In some what of a last minute deal, I decided to fish the TBF/MFBA Southern Open so I could potentially qualify for their state tournament in late September.  With limited time, I only had Saturday to practice, the day before the tournament.  I got up super early and drove down from Lakeville so that I was fishing on Pool 6 of Mississippi river by 6:30am.

It didn’t take me long to start finding fish and actually found fish all day long on several patterns.  I caught them main channel & backwater, pads, grass, & wood.  Also found good largemouth & smallmouth.  No real giants but found some real good quality.  I figured if I could get a good average bag and find one kicker I could do real well in this tournament.  Below pictured is my first frog fish of the year, good to get off the snide and it would not be the last of the weekend.

Tournament day came, we launched out of Dick’s Marina in Winona.  All the boats in front of me appeared to be headed to the lock and Pool 5A.  I ran to the spillway, very frustrating as I lost 2 really nice largemouth on topwaters, but boated one decent one on an Ima Square Bill.

From there, I ran to a silted in wing dam that produced nothing, but I found some smallies on an adjacent sand drop, where I dumped a good’un and caught a decent smallmouth on the square bill.  I also flipped up a small keeper smallie on a beaver.  The next area produced a keeper largemouth on the Square Bill and another on a Fork Craw.   We kept hunting, the next area produced several shorts and about a 3lb largie for my co-angler on a jig.  I also failed to convert on 3 nice bites on a beaver, weird deal, seemed like they were eating it funny. Good thing we’d bought ourselves a couple extra AR-15 upper receivers, for after so much hunting, you would need to change the components of your gun.

Hit a few more spots, between us we flipped a couple small keeper bass on a cut/wood bank on beavers, and then headed to the slop for the last 90 minutes or so.  Took a little while to locate where the fish had repositioned in this large slop field.  I managed to add three 2.5-3lb largies on frogs to my creel.  Time as short, so we started the run back to Dicks.  We made it out of the backwater and through the side slough and were in the main channel headed north.

Then in an instant, our day was over as we went from 53 mph to a 360 spin and dead in the water in an instant and my motor was hanging from the back of my boat by just the steering cables.  It all happened so quick, but I believe I made contact with a submerged dead head.  I am just glad we both stayed in the boat and neither of us were hurt.

Got back to the landing too late to weigh my fish, but thankfully several of my competitors were nice enough to help me lift my motor on to the back of my boat and thanks to the friendly recreational boater who gave me a tow.  Here are few pictures and see all the pictures here.

I figured I had around 13lbs in the well, more then enough to move onto the state qualifier out of Wabasha and maybe on the fringe of a check.  Don’t know the final verdict yet, but I believe the boat may be a total loss at this point.

Caught a lot of good fish in this boat!

The norm for Gopher Bassmasters is to fish two tourneys back to back on the same weekend.  For July we were fishing Lake Minnetonka twice and launching from different ends.  Saturday we launched from Maxwell Bay.  I had not been on lake since mid June and that was my only trip on Tonka this year for a Jr Tourney that I captained for.

My plan was to start deep in Cook’s Bay and try to find some good fish and use shallow as a backup plan.  The spot I wanted to start on had a boat on it, so I tried a deeper rock spot with not bites, I moved in and flipped the foil, missed a bite, caught a short and caught 12 incher.  The next deep rock/foil area produced no bites, but I slipped in on some docks nearby and caught 3 more tiny keepers to have 4 fish that would not have weighed 5lbs.  From there, I swung back out on the foil edge and fished along.  Shortly there after we ran into a school and we caught 11 nice keepers in about 15-20 minutes in 50yd stretch.  I caught mine on tubes & jigs.  These were nice fish, with a few in the 3-4lbs range.

I then went to where I wanted to start and immediately caught a 3.5lb fish on a football jig.  No more bites, spent the rest of the day bouncing around rocks, foil & docks.  My partner ended up filling out his limit and I caught some fish, but nothing to cull up with.  I finished the day will just under 18lbs and 4lb 3oz was my big fish.  It was good enough to first, but there were several nice bags in the tourney that day.

Sunday was a new day, new partner and launching out of Gray’s Bay.  I started on some weedlines and rock in Brown’s Bay.  I caught decent fish on a tube right away, then caught a musky and then a tiny keeper.  We then made the run to check the school I had in Cook’s.  I got some bites, but really had to work for them, losing one nice bite and catching a few including one fish close to 4lbs by deadsticking a jig worm.

We tried several more spots, nothing produced, so we went fishing shallow in St. Albans and I culled my really small fish with some 14″ fish and my partner ended up with 4 fish.  Much tougher day for us and turns out everyone else.  I ended up with 11.43lbs, which got me 3rd place and also enough to advance to 3rd round of Match Fishing.  See full results.  I also extended my healthy lead on the AOY race with two tournaments left.

Got a family vacation this coming week, hope to do some ocean fishing and then some more tourneys in August!

My partner Ryan Brant & I fish Tuesday July 5th for a good chunk of they day, which for the most part was very unproductive.  I did jump one nice fish off on shallow weed point when we first got out there.  So we ended up starting there.

I quickly caught a fish close to 3lbs on a Baby Ring fry on a mojo rig, Ryan that lost a beautiful 3-4lbs bass that jumped off his flick shake setup.  We got or 2 more fish there and the bite died.  We tried some docks, picked up a few small fish and fish some inside weedlines and scratched up a limit with a few decent fish.

We returned to our starting spot and culled once then went to a similar area and Ryan got a 3.5lbr on shakey worm. We then went out to a handful of deep spots where all I caught was a northern pike on at DT20.  Hit a few more shallow areas, caught some small fish that didn’t help the bag.

We returned to our starting spot and I immediately got a 3lb plus fish on Lake Fork Hyper stick on a shakey head.  Just after that I lost a big fish in similar fashion to Ryan’s jumping off halfway to the boat.  I ended up getting one more small cull on that spot before we had to go in for weigh-in.

We still had 2 small fish in our box, which made the nice ones that gave us the slip sting a little more.  We finished with 6 fish for 15.92lbs and 4th place.  First place was 18lbs and change, those lost fish would have gave us 19-20lbs, but that is fishing. Intensifying my love to hate relationship with finesse fishing with fairy wants
 Find full results here.

Still a nice little pay day on a Lake that is close to home!  Two tournaments on Minnetonka this weekend, should be fun, have not been out there in over a month and have no chance to practice for these tournaments.

Fresh off a win on Saturday, it was time to get back at it on Sunday.  I had overtook first place in AOY for Gopher Bassmaters on Saturday, but i was fishing with my good buddy Josh Douglas who was hot on my heels on Lake O’Dowd.  We both did a little prefishing independent of each other and Josh has put his time in on this little gem over the years.

It’s always fun to fish with a good pal like Josh, but challenging at the same time, because he is a very talented fisherman and you can be certain we will be sharing each others fish all day.  If you pit Josh around fish, he is going to catch his share.

We worked well together all day, taking turns running the boat, sharing the front deck a good majority of the time and running lots of productive water.  We bounced back and forth between shallow & deep all day, the majority of our fish came shallow on weightless ring fry setups; but we also each weighed 2 key fish on deeper water.  It was fun to register my first football jig fish of the year.

Fairly early in the day, I got a 4.23lb bite on a ring fry, other then that we spent all day trading blows with each other slinging fish in the 2-3 lbs class all day.  It was humorous, as we were both sure the other one had more weight then the other all day.

In the end i weighed 16.01lbs, which was only good enough for 4th but I squeaked ahead of Josh by .3lbs, so I guess i retain slim bragging rights until next time.  Hats of the the guys that weighed 17-18lb bags, we even had a 6.45lb fish weighed in our tournament, clearly post-spawn fish.  Probably would have been 7lbs 2 weeks ago!

I retained my AOY lead and in a few weeks we head to MInnetonka for two tournaments.  But in between, I will be concentrating on the Pan-O-Prog bass tournament on Lake Marion.  Fun little tournament that is close to my heart, really want to get a win there this year!

We had a quick turnaround between Gopher Bassmaster club tournament weekends between late May and early June, but I did prefish both lakes for a few hours the weekend before; thanks to Simply Fishing Extreme Marine for getting me back on the water.  I had an idea of the kinds of things that I wanted to do on this lake.  New thing this year, I want to try to spend the first 20 minutes or so gambling for a bigger bite or two on each event, then worry about limit fish.  With that being said, water temps were in the mid 60’s to start and I had a couple small subtle points with grass and hard bottom hoping to intercept some staging fish early. 

That did not pan out, so we ran into a couple of small boat canals.  I caught 2 out of the first canal on a black 4″ tube and another boat beat us into the other cut, so we killed a little time where I caught a fry guarder on a ring fry and then went in afterwards.  I quickly caught a small 4th keeper on a tube and then I saw a couple good fish on a bed.  While i worked those fish, my partner Rick caught 3 good keepers on a stick worm out the back of the boat.  I finally tempted the smaller fish of the 2 nice fish on a white jig, and the bigger fish split.

We then headed to a section of docks, where we hooked a few shorts and lost one keeper and saw several cruising fish that we could not tempt.  Shortly after that I caught 2 fry guarders on a drop shot setup, culling 2 of my 13″ fish.  Rick also picked up his 4th keeper out of some cattails.

Rick them took over and ran the trolling motor through a large reed and pad flat.  He quickly put his 5th fish in the boat.  A little bit alter, I hooked and landed a 4lb class fish blind casting a weightless ring fry.  Not much longer, i see a really good fish just suspending about 10 feet from boat, I managed to get my ring fry in front of her without spooking and gobbled it right up and it was another 3lb  plus fish in the boat.  We kept pecking away in this reed flat, and i saw a good fish scoot around the boat, but I noticed it quick resettled on light spot behind the boat, so I asked Rick to hold the boat for a little bit.  It only took me a few minutes to tempt this nearly 4lb fish with my tricked out white jig.

Working through the pads, Rick was able to get another 3lb fish and get rid of his one little one, so I ran to where I saw some big fish the week before.  I quickly caught another 3lb fish around 1pm out of a boat lift on the ring fry.  We ran around quite a bit after that, hitting lots of spots, catching a few fish that would not help us.

When the dust settled, I had 16.26lbs for 1st place even though my big fish was only 3.81lbs and Rick caught a nice bag of 13lbs, which got me the team bonus for the 2nd straight tournament. Its nice to get a good bag and win a tournament, but even more fulfilling when you can put your partner on a quality bag as well.

Pictured is my bed fishing setup, 1/2oz jig skirt trimmed to flair more, big rattle, with specially dyed chunk.  I think the red contrast can trigger more bites from reluctant fish, plus when the red disappears, you know it is time to set the hook!

No rest for the weary, I had another tournament on Sunday, so it was time to get home and get my gear ready for Sunday.

Following up club tourney #1, the very next day we had our 2nd club tourney of 2011.  We launched out of Colvill Park in Red Wing and we could fish all of Pool 4 and bottom of Pool 3.  I had not fished this water since last year and never really fished with water has high as it was on tournament day.  Based on my past experience and familiarity with the water closer to Wabasha, I decided to make the 25 mile run and just go fishing down there.

It did not take long for my partner Kory and I to start plucking fish from dead end cuts with rock and wood cover.  We hopped around, checking spots that I thought would have the right stuff, most of them panned out, with each of catching a pretty decent 4 fish limit, bot having 1 kicker smallie to go with solid largemouth.  I caught all mine on a 4″ tube and a 3/8oz jig fished on 17-20lb fluorocarbon on heavy action Dobyns Rods, while Korey got all his on a Tube Craw.

The wind managed to kick up in the afternoon, making for an adventurous return to Red Wing and we drove right into a thunderstorm with driving rain and hail.  We made it safely back to Colvill Marina, just in time to catch a few small keepers that we threw back.

In the end I took 2nd with 12.22lbs for 4 fish and Korey got 4th with 11.26lbs, my big smallie was 3.49lbs.  We easily had the largest combined weight but a few guys found some really nice smallies up near Red Wing to beat us out.  Still a decent tourney, but as Ricky Bobby says “if you are not first, you’re last!”

After two tourneys, I am less then a .5lbs out of first in overall standings.  I look to keep up the strong weights on my next 2 tourneys on Medicine & O’Dowd that will be first weekend in June.

My first tourney of the season was this past Saturday; with the super high water this spring and all the travel I have been doing, there wasn’t much time for practice.  I did get out for about 3 hours the Wednesday evening prior, but all that was accomplished was looking at new water that wasn’t productive, checking water levels and falling out of boat reaching for trolling motor right before heading home and losing my favorite sandals in the mucky bottom of a backwater.  But watch for a blog post on how to dry a cell phone out in the near future.

That being said, I and my partner had a game plan for tournament day, we were dedicating our entire day to two backwater areas targeting primarily largemouth.  We started on a rip rap bank where I caught a nice 15.5″ smallmouth on an Ima Shaker crankbait in Bluegil color and 2 more keepers on a black tube.  Shortly after, Steve caught a small largemouth keeper on a white swim jig.

We then spent the rest of the day in a larger backwater area largely flipping tubes, jigs & beavers to shallow wooden cover on rocky banks.  My primary baits came down to a 3/8oz Tungsten jig and a black 4″ tube on a 3/16oz weight fished on 17-20lb fluorocarbon on heavy action Dobyns Rods.

All in all i caught about 12 keepers throughout the day, because its catch and release, we did a paper tourney, my best 5 fish measured/weighed 15.44lbs (18″, 17.5″, 17.25″, 16.5″ 16″).  My partner got 4 keepers and had his 5th fish on several times.  I also lost one kicker fish, stupid mistake rushing her and trying to swing her in, she hit on the edge of the gunnel and flopped the wrong way.

18″ = 3.64lbs Bass shown above

In the end, I ended up 4th out of 26 anglers, very solid, but I always want to win and stings when you drop a difference maker fish on a dumb decision.  I feel that most of these fish were trying to spawn as the water was around 63-64 degrees and were a few days past the full moon.  So fishing slow and deliberate around key areas seem to be the ticket.

Also of note, my Moisture wicking Polo and under shirt were a perfect combo for this rainy day, it dried in just a few moments, so no matter if your rain suit fails or you get caught without it, you fish comfortably!

But no time to worry about spilled milk, had to get home get the batteries charged and ready for tournament #2 on Sunday out of Red Wing and haven’t been there in a year…..

 

Last week I got a Facebook message inviting me to the Simply Fishing Marine Fall Tournament, so I called my buddy and Pan-O-Prog tournament partner Ryan Brant to see if he was game.  Ryan lives in Forest Lake, so we could use his boat and I could keep mine in garage, and he was all in.

Ryan got to prefish for a few hours one evening, eliminated some water.  So our plan was to fish the conditions and keep on the move until we found them.  Started shallow, caught a small keeper on a SWL Buzzbait right away.  Fish were small early, as we had a limit of line burners that probably wouldn’t of weighed 6lbs total.

We kept poking around shallow with Tru-Tungsten jigs , at about 11am,  I finally got a nice 2 plus in the boat.  Shortly after that, another solid keeper.  Still not super excited, we stuck with the plan.  Then at about 12:30, I finally stuck a good one, it was kind of a mad scramble, as we had to go get it and Ryan was down on the bow on his belly to get her in.  This would be our kicker fish in the end.  Not long after that, I got another 3.5lb on my 3/8oz Tungsten Green Pumpkin / Brown jig .

At this point, we could feel things starting to click and now felt we at least had a decent chance to get our money back.  We stayed the course, pounding shallow, Ryan picked up a nice cull on a tungsten jig with about 30 minutes to go.  Caught a few more fish, none of them helped us.  Overall we caught at least 20 fish, but most of them were 11-13″ long.

As all the boats pulled into for weigh-in, we noticed lots of long faces, so we started to think maybe we did okay.  A 12lb bag weighed in right before us and they were new leader.  We then weighed our 5 and they went 14.18lbs, with a 4.5lbs big bass.  We watched the rest of the bags and it appeared we had won.  All the teams headed up to Simply Marine for food and final results.

Simply Fishing Marine put on a nice tournament and had a nice spread for us back at their shop, fun event and hope to fish it again next year!

For now, time for some fun fall fishing with my Dad later this week!