Well the stars aligned this year and the BFL slipped back one weekend and I had an open weekend to fish the event out of Alma.  Although I did not have the amount of practice I’d of liked to have, though I would go for it anyways.  I was able to fish the Sunday before the event and the day before on Friday.  The water fell over a foot between Sunday and Friday, so that made much of my Sunday practice irrelevant.

Friday practice was mixed results, I actually got plenty of bites, while pulling on most, the few that I hooked did not show promise of the 3lb plus class fish that would be needed for this event.  Most of my success was coming flipping current banks with a Okeechobee Craw Pit Boss on a 1/2oz weight.  I tried plenty of grass but never seem to find the right stretches.  I did have one main river rock area where I got a couple of quality smallmouth bites, including the 19″ fish on an A-rig.

I drew boat 59, and my co-angler seemed like a pretty good guy.  I started on a small grass/gravel point, it only produced on small 14″ largemouth on a Yellow Magic popper.  My co-angler did get a nice largemouth on a frog as we fish down the grass a bit farther, we got several bites in the area, but I think many were pike.  I then whipped into an area up river that seemed to look right.  I missed a couple smallmouth there, but they were probably just keepers.  The next area, was where I had gotten some bigger smallmouth in practice, current was super strong in this area.  My partner got a smallmouth close to 3lbs on a jig and I caught a 2lb smallmouth on an A-rig.  We made several more passes here with no more fish.

I then went and fished several areas in Indian Slough, I was able to get my 3rd fish and upgrade a couple times flipping a Pit Boss on banks with wood, rock & grass.  My partner also got a squeaker largie on a beaver to fill his limit.  He also missed a few nice bites on a frog.

We then returned to my rock area, we each got a smallmouth that culled for us, but then again no more bites.  I then hit some more flipping water on the MN side and culled on more fish flipping.  Time was running out, we hit a few things on the way back to Alma, but no more upgrades.

I ended up 62 out of 100 with 3 fish for 7lb 3oz, my partner who had fewer bites had slightly better quality and got 18th and a small check on the co-angler side.  Not sure I could have done much different in the tournament, other then I should have probably covered more water and found better areas in practice.

Onward and upward to the next tournament, can’t win them all.  On another note, I am glad I fished this BFL, as I was very impressed with how they ran their tournaments!

I only spent a few hours looking at the lake on two different mornings the week of the tournament for practice.  Lake Marion is not a big lake, so I feel like I just need to locate a few fish to start on and get a feel for what the fish are doing each year.  The Saturday before the event, the first spot I checked, I caught a 3.5lbr and my buddy Bill got 2 keepers on our first 3 casts.  As tough as Marion has been lately, I knew this would be our starting deal if we could get a good draw & be first boat there.

I was fortunate enough to draw boat #7 and we were able to get to our desired area first.  It was not lights out when we got there, it took awhile to get bit and a few casts more before Ryan got our first keeper in the boat on a flick shake.  Ryan was able to get another keeper before we doubled up and that gave us 4 fish, with three of them being pretty small.  Finally Ryan got a 3lb fish hooked up and in to the net, things were looking up.

Sunday I practiced for the Alma BFL, as I hope to keep this momentum rolling!

I only caught one keeper in practice, saw a few more and pulled on some better bites, but Josh was pulling on tons of bites and getting quality when he did lean back on one.  Check his report for the details.

We got to our best stretch and had it to ourselves, less wind and sun then in practice, but we gave it a go and got a few bites.  The bites were fairly steady throughout the day, but they never materialized into fish in the box.  Most results in torn baits with missing appendages or short fish.  It was honestly baffling to have less then a 10% hook up rate even letting the fish swim off with  your bait.

We only managed 3 fish for 7lbs and change, in retrospect, we probably should have tried finessing them off the edges, but the practice was so strong just the afternoon before and the bites were still there.  The only way to really deal with these two sub-par tourneys is to take a lesson and move on.

We found some things we really liked in our practice, but the main issue was how obvious these spots were and we had high certainty of plenty of company come tournament day.  The primary pattern we found fish in was shallow largemouth that trying to spawn or just barely on the front or backside of their annual ritual.  Our practice was pretty consistent, finding a few good fish here and there until late on Friday afternoon before tournament registration.  We found a small little boat canal all by itself that was stuffed with bass.  Josh and I both agreed it was one of the craziest things either of us had seen.  This small shallow canal, was just loaded with bass, big bass, bluegills, slab crappies, gar, in fact it looked better then most Bass Pro or Cabela’s aquariums.

After a long debate, we both agreed to roll the dice and put are eggs in the basket where we saw the huge load of fish.  We drew boat #23 out of 42, we came around the corner and thought we were first boat into this small area.  Although, there was a fishing boat catching bluegils just inside the front entrance, it also seemed water had gotten a little dirtier in this area.  We kindly asked to pass them and we got in position to start fishing slowly into this area.  As we started making our firsts casts we saw a tournament boat towards the back, obviously they ran past the front entrance and started in the back.  Fairly quickly, both Josh & I got a short and then Josh put a nice 2.7lb largemouth in the box on a Havoc Pit Boss.  Starting to feel good, another local bass boat emerged from way back fishing towards us.

Long story short, we tried to make this area work and blind fish it slowly, but dirty water, boat traffic and home owners fishing from their docks got the best of us; three hours into the tournament we still had just the one keeper.  We bailed from the area and went to fish similar structure that was also sure to be community stuff.  I quickly put a small keeper in the boat on a wacky rig (sign that things are not going well, when I am throwing a wacky rig).  We were about to get to a back area to try to catch some bedders only to find another boat leaving from there.  We continued to work these areas and tried to catch two bedders of our own, only to still have two fish with about 2 hours to go.

When things were looking super grim, I caught two decent keepers on a baby brush hog on an inside weedline.  We tried to work that area and another area like it for that fifth fish, but were stuck on four with about 90 minutes left.  We decided to live or die in our starting area, hoping some of the afternoon sun pulled more fish back into the canal that was so loaded just 24 hours earlier.  We did manage one small male sight fishing to fill our limit and setup on a couple females that just would not commit before we had to weigh-in.

Don’t forget to enter the May contest for a free $50 gift card to Sportsman’s Warehouse.

Even with the brutal conditions, it seemed there was a decent morning bite in the backwaters where we started.  I had a limit by shortly after 8am casting a Big Bite Baits tube to shallow wood, rocks & weeds.  I caught some small fish and some 16-17″ class fish early in the day on this pattern.  I stuck with it the rest of the day mixing in occasional reaction baits.  I did catch a few bass on a 1/2oz Ayu Biovex Stangun spinnerbait, one fish on a D-Bomb and a couple on a flipping jig, but I think all the fish weighed came on a tube.

Not much for pictures, because it was a paper/measure tournament. I did take one quick pic of my 18-5/8″ Largie!

My best 5 fish:
18-5/8″
17″
16.5″
16.5″
16.5″

That converted to 15.44lbs which was good enough for 4th place.  I fished pretty clean, just never made adjustments to get the bigger bites needed!  It was great just to get to put some of my newer Dobyns Rods to the test, they never disappoint! This weekend of to Lake Winnebago chain for some practice for an upcoming NABC tournament.

Watch for a contest announcement tomorrow!

This year, I drew Paul Coffey, neither of us had been on this West Metro Lake before, but had heard a few good things, so we were excited.  We started the day by side scanning an area we thought looked right from map and looking at the shore.  We quickly found a patch of rocks.  After about 15 minutes, I loaded up on a nice 3.75lb fish on a Carolina Rigged Game Hawg.  We tried the spot a bit longer, but decided to head shallow.  With the lake not being huge, we wanted to the first to some of the shallow fish before others got the idea as well.

I doubled up on a good fish on the first dock but came unbuttoned.  We kept at it and it did not take long to fill our 6 fish limit with 2-3lb fish.  I was also fishing a buzzbait and a Phenix vibrating jig over the grass.  I picked up our 7th fish on the Phenix jig and it was easily over 4lbs.  We continued to hunt & peck along shallow cover, picking up a few upgrades here and there.  One of the last docks we hit, Paul nailed another 4lbr on a ring fry.

We then headed back to our deep spot, thinking the warming air and sun would position the fish out there.  Paul got a 3.5 & a 4.5lbr on a football jig to end our day.

Our total ended up being 23.98lbs for 6 fish and our big fish was only 4.49lbs, so we got to 24lbs the old fashion way, all 4lbrs.  We caught around 25 keepers for the day.  I hope to fish the Simply Fishing Marine tournament this Saturday as well.

Saturday morning, I went directly to my best area and the boat right behind me had the same idea, good thing I did not daddle.  On my first cast with a Vixen topwater, I boated a keeper smallie.  I stuck with it for awhile with no more bites.  I then went to dragging plastics, and I was able to coax 3 bites including a 19.5″ beauty.

We hunted around the rest of the lake, I was able to get 3 more keepers on soft plastics.  Other then that, we caught some northerns, walleyes and short bass.  It ended up being a long grueling day.  In the end, I was one of two limits caught by 19 guys.  Mine was the largest limit, 10.6lbs with the big fish as well. 

Sunday brought a new challenge, as I never spent anytime on that side.  I started running points in the morning with topwater.  On my 2nd spot, I had one hit, but couldn’t get any fish to commit on the topwater or jigs.  I kept moving and finally scored a 12.5″ smallie on the topwater.  I then slowed down and fished it with plastics.  I dumped a nice keeper next to the boat and then caught a short.

I stuck with soft plastics for the rest of the day, catching one here and one there.  Ended up catching 6 keepers total of 10.4lbs, this time there were 3 limits and mine was 2nd largest.

In total, 19 guys produced only 5 limits in 2 days.  I got 13 keeper bites in 2 days and that was the most by far.  Should be a challenging state tournament come next September.

Glad I caught some fish this weekend, as I was able to hold on to my AOY lead and finished 1st with a razor thin margin of 36lbs over 8 tournaments.