Category Archives: Tournament Info

Federation Nation Northern Divisional – Day 2

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
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Federation Nation Northern Divisional – Day 1

As I waited with my partner in the Escanaba harbor, I had a good bit of excitement at the possibility of what I could catch and my chances to do well in this tournament.  The plan was to head all the way to the east side of Big Bay de Noc and work several of the key spots and areas that we had so much success on during Monday’s practice.

The first area, was an absolute ghost town, no fish or bait.  Probably wasted too much time there.  My next area was a large peninsula/point, there were 2 other boats working the area, I caught a nice keeper on a Quickstrike spinnerbait, then just a few shorts from there.  We hopped around to a few areas, finally I missed and then caught a nice 3lb plus smallmouth on a 6″ BassTrix swimbait.  I then went back through this area only to have a giant smallie climb all over the swimbait and somehow not get a hook.

The next area I caught another keeper on my spinnerbait, I then went to my bigger swimbait, 5″ Optimum Baby Line Thru and pretty quickly hooked and landed a 4lb smallmouth.  To make a long story short, I had about 3 more big smallies go after my swimbaits and not get hooked, very frustrating.  I ended up with 4 fish for 11lb and chance, middle of the pack after day 1 and about 5lbs out of the team lead.  That 5th fish could made a huge difference, but I was still in this thing with 2 days to go.  It was time to go big or go home on day 2, I was up to get revenge on Lake Michigan.

Rich
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Bay De Noc Practice Days 3 and 4

Monday morning greeted us with very light winds and a calm LIttle and Big Bay de Nocs to run around on.  We spent just a few minutes checking some pencil reeds between Escanaba and Gladstone, not even a bite.  It was time to check the fish in Big Bay de Noc that we found late Sunday.  When we got there it did not take long for me to catch a beautiful 4lbs smallmouth on a Tru-Tungsten Depth Shad.  Tim ended up catching a 4 and 5lb bass on small spinnerbait, then we got the heck out of there, 3 quick fish for 14lbs and we saw plenty more there.

We spent the rest of the day covering water looking for more of the same type structure and cover, we did best on spinnerbaits, jerkbaits and swimbaits.  I alternated between a 13/16oz Golden Shiner Secret Weapon Lures spinnerbait, Ima Flit in Chartreuse Shad, 6″ BassTrix in BlueBack Herring and the best bait for me was the 5″ Optimum Baby Line Thru Swimbait in Ayu.  Both Tim and I would have had around 20lbs for our best 5 and found several stretches with lots of fish.


Nice Baby LIne Thru Swimbait Smallie!

Tuesday, I decided because of the short day and the big water, I needed to find some fish closer to Escanaba.  I took one of our Jr. anglers out to help find fish for me and them.  I caught 2 nice keepers on my Ima Flit in the morning on a Little Bay rock shoal.  We then tried the east side from Black Bottoms down towards Peninsula Point with very little success.  From there we ran down to Ford River area, we found several shallow rock, weed and sand areas holding quality keeper fish, most of those fish fell for 4″ Green Pumpkin Mizmo tubes, we each would have had a decent limit on Tuesday afternoon.


Swimbait does not seem so big now…..

Now it was time to get in, get the boat ready and head to the pairings meeting.  Based on the last 2 days of practice, I was pretty excited about what the tournament may bring….

Rich
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Bay De Noc Practice Days 1 and 2

I drove pretty much straight through from MN to the UP on Friday night/Saturday morning so I could start fishing early on Saturday morning for the Northern Divisional that would start on Wednesday.  I arrived around Cedar River area at about 8am, I was greeted with 6 foot plus waves, I fished a little in the harbor and caught a northern and headed 8 miles out to Whaleback Shoal, I found it to windy to fish when I got there.  It was time to meet a team member Tim back at the landing.  We headed up to Ford River area, had a couple bites but no fish.  We then decided to check into our cabin for the evening at Lindberg’s Cove up in Gladstone, great resort right on the lake!  Tim and I decided we needed to catch a fish before dinner.  We goofed around, ended up catching 1 keeper largemouth on a white Super K swim jig and then Tim got a nice smallie on a tube, we also caught a few short fish, time for dinner and bed.

Day 2 we tried more deep areas, fishing breaks with weeds and rocks, could not believe we were not finding any fish.  Finally, it was calm, so we decided to head towards Big Bay de Noc.  Right before it was time to head back, we found a school of fish on some sand and rock mix in about 6-8ft of water.  I ended up catching one nice smallmouth on a 5″ Tru-Tungsten dart worm (watermelon/purple) on a 1/8oz Flea Flicker head.  There were a lot more fish there, so we headed back to check into our hotel in Escanaba.

Not the greatest start to practice, but Tim and I were optimistic we were on the verge of something….

Rich
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Too Busy….

Traveling the past two weeks, so this blog entry will try to get me all caught up in one shot.  I was home last weekend between trips, my buddy Ryan Brant decided to fish the Celebration OUtdoors tournament on Lake Marion kind of last minute.  Neither of us had fished Marion since last summer, but we thought it would be fun none the less.  We did not get to practice at all, so we had a couple ideas and decided to start on one of our favorite deeps spots.  We fished the area pretty good and only had 1 missed bite.  We then tried  a few shallow areas, we caught a couple shorts and then I got a good bite on my favorite 3/8oz Green Pumpkin/Brown Tru-Tungsten jig using a 3″ Green Pumpkin Chigger craw as a trailer, it ended up being about 3.5lbs.  Definitely a good first fish! The next are we fished was a mid-depth area that usually has good coontail clumps, after a few casts I got a decent 2lb fish on my jig and that was the only bite we got there.  The next area was shallow again and I popped 3 keepers pretty quick on my jig, nothing special by any means, we would need to cull several of them to contend on Lake Marion.  Shorty after that, Ryan caught a nice almost 3lb bass on a frog out of a small clump of pads.  Then we jumped to another shallow area and I stuck a another nice 3.5lbs bass.  We tried two more deeps areas without a single bite and then made a decision to spend the last two hours dedicated to shallow water.  Ryan caught a few more fish on jigs, but none that helped, on my last cast I got broke off by what felt like a good bite on a dock.  We though we had around 13-14lbs for 5 fish, which on Lake Marion normally is not that great, but we optimistic to at least make the bottom end of the checks.  We were the last boat to weigh-in, and as we watched and watched the small bags, we were in disbelief, with us and one other boat to weigh, the leader was only 12lbs.  We knew we had more then that, but the bag just before us ended up being a whopping 21lb plus bag.  So we ended up at 13.91lbs and 2nd place, so Ryan and I got a nice $700 check to split and some spiffy little trophies.  Not bad for no practice or effort of preparation.  Regardless, it was fun fishing a team event with a good buddy!


Here are our 2 biggest from Lake Marion Celebration Tourney

Congrats to Greg Hackney on his Forrest Wood Cup championship on Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers.  A great victory for a guy that had traditionally not shown well in season end championships like th FLW Cup and Bassmaster Classics.  I also like that fact that he kind of stuck it to FLW a bit, because they would have obviously preferred it if one of their main FLW pros would have won, not a traditional BASS guy.  THis is quite evident based on the coverage of the FLW Series East-West fish-off on Lake Falcon, where Hackney destroyed the field and almost broke a 4 day weight record in 3 days, and Hackney got almost no TV coverage when that program aired.  Hackney used several baits en route to his win, but he gives credit to a 1/4oz Pro-Model Spinnerbait in Golden Shiner and a Strike Kingd Ocho rigged on a Tru-Tungsten Flea Flicker jig to catching many of his key fish.

Watch for a preview to Oneida Fantasy Fishing lineup for next week.  Tomorrow night I leave for Escanaba, MI to fish the Federation Nation northern divisional on Lake Michigan.  It is a tad intimidating to tackle 120,000 acres of wide open water and at the same time very excited to tackle some big great lake smallmouth bass.  Not to mention, this being my 4th Northern Divisional, I am really focused on trying to make it to the Fed Nationals from this tournament.

Wish me Luck!
Rich
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Bassmaster Weekend Series Tourney at Prairie Du Chien – 2009

Sunday was my 3rd Bassmaster Weekend Series tournament of this year.  In general river fishing suits my fishing strengths well, so even though I had not fished this strech of river in about 10 years, i still felt I could compete down there.  I ended up getting 3 full practice days inn.  Fishing both pools 9 and 10, based on that, I really felt I had two areas in Pool 9 that could produce a potentail winning bag.

I am not sure what happened, we got a lot of rain and most things got muddied, but my area remained in great shape, but the fish seemed to have vanished.  Long story short, I was back at the lock around 11am and neither myself or partner had a fish in the livewell.  We hit a rock point just below the lock, nothing happening there.  At that time, I pushed the panic button and went to the area I was most confident that I could get a keeper bite and put at least one in the well.  It was a shallow flat backwater area with just a little wood, but for some reason there was some bait in the area.  Turns out I caught 4 keepers pretty quickly pitching a Sweet Beaver on a 1/4oz Tru-Tungsten sinker.  My partner lost one that seemed to be good as well.  It was now decision time, should I stay and try to catch another small keeper?

I decided that the decision was no, I must go find bigger fish.  With 4 fish in the well, I knew I had a decent points finish, the smart decision was to shift gears and try for a check.  It did not work out, but I am still happy with the decision, it is the right mentatility to have to do well in the long run.

Sorry no pictures, 4 fish for 7.5lbs and a 41st place finish is hardly picture worthy.  I am still hanging in at 7th in the points, well in the position to fish the regional if I choose to do so.  I am not fishing the La Crosse event, to much going on with the Norther Divisional event in Escanaba, MI.

Til next time!
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Knife Lake – Gopher Bassmasters Tournament – July 12, 2009

I was able to get up to Knife Lake on Friday night for about 3 hours to scout the lake for my tournament that was on Sunday, prior to that I had never been on the lake.  I did catch a few fish, but nothing bigger then about 2lbs, learned my way around the lake anyways.  Because of some last minute adjustments, I ended up fishing alone in this tournament and there for was last boat to take off.  So I decided to just start by the landing.  After working the shallows with buzzbaits, frogs, jigs and a chatterbait, I decided to toss my Carolina Rig out from one of the small points, it did not take long to put a nice solid keeper in the boat on a ring fry.  I ended up catching one more fish on the C-Rig and another on a Chompers Twin Tail Grub  on a TackleSmith Tungsten Bronzeback Football head jig.  Not too long after that, I picked up two smaller keepers on a chart/white Fishing Magician VooDoo.  Fished a few docks along there and got nothing on them early.

I then decided to head down to near the bridge where I got a few decent bites on Friday evening, I ended up catching a few really small keepers, not what I had hoped.  I kind of bounced around a bit, finally got a nice 3lb bite on a dock with my 1/2oz Black Blue Tru-Tungsten jig with Blk/Blu Rage chunk.  I spent most of the day hopping around fishing banks and rocky areas, catching fish here & there, but nothing that really helped my bag.  After lunch the sun started popping out, so for the last 90 minutes I decided to commit to fishing docks with my Tru-Tungsten jig and cover water.  The afternoon dock bite really seem to go, as I caught about 10 fish in that time and caught my two biggest fish.

My final weight ended up being 14.59lbs which was barely good enough for first place, I really thought it would take more weight to win this lake, I think we caught it on a bad day.  See full results here.  I also advance to the Final Four of Gopher Match fishing and jumped from 4th to 1st in the overall standings on the weekend.

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Rush Lakes – Gopher Bassmasters Tournament – July 11, 2009

Saturday morning came very early this weekend, as several Gopher members stayed up in Hinckley the night before and participated in the town festival on Friday night.  I actually was retying most of my rods as my partner Rick was parking the truck and others launched.  We were boat #2 and boat #1 actually went to the same area on East Rush that we did.  We set down about 75 yards apart and worked a weedline towards each other.  I made sure I had my buoy on my deck, so if we ran into the school that I hoped was there, we would be able to stay on them.  (More on Buoys here)  Sure enough a few pitches with my 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten jig and I had a nice fish hooked and in the boat, as I fought it, I kicked the buoy in with my foot and it was game on.  I was able to boat 6 fish on my jig, lost 3, and my partner got 2 and lost 1.  After that the fish stopped biting, we tried a few other baits, but then left.

On the next spot, I cracked a nice fish on a Mad Maxx frog in Bluegrass color, that was the only frog bite I got, but it called a small fish from my starting spot.  After that, we fished some shallow grass and docks on East Rush, I caught a few fish, but nothing that would help, but Rick got a solid 3lb fish out of some shallow grass with a jig.  We then decided to try our hand at West Rush, more of the same, we tried about 8-10 spots with little success.  On our last spot before coming back to East, we made a pass around the Cane grass on the north end of West Rush and I caught a nice 3lb fish on my jig; Rick also missed a bite there.

We ended the day on our starting spot, right when we got there, I caught another nice 3lb fish.  I ended up catching a few more smaller fish and it was time to go in.  My final weight was 14.86lbs and I won by about 3.7lbs.  I also advanced into the 2nd round of Gopher Match Fishing.  It was a fun day, we had a great weigh in at Flickabirds on Rush.  After that, it was back to the cabin to prepare for Knife Lake on Sunday.

Check back soon for the Knife Lake Report.
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Rush Lakes Practice Report

Sunday I was able to get up to Rush City with John Haynes to get a little practice on  East & West Rush Lakes for my upcoming club tournament.  We did not get a super early start, probably on the water a little after 8am.  We checked a few reed & dock areas early, not much water on them to speak of, but John did manage a single small keeper.

I then drove around East Rush and found what i thought looked to be a good looking inside turn in the outside weedline.  We caught 4 keeper bass from there and big pike, felt we did not need to catch anymore and left.  We then went froggin for a bit, had about 4 hits on my new Mad Maxx Frog, but they all just slapped at it or bumped, they would not commit.  We checked a few more deep areas, trying to duplicate our first area.  John got one bass and I went through a bunch of jig worm hooks, lost to pike.  After that, I went to check some more shallow stuff, did catch the nice 3.44lb bass pictured below on a Tru-Tungsten Jig.


Headless angler photo courtesy of John Haynes

We then spent an hour or two looking around West Rush.  I think I only caught one bass on a Super K bluegill colored swim jig, had a few frog hits, but more of the same short striking.

At the end of the day, we each caught 5 fish, with a few decent ones.  I think I at least got a starting point, after that it will be a scramble.  I am efforting to get to practice Knife lake on Friday night for a few hours before dark for the Sunday tournament.

Check back next week for results…  maybe a live Tweet from the no wake zone channel during the day…..

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Mississippi River – Bassmasters Weekend Series Tournament #2 – June 28, 2009

Yesterday was my 2nd Bassmaster Weekend Series tournament, I was able to get two days of practice in for this event.  It sure would be nice to get some more time so I could expand my water and areas, but there is only so much time.  Based on my practice, I had one really strong area that I felt good about and a couple back up areas, plus some stuff that I had fished in that past that I felt could produce a few bites in a pinch.

I drew boat #15 and a heck of a nice co-angler named Sam.  We arrived in my starting area and were the only boat there, I shut down a little short and used the trolling motor to get into position and as we approached I saw a surface swirl.  All ready with my Yellow Magic Popper in hand, I started firing casts towards the area the fish were boiling and they started biting pretty fast and furious.  A mixture of smallies and largemouths were biting, as well as some white bass and a walleye.  Once the topwater fizzled I switched to a Fork Craw on a mojo rig and caught my big fish of they day, 3.49lbs.  I continued to flip the grass edge with a Game Hawg on a 3/16oz Tru-Tungsten weight and 3/0 Youvella OWG hook, boating a few small keeper largemouth.
NEW Yellow Magic® Japanese Topwater Baits
Since things really slowed down and we made several passes through with no bites, we started running through my backup areas.  The next couple spots we had a couple frog blow ups, but no fish.  The 3rd area I started flipping my Game Hawg along an eel grass edge and quickly caught a nice chunky largemouth, as I dropped that fish in the livewell we drifted into a bunch of weeds, as I tried to trim the motor up I noticed was really slow and unresponsive, I knew that my starting battery must have been getting very low.  Long story short, we lost almost 2 hours trying to get a jump and trying to revive the fish I had as they almost died with out the aerators running for that time.  Big Thanks to Paul Strege for helping me get back in the game.

From that point, we made a pass back through my starting area with the motor running with no more fish.  Next I hit up a wing dam and another main river rock spots, just got bit off by a northern on the latter.  I decided to try an area that I caught some good fish flipping wood in the first tournament, it turned out to be a good decision, as I picked up a really nice keeper on 3/8oz Tru-Tungsten jig tipped with a rage chunk and a 3lb largemouth on a baby brush hog, as I used up all my Game Hawgs on some smaller fish prior.  It was pretty much the end of the day at that point, so we strapped everything down and headed back to Alma for weigh-in. 

Video of me weighing my fish, see my other videos to see interviews with top finishers!

One thing I have noticed is that I have been fishing extremely clean this year and I think a lot of it can be attributed to switching over to the new Youvella hooks for my soft plastic applications.

I was about the 10th angler to weigh and was the leader at the time with 14.21lbs, it did not last very long, but I held on for a solid 8th place finish.  It was a nice little pay day with a 78 boat field and it boosted me from 12th to 3rd in the Angler of the Year points.  End of July is the 3rd tournament down at Prairie Deu Chien, I have little experience down there, so I need to make some time to practice between now and then.  I have a couple club tourneys in July, I may have to forgo practice for those and go fish PDC.

Tight Lines,
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