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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As I sat in the boat rigging up the night before the tournament, I decided that I needed to fish deeper, so my partner (Sport) and I agreed we would search for fish on the adjacent drops to where we saw and caught the best fish the previous weekend.  I tied on a 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten jig the night before and told myself that I was going to put it to use tomorrow.
 We were boat #1, so we cruised over to the flat where we saw fish last weekend, the wind was blowing in so we spent a few minutes throwing cranks & chatterbaits.  After a few minutes, we worked our way to the edge of the spring curly cabbage and Sport dropped a jig down into 8ft and caught a keeper just like that.  I quickly grabbed my jig and hopped up front to hold the boat and a few pitches later caught a 3lb bass.  Things were definitely looking up.  We continued down the edge and I busted a 14.75″ keeper and thought about tossing him back, but I didn’t.  Sport then answered by catching a nice keeper out of a weed hole near the end of a boat lift, then I pitched in there and caught a nice 16″+ fish.   Shortly there after that, Sport boated a keeper on a Rapala Hot Mustard DT6.

We continued to work our jigs, mostly deep, few fish off docks.  I probably threw 10+ keepers back after I had 4 fish in the well, trying to get a big bite, some of them were 16″ fish that I threw back.  Finally around 12:30 I busted a 3lb fish of another weed point and I was done.  Sport worked to the very last cast, & caught his fifth fish.  After I was done, I gave him my rod & reel with my jig setup and he caught them pretty good and caught two good fish to fill out his limit.  So all in all the jig pictured above, accounted for 7 of the 10 keepers weighed, several more that I did not keep as well as a dozen short fish.
  This is a picture of my first & last fish of the day, both around 3 lbs.  My total weight was 12.0lb with a 3.2lb big fish, good enough for 2nd, but first place money   Could have been better if I had not kept that 2nd small keeper, but that is part of the game when you are in a no cull tournament.

I also stormed back to win the blizzard bet with Brushhog, that will be sweet tasting when I lay my lips on it!  I also moved from 15th to 8th in the overall standings.  I also intend to duck tape my jig rod (G-Loomis 844 IMX / Shimano Castaic SF, 20lb Seaguar Flourocarbon) in my hands for the next two club tournaments on Clearwater & Chisago to make up some more ground, as I will be in Italy and not able to practice those two lakes.

Rich
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Let’s just start out by saying, I have had worse tournaments, but not many that I can recall. 

Neither Frank or myself spent much time practicing for this tournament, so we started in a place that I did well last time the club fished here and one of the few spots I checked the previous weekend.  We started in a shallow pad bay that a lot of lily pad roots which almost all of them were holding fish the previous weekend.  We each made a few casts with reaction baits and I quickly switched to a weightless ring fry. I started catching bass immediately, but none that exceeded the 14″ minimum.  About 15 minutes later I caught a 14 – 1/8″ keeper, I thought about it for a moment and tossed it back.  These first two club tournaments are both “no cull” tournaments, so once it goes into your livewell, there is stays, no upgrading.  My logic was, that I wanted to win the tournament and I was fairly confident that I would catch bigger fish, after all that was about my 6th fish of the day in the opening moments.

As you may have already guessed, things deteriorated from there on out.  I continued to catch short fish and my partner caught a keeper on a spook, he was smart enough to drop it in the well.  We continued to fish hard and about and hour later I caught another keeper, I smartly dropped that one in the box, although considered releasing it as well.  I caught that fish right before a little front passed through & before the skies turned high & blue.  I then decided that the majority of the fish were probably moving out of this bay, so we went out on the first drop of the mouth and I quickly started catching bass on a crawfish colored DT6, none keepers.   I then switch to a mojo rig and caught several more, again all short.  My partner makes on cast with a worm on a Ball Buster and gets his 2nd keeper.  We continue to check similar drops and I continue to catch a short fish here & there.

Pictured is the bait that I caught my 2 keepers on.  Weightless Lake Fork Ring Fry with 2 TT Force Beads held in place by a bobber stop.

We then head back shallow, I miss a good bite in a clump of pads, my partner then catches his 3rd keeper in that area on a 4″ senko.  We scramble around the rest of the day, each catch a few more shorts and I only weigh one fish, which left me mired in 15th place for the tournament.  Sounds like most of the better bags came on the drops, but they also caught their keepers early, so my move deep was a little late

Fortunately, I am wise enough to learn from my mistakes and I vowed to make Sunday a better tournament. Plus there was a blizzard bet on the line for the weekend, BrushHog & I had a blizzard bet for total weight for the weekend and I was in a 1.8 lb hole.

Rich
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Unlike previous years, I only made it to WI to practice one day for my first two club tournaments, so Sport & I split are day between the lakes.  We spent about the first 5 hours on Trade & less then 2 hours on Wood.  We got out around 8am on to Trade.  We jumped around and fished a bunch of different areas in both Big & Little Trade lakes.  Sport struck quickly with his new hand poured stick bait (senko) that he poured at home this winter while the rest of us were at the office

I went on to catch several fish in a row before Sport responded with another fish.  The water temp was around 60 when we started the day and many smaller bays had much warmer water.  In total between the two lakes, I caught 16 bass, 5 keepers and Sport caught 3 keepers total.  He mentioned something about quality over quantity.  The majority of my fish came on a baby ring fry, pic below.
  I rigged it weightless with just a bead or two in front held in place with a bobber stop.  I fished this on a spinning rod with 10lb flourocarbon.  The beads add just a touch of weight for casting and a little extra flash and clicking noise.  The other two baits that produced best were a small single colorago Secret Weapon Spinnerbait & a XCalibur xr50 Lipless crank in a craw pattern.
 
Couple things to note here, I did not employ a trailer hook on my spinnerbait while prefishing, but I will surely have one on during tournaments this weekend, and the red sure-set hook on the lipless crank seemed to help the fish take the bait well.  Sport caught his two other fish on a jig & a regular size ring fry.

All our fish on both lakes came in water less then 6ft.  We saw, John Atkins, Ron Smith & the Brant boys all over at Wood in the afternoon.  Here is a picture of Atkins big practice fish at Wood Lake.
 I could be mistaken, but it looks like a swimbait hanging next to his windshield on the left side of the picture……   Also, I think Ron helped John pulled an embedded hook out of his thumb that morning

Rich
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That means its time for me to head to WI and do some bass fishing.  I can honestly say, I do not think I have ever fished in MN on the MN opener…..

Tomorrow Sport (fellow Gopher club member) & I are heading to Grantsburg, WI to spend a couple hours on each of two lakes that I have tournaments on May 19-20.  I have fished both lakes before in club tournaments and have done well, but I feel the need to get over there and see what stage the lake is in so I can have a clue where to start come race day.

Should be fun, we are having great weather so I expect the fishing to be good.  The two lakes are Big Wood Lake and Big & Little Trade lakes.  I expect we will do a lot more driving around and looking rather then fishing.

Sunday, I plan to get my boat out on a local lake in Lakeville to make sure everything is firing on all cylinders   I am chomping at the bit, because I have not been on the water since my trip to Amistad.  I really intended to get our on the river this spring, but that has just not worked out.

Check back on Sunday or Monday for a report on my practice.

Rich
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