8 and then Lake Onalaska in Pool 7, a few guys will likely make the run to fish the upper end of Pool 9 as well. Should be a very exciting tournament to follow, there will likely be spawning fish as well as a few frog fish starting to bite. Swim Jigs, Chatterbaits, and flipping techniques should be quite strong as well.
Been a long winter, but I am getting the itch big time this spring. Compared to last year, I am way ahead of the game, I actually got the boat out fishing on the Mississippi River on April 1st, it ran great and we caught some bass, all in all a good start. Pictured is one of the best fish of they day.
Pool 2 Spring Largie
Also, I finally got the bug to do some video editing of previously recorded GoPro footage I had some some drives. Trying out some new video editing software I just added to my new laptop.
Below is a pretty fun couple of hours of early fall bass fishing with Jason Holmer of Bass Utopia boiled down to 10 mins of highlights. We only weighed the 3 biggest fish, but the best 5 easily topped 25lbs.
All our fish were caught on flipping jigs and vibrating jigs, my jig of choice was a BassTEK 3/8oz Okeechobee Craw with various trailers. I also caught several fish later in the day on a Black Blue chatterbait style vibrating bladed jig.
My goal is to produce a lot more video content this year, leave a comment on this blog or on video, let me know what you want to see. Maybe even subscribe so you don’t miss any new videos!
Talk about a blog long overdue, this tourney ended the Friday after Labor Day. After a disappointing BASS Nation Divisional event on Vermillion, I was anxious to get back on the path back to BASS Nationals and possible another shot at getting to the Bassmater Classic.
After winning the TBF TOC on Gull earlier in the year, I did have a little confidence coming into the tournament. I only practiced 3 of the 4 official days allotted, saving some PTO time and being home for first day of kid’s school. All in all, I had a pretty rough practice, spending the majority of my time deep and checking occasional shallow areas, I think I only got a single 3lb bite in 3 days of practice. While not a great practice, it was actually better then the practice I had for the TBF and that turned out just fine.
I had one area that I was pretty confident that would produce a decent limit on a topwater bait or by flipping the edges of the deep weed edge. On Day 1, that spot gave up a few small fish on chatterbaits and crankbaits, but nothing that I was looking for. The day continued, mixing in some offshore with some shallow and ultimately all my fish came shallow skipping a 3/8oz Bluegill Colored BassTEK Tungsten Flipping jig around boat docks. My best weighed 11.32lbs and had me hovering somewhere around 33rd place out of 188 anglers and after 2 days the top 20 would advance to Lake Guntersville in April 2016.
Day 1 Gull Lake BASS Nation TOC
Going into 2nd day, I felt like I need to have about 12lbs to move up enough to make the top 20. I started out offshore and alternating again and did get once decent keeper flipping a tube craw in 8ft of water, but ultimately leaned on the dock pattern most of the day to fill a limit and catch a few decent 2lb fish. About mid day, I caught a fish punching a shallow milfoil mat around some wood and it was a nice upgrade at the time. I took that as a clue and ran that pattern for a bit and culled most of my early limit almost calling my shots for about 90 minutes. Check out the following video to see some of the fish caught this way. These punching fish all came in Big Bite Bait Tube Craws in Green Pumpkin with a 3/4oz BassTEK Tungsten Flipping Weight, 20lb Sunline Fluoro on a Dobyns 765 Flipping Stick.
Havaing a box full of 2lbr mid day on this pattern, I was feeling decent knowing I really just need one more good bite. I spent the rest of the day shallow chasing that bite, but it never materialized. I ended up with 10lbs on day 2 and remained in about the same place as I stared the day, 34th place. Kudos to the angler that caught them and are moving on to Guntersville. I fished very clean and my weight reflected what I caught during practice, just never got those key bites I did in the TBF tournament earlier in the summer. One slight bright spot, is our bass club Twin City Bass won the team portion of the event for the 3rd year in a row and Brian Bengston is moving on to Guntersville to represent our club.
This was pretty much my last tournament of the year, except for participating in a Minnesota Match Fishing event that was a lot of fun as well. I did do quite a bite of fun fall fishing in October and early November, I will have some videos coming soon on that, in the mean time, check out my Instagram account to see some of my best catches and 15 second fish catch videos.
Drop a comment if there are things you would like to see on my blog this winter.
First off, my last tournament, which was the Lakeville Pan-O-Prog bass tournament was a total bomb, 6 fish for 10.4lbs, first time not cashing a check in that event. So after having a terrible weekend of practice for this Gull Lake state tournament, I was itching to get my swagger back as my fishing confidence was definitely pretty low.
I had some success on Gull back in a BASS Nation State Tournament in 2001 where I was runner up, but since then, only fished there a handful of times with mix results and since then, there is a lot more milfoil and cleaner water due to zebra mussels, so fishing what worked 10+ years ago probably wasn’t the answer.
My game plan for this tournament was to keep an open mind and rely on my strengths, which is power fishing with a jig. I stated the first morning with a topwater as that produced fish the weekend before, but the fish really weren’t having it. From there I fished new water bouncing around deep and shallow, mostly fishing a 1/2oz BassTEK Tungsten Flipping jig paired with a Stike King Menace grub as a trailer. Focusing on points and inside turns on weedlines and other shallow areas that looked good based on wind and current conditions. It didn’t take me to long to fill my limit and start upgrading a bit at a time.
Day 1 – 14.37lbs
Mid morning I got two really good bites, a 3.5lb fish deep and a 4.45lb fish shallow, both on a jig, from there I just kept at it and upgraded a few ounces here and there to get to 14.37lbs, which was good enough for 2nd place after day 1. Thanks to Rick Pelletier for some great net jobs and going along with the flow as I made things up as we went.
It felt great to be near the top of the leaderboard after day 1, but I also new that I would have to fish mostly new water on day 2 and that withouth getting a few key bites, 8lb was as likely a results as another 13-14lbs bag. On day 2, I drew former club member Steve Brummer and he was more then game to fish the moment and the conditions as well.
Day 2 started with a few decent fish and a few small fish to fill an early limit and then we bounced around slowly keeping my jig wet and bites came steadily building a decent limit. My biggest fish on day 2 was 3.3lbs and the rest were all 2 to 2.75lb fish.
The main keys for me were not fishing history and fishing the conditions and having a bait that I had a ton of confidence in. I chose my jig because it required little maintenance. On day 2 I only went through 2 jig trailers due to my Jig Sling keeping it on place and secure, which meant more time casting and less time fixing my bait.
Day 2 – 13.62lbs
The end result was 13.62lbs and a 1st place finish. Felt great to get a win over a solid field with several local Gull anglers in the field. Also, cool that my dad was able to finish 4th on the non-boater side, so we both qualified for the 2016 TBF Northern Divisional in South Dakota next year. Final Results Here.
I know in my last post, I said I was going to blog more, not that great, but here I am. Work, Business, Family and other stuff has kept me off the water more then I would have chosen.
I have only fished 3 small tournaments thus far, but good news, cashed checks in all of them. Winning would have been better, but anytime you are cashing and losing less money then most, so that is a good thing!
Two of the tournaments I fished down in La Crosse with my buddy Kevin, we fished some Bass World Sports team tournaments, got big bass in both and got 3rd and 4th places. They may tournament all are fish fell pray to Bladed Swim Jigs and Tubes, no real surprise for the river.
15lb Pool 7 Bag from May
The early June tournament, we got most of our fish flipping 3/8oz Black and Blue BassTEK Tungsten jigs on various types of cover for a nice mixed bag of fish.
Grinding to 14lbs & 3rd Place on Pool 8
The other event was a Bass Pursuit event on O’Dowd on June7th, it was a tough bite, but we scratched out a few 2-3lbrs on Dropshot and 3/8oz BassTEK Jigs in Magic Craw on deeper weed edges bordering hard bottom areas. The weights were so low, we didn’t even both to snap a picture of the fish.
Quick Pic of some Magic Craw Goodness!
Next up this week is the annual Pan-O-Prog event on Lake Marion which is close to home. It always seems to be a grind, but it’s nice to fish a few events close to home.
To close, here is a recent video on a local pond to my house. I don’t always have a ton of time to get out in the boat, but I sneak a little fishing in when I can, not bad eh?
First off, apologize to you long time readers that made the transition to the new site, as you have not been rewarded with new content here. I am planning on changing that, effective immediately. While I am not going to promise a new post every day, I do plan to try to do something small every day to make this blog a better site again and get it back to the form it once was.
When I was forced off my old platform, many of my posts suffered, broken links and lost images. So some of the most popular posts will get reworked so they are readable and usable again.
Also, I added my Twitter feed on the right side of the page, so that should make things a little more interactive and fresh. I have also added videos to the video page and freshened up some of the other pages on this website.
And most importantly, try to at least blog a few times a month here instead of a few times a year like last year.
Also, please leave a comment or shoot me a message via Facebook or Twitter and let me know what you would like to see more of here. Whether it be tips, tournament recaps, videos or other.
First off, I am not happy or pleased with how I finished at the B.A.S.S. Nation National Championship presented by Old Milwaukee. But it for sure was an honor to represent the State of MN and the Minnesota B.A.S.S. Federation Nation in this event. I assure you all it was not for a lack of effort, but likely came down to some decision making on locations in the end.
I was fortunate to get about 2.5 days of pre-practice before the cut-off and based on my research I had made up my mind, win, lose or draw, to put all my eggs into fishing D’arbonne Bayou. The little info that was available suggested most tourneys were won in there and that the average size of fish was better there. It also suggested that you would sacrifice the number of bites one could potentially get, but the chance of quality fish was best there.
My entire pre-practice was spent in the 35 mile long bayou and its adjoining sloughs. The first morning, I launched at the spillway below D’arbonne Lake where Jamie Horton had won the previous Championship held here. It was full of bait and gar, but not much from bass that I could find. The rest of the day, my dad and I explored the upper 1/3 of D’Arbonne, finding a few fish and lots of time learning to navigate. I would’ve had a decent limit fishing square bills on cypress trees and my dad got some decent bites flipping plastic.
1st Ouachita River Bass was a decent one
My next practice day, we launched at Hollands Bluff and fished from the mouth of Long Slough down to Cross Bayou, and checked out Circle Slough and the part of Cross. It was actually a pretty good, day, we got on a deal where we were nearly calling our shots when we found deeper cypress trees with 3-5′ of water on them, mostly flipping a beaver to the shady sides of targets.
My dad found the biggest Bayou bass I saw in my boat
My last day I looked the middle part of the bayou, the bean field and the other side of Cross bayou, had to sort through small bites, but would have managed a limit and starting to build confidence in the style of fishing.
The first official practice day, I made the 80 minute run from take-off to the spillway. Coby Carden off Alabama arrived moments after I and we both checked things out, I never saw him catch anything and I only managed two small spotted bass on a Muscle Squared crankbait. From there, I started working my way down the bayou checking on stuff from pre-practice, I caught a decent keeper on a square bill early on and then switched to flipping so I could better pull on fish. And the bites came fairly steady while flipping, some felt better then others, but I pulled on them all. I felt pretty confident that I could have had a decent limit fairly early that morning, but there was also a lot of traffic in the upper bayou where I was. All in all it was a very good practice day, until I made a mis-step in the S-turns on my way back in and put a nasty gouge in the bottom of the boat.
Practice Keeper on Square Bill
My second and final official practice day was spent riding shotgun with Brett Reid (Ohio Youth Director) who was awesome enough to take me out while my boat was getting patched. I concentrated on the lower end of the bayou. I started in Cross and caught a fish on a spinnerbait way in the back by the small bridge and had another bite on a buzzbait. On the way back out, I had several fish hit a crankbait that I pulled on and also pulled on some bites on laydowns flipping. From there I checked out areas and it wasn’t awesome, but I was getting bites on my square bill and flipping. I ended up catching 3 keepers and pulled on several more.
Not sure if I over thought things in my head or let the patch get in my head, but I decided to fish the lower bayou on day 1, and move up the next two days. I started and worked large sections of Cross Bayous with nothing but frustration to show, thinking maybe I had a few short strikes on my square bill. Moving up to some of my deeper cypress tree fields, it took me until after 10am to boat my first keeper and it was barely a keeper at that. The next large field yield two more keepers flipping a beaver, but 3 fish for 3-15 was all I could manage and was mired in 41st place after day 1.
Below is a video show casing the boat ride from Forstyh Park to D’arbonne Spillway that I did on the first practice day, but wished I had done every tournament day.
On day 2, I started in the deeper trees, quickly caught a 13″ keeper, but the rest of the large area produced nothing. My second produced a barely keeper and the 3rd area I fished a large area and only for one more keeper. From there I ran about 15 miles up the bayou and fished some key areas on the way back down and scratched out a small limit flipping a hematoma beaver and a Junebug Kompak craw. I felt better about getting a limit and staying in the game, I moved up about 10 spots, but lost ground on the leaders of my division.
On the final day, I felt I had two choices, either go all the way up to the spillway and fish my way down, or enter a larger slough or bayou on the lower end and just keep my baits wet. As far back as I was, I convinced myself to stay away from where several of the leaders were fishing, even though, that was my primary area in practice, and I spent a little time in Cross bayou where I caught a decent keeper on a spinnerbait and then the rest of the day in Boggy. I managed two more keepers in Boggy, on spinnerbait and chatterbait, plus a handful of shorts and a few more short strikes. Another 3 fish for 3lbs and change effort made for a disappointing finish.
1st Keeper on Day 3 – Spinnerbait
I actually fished a very clean tournament, not losing any fish that I had hooked, but felt very angry with myself that I didn’t commit to the upper end of the bayou where 4 of the 6 classic qualifiers spent the majority of their time. Most of us know that bass fishing is very mental and comes down to decisions and I am not happy with my decisions made each morning. Which made for a long drive home to MN from Louisiana and will make for a longer then normal winter.
The next video is a sampler of fishing scenery & a few fish catches
Thanks to all of you that texted, emailed, messaged me during practice and before each day of competition. Also thanks to the Family, Friends & Sponsors that helped me along the journey.
BASS puts on a first class event at this level and I am fueled more then ever to fish hard to get back! Congrats to the 6 anglers who “Survived” the Ouachita River, as it was very tough on equipment and the anglers all week!
Last video is a compilation of take-off and weigh-in video from each day of the event.
Plus I met a lot of new bass friends at this event, the group representing the Northern Division was a great bunch of guys to hangout with all week as well as the anglers from other states and countries.
I look forward to getting back to another BASS National event and the next shot is in August on Lake Vermillion, it will be a dog fight being on MN waters, but I look forward to the challenge!
I am always excited to get back to La Crosse and fish a tournament, it is just a really fun place to fish most of the time. Not always easy, but usually a good time. I went down with the plan to power fish the grass and slop as that is often the deal in July even though recent high waters would likely have trashed some of the usually good areas on Pool 8. I was able to get down after work on Wednesday evening and get out in the Goose Island area for a few hours before dark, bass fishing was actually pretty easy that night, lots of fish willing to eat my Evolve Nervous Walker Frog, but not much over 2lbs.
Because of special Wisconsin DNR regs for summer tournaments, this was only a 3 fish limit, so normal quality 2.5lb tourney fish wouldn’t be good enough for a check this week.
That being said, my game plan was to set the hook on everything until I found 3lb plus fish, because I knew that is what was needed to hang in this event.
Bass Fishing is often just as awesome as the scenery in La Crosse!
Through the next two days of practice, no shortage of bites running all over the bottom half of Pool 8, but 3lb fish were rare and spread out for me. I found plenty of fish that would be decent in a regular tourney, so I was going to basically going to have to get a lucky bite in this tournament. At this point, I don’t remember my take off number or flight. I started on some banks in the Goose Island area, caught a quick keeper on a buzzbait and another competitor started opposite bank from me and caught 3 good fish, bummer deal, that was my next stop. Decision making and timing are such huge deals in tournament fishing.
After that I went to flip grass edges with deeper drops, that place dried up from previous days. Quick stop to fill my limit on a smallie spot that produced small keepers and then back to frogging and flipping. The following video shows my 3 best keepers from the next area and the 3 fish that I weighed. Caught on Nervous Walker Frogs and Evolve Kompak Craw punched in grass mats.
Tried a handful of other areas during the day, but I ended up with exactly what I had in practice, 3 fish for 7.5lbs and a slightly better then average finish but no check.
Next tourney BASS Nation Northern Divisionals on Monroe Lake in Bloomington, IN.
What I really needed in this event was a bite like this one in the below video from Lake Waconia!
Starting to lose track how many years I have fished the Pan-O-Prog bass fishing tournament, but I started fishing it every year when I moved to Lakeville, so it must be 9 or 10 years now. In the early years, I spent quite a bit of time practicing out on Lake Marion, but in recent years, I am lucky if I have 4-5 hours on the lake from one year to the next between tournaments. After how badly the Bass Pursuit tourney went out there for us, I was hoping to get a little more time.
But this year was no different, I spent a little time scouting the Sunday before the event, bouncing around looking deep for weed growth and potential schools of fish, I found a little of both, but nothing great. My partner Paul, got out fishing for a few hours as well, and found a few deep fish as well. We drew boat 31 out of 35 on tournament morning, so with little to go on, we started on a place that had been good to me in the past.
The first stop produced a few small keepers but not what we needed so we tried a few docks and then out to a deep coontail clump. It didn’t take long for Paul and I to fill our limit on drop shots and start the culling process. The drop shot fish came on 4″ wacky ReSticks and 4″ Biovex Kolt Shad Tails. You can check out the embedded YouTube video to see our fish catches from the 6 fish that we weighed.
After that spot stopped producing we bounced around the lake finding a few upgrades here and there but mostly fish that wouldn’t help. Right at the end, we returned to our starting area and I got us one final upgrade flipping a Pumpkin Oil Kompak Craw into the milfoil.
Bagging them up in the Rain
Our final weight was a respectable 18.3lbs, but weights were up this year and it was only good enough for 6th place and small check. Sometimes the bigger bites just don’t fall your way and that is the way it goes.
