This past weekend I had two club tournaments to wrap up the regular season with Gopher Bassmasters.  Thanks to Dave Cindrich for being unfortunate enough to hurt his back and to be an awesome guy and lend me his boat for the weekend.  We split the lake East & West for the weekend and the two tournaments.  I got up there around 1pm on Friday and practiced a bit on the East side.  I found a few fish and a few baits that produced some bites.

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.