Lake Independence - June 6th

A couple weeks ago I had my first club tournament of the year on Lake Independence in the northwest metro. My club had already fished two tournaments in Wisconsin prior to this event, but I was unable to fish them since I was still at school. This tournament was the first weekend that I was back from school so I didn’t have any time to pre-fish, nor had I ever been on the lake before. Needless to say, I hadn’t a clue of where to go, but it ended up being alright.

If you can recall the weekend of June 6th was a cold and wet one. I don’t think the temps got about 55 degrees and you could see fog coming off the water in certain areas all day long because the water was warmer than the air for a good part of the day. I had good rain gear and luckily brought a warm hat, but another layer of clothing and some gloves would have done me some good!

I started off fishing a cattail island that was close to the YMCA island. It was surrounded with shallow water and thick milfoil. It didn’t look to productive because of the lack of deeper water close by so I made a move to some docks close by. After cruising down a row of docks without a bite it was time for another change. I moved across the lake to a slop and pad filled bay. The water was noticeably clearer here and looked much more productive. On about my third cast in the area I landed a decent keeper. I proceeded to fish the bay with a frog, swim jig, spinnerbait, and a t-rigged beaver. I ended up filling out my limit with a bunch of runts and also lost a couple good fish on a frog that may have helped. After getting through the bay I continued down the bank to some other pads that had some good wind blowing into them. I caught two more keepers on a spinnerbait on that bank and was able to cull for a couple ounces.

After fishing the windblown bank I moved to a spot behind the YMCA island and started pitching a blk/blue t-rigged tube in the cattails. After a couple minutes I laid into a nicer fish. It ended up being about 2.75lbs and my best fish of the day. I continued to pitch the cattails thinking that I was finally on to some better fish, but it never panned out.
I ended the day with about 8.5lbs which was good enough for 2nd place. I wasn’t too pleased with my bag, but I can’t complain with that for never being on Independence before and especially under the colder conditions.

Fishing Report/Update: I’ve been fishing the south metro lakes quite a bit the last couple weeks since I’ve been back from Iowa and have still been finding fish shallow until about the last week or so. My best lures have been swim jigs and plastic stick baits on the inside weed lines. I’ve caught some fish in deep water on jig worms and texas rigged beavers but it’s been very sporadic. I’m looking forward to this hot weather to continue which should help in getting the fish stacked up on the deeper summer spots. It will also put some stability in other shallow water patterns throughout the lakes such as docks, pads, and slop.

Stay tuned for another entry sometime this week. I fished an ABA tournament this weekend and will be sure to let you know how it goes!

National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship - Lake Lewisville, TX

My buddy Tyler and recently got back from our trip down to Lewisville, TX for the National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship that was held on Lake Lewisville May 25th - 29th. It ended up being the largest collegiate bass fishing tournament ever held with 129 two person teams competing in the event. Over 75 colleges were represented that came from all around the nation. This was my third year competing in the tournament and Tyler’s second.

If you have read older write ups in my blog you may know that I have done terrible the past two years that I have competed in the tournament. In 2007 we finished dead last and zeroed both days of the tournament. In 2008 we moved up slightly; we weighed in a total of 4 fish and finished 75th. This year would be different. The tournament in past years had been held in the fall and it was moved to the spring this year. I had high hopes going into the event because the water had risen about 4ft about 20 days prior to when practice started. I thought it may position some fish in more predictable areas up shallow.

At first I really wasn’t too thrilled about going to this tournament because it meant that I was going to miss the Minnesota Bass Opener for the first time ever. We usually catch them pretty them pretty good at my cabin in northern Minnesota during that weekend so I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to be there this year; Lake Lewisville would have a lot to live up to compared to northern Minnesota.

Tyler and I drove down to Texas on Sunday. Practice didn’t start until Tuesday so we fished Lake Ray Roberts (just north of Lewisville) on Monday to see if we couldn’t get an early jump on what kind of patterns the fish were on in North Texas. We had an awesome morning on Ray Bob when we got into the white bass (called “sandies” in texas) on topwater. We had multiple doubles; it made for a great start to the trip. In the afternoon we got on a little shallow water pattern in the flooded bushes using frogs, beavers, and weightless stick worms; it ended up being a fun day.

Big Fish of the day on Ray Bob

On that Monday night it was Cabelas Day for the anglers competing in the championship. Each team received a $100.00 gift card to Cabelas. I spent mine on a navionics chip for the southern states which was awesome for being able to navigate Lake Lewisville. Tyler spent his wisely by picking up some new baits to try such as the Spro poppin frog, the Spro BBZ-1 and some tungsten weights. After buying our stuff and seeing pros such as Jeff Kriet, Kelly Jordon, Mike Hawkes, Sean Hornke, and others we were ready for our first day on Lake Lewisville.

To make a long two practice days short, I will explain the main patterns that we found in practice and our game plan for the tournament:

Fishing the huge marinas that Lewisville had to offer: Our best bait around these marinas were t-rigged all terrain white tubes and Yum vibra king tubes. They emulated the shad perfectly and were by far our best producer in practice. These Marinas are a piece of cover that I never grew up fishing and were very different for me. I grew up fishing stationary docks with 0-6 feet of water under them. However, most of these docks had anywhere from 5-35 feet of water under them. These marina docks always kick out good weights in the championship so we figured we’d better learn how to fish them. Most of the fish we caught were suspended under 8-12ft docks.

Fishing the big tires that acted as a wind break for the marinas: This is also another crazy pattern that was totally new to me. I hooked into about a 5 pounder in practice fishing these with a white tube. The fish was suspended about 2 feet under the tires that were floating above 25 ft of water. This pattern never paid off for us in the tournament, but I know of several teams that caught them doing this in the tournament.

Topwater on the dam in the morning: Both walking baits and poppers worked, as well as frogs in areas that had brush close to the dam.

Flipping and Pitching flooded “grass” in the upper portion of the lake: We could not get a bite in the bushes, but you could sometimes find patches of this woody/grassy stuff that was flooded outside the bushes. I had never fished that stuff before and don’t even know the name of it, but it looked like grass... In the grass I was catching them on an all terrain finesse jig and an all terrain white tube.

At the banquet the night before the tournament we unfortunately drew boat number 128 out of 129 boats. Thus, we had to change our game plan a little bit. Once again the banquet was pretty awesome. I can’t give enough thanks to all the sponsors that support this event and the anglers competing in it. We got another set of free frog toggs, ranger hats, Columbia fishing shirts and various other gifts and giveaways. Once of the coolest parts of the banquet was when I walked in the door and saw Jimmy Houston standing there; quite the surprise! It was really cool to talk to him. He did an awesome job being the MC of the banquet and at the end he got two guys from Oklahoma University and Oklahoma State to arm wrestle for a Plano tackle box, it was quite the evening! Tyler and I went back to the hotel for the evening, prepared our tackle, and got ready for Day 1.

Day One Launch

With our less than stellar boat number Tyler and I decided to start fishing in the marina that we were launching out of. We had some success fishing way back behind all of the docks in practice where most of the other teams didn’t go. Initially our plan was to start on the dam, but with such a late draw we knew that the area would already be full of boats. Our goal for the day was to get a limit. More specifically we had a goal of getting at least one keeper in each of our spots throughout the day. Once our boat number was called we basically did a 180 degree turn back into the marina. After about 45 minutes Tyler landed our first keeper of the day on a white/gray laminate tube. It was a solid fish and really helped get the monkey off our back to get the day started. We continued to fish around in the marina for about another hour and a half with no bites. We cut over to another spot in the marina that was ultra shallow and full of brush and weeds. I tossed my frog into the area. The line ended up getting hung over a branch so I kind of just “bobbed” my frog up and down in the water. Right away we saw a big swirl under the frog, but with all the carp that I had seen doing this in practice I kind of just wrote it off. Tyler, on the other hand, thought it was bass so kept the frog there for a little bit longer. BAM! He came up and just smoked it! After dragging the fish through the brush and weeds, I landed what would be our biggest fish of the day. It was a catch that I wish was on camera, it was pretty cool and really got us excited about the day ahead.

After another 20 minutes or so we moved up north a little bit to a spot that had both flooded brush and rocks/foundations outside the brush. We tried up in the bushes with no luck and then proceeded to move out a little bit and fish the rocks/foundations that were out from the bushes. One cool thing about this spot is that we found these foundations last year when they we high and dry because the water was lower. However, this year they were completely under water and held some fish. After about 15 minutes I landed our third keeper of the day on a shakey head with a 7” watermelon zoom finesse worm. We never fished the foundations in practice, we had only concentrated on the bushes, so this was definitely a bonus fish. We tried this spot for a little longer with no luck and then moved even farther up north to our spots where we were pitching the grass.

Within the first 20 minutes of moving up there we found a point with bass busting on shad in the grass. I pitched my white tube in the grass and stuck our 4th keeper of the day. We were now feeling better about our chances of getting a limit. This pattern was very inconsistent, but it seemed that in practice this is how we were getting our better bites. Right at the point when you thought you should move and do something else, you would get bit. In practice I landed a solid 3lb fish from the grass and I also lost a fish that straightened out my hook after it ran at, and then under the boat. I have never had a fish pull that hard before and would have loved to have seen how big it was even though it was during practice. Like I said, just when we thought we should move and do something else I caught our 5th keeper on an all terrain finesse jig; a solid 2-2.5lb fish. We now had a limit and it felt awesome. After struggling terribly for the last two years on Lake Lewisville, it was such a load off our backs to have a limit in the boat. That would be our last keeper of the day. We ended the day with 10.53lbs which put us in 30th place out of 129 boats. We felt good about our day, but would need a couple lucky bites on day 2 to stay in the same position in the standings.

Day One Fish

Day One weigh-in

On day 2 we were boat number 2

We decided to go to the dam where we caught a good amount of fish in practice. However, besides a couple white bass and one short fish, we had nothing to show for our efforts after about 1.5 hours at the dam. With an empty livewell we made the decision to head north to our grass spots. It was much tougher on day 2 to get keeper bites. However, we were getting a lot more shorts that day. I caught one keeper deeper and off of the bank in some sticks on the AT finesse jig and also another solid 3lb fish on the finesse jig in the grass. The 3lb fish came from the EXACT same grass spot as the last keeper from day 1. We definitely struggled more on day two to get keepers and I think the main difference was not getting a couple more junk fish like we got on day one (frog fish and shakey head fish). We tried to run our grass pattern throughout the lake after we fished the grass up north. We were able to run down lake, find a grass spot, and pull over to fish it. It worked with perfection, except for the fact that we were catching all short fish! With about 1.5 hours left in the day we made a move back down lake to the marina that we fished in on day one. We moved into the same area that Tyler caught his keeper in the first day. After fishing that spot with no luck we were making our way back out from behind the docks. I pitched my white tube to the end marina dock and stuck another good keeper with about 20 minutes left in the day. It felt really good to get that keeper; it would help us to stay in about the same spot in the standings. We ended the day with about 6.5lbs and a total of 17lbs and some change for the two days. This put us in 37th out of 129 for the tournament. We were happy with how we finished compared to past years, but naturally we would have liked to have moved up the leader board after day 2. Murry State ended up claiming the title. They were cranking off shore structure and cover to take the win. The smoked them pretty good; Congrats guys!

After having a couple weeks to think about the event, I really can’t complain about our finish. We were the top finishing school from the Big Ten and also a top finisher among all of the other northern schools that were at the event. It’s definitely not easy to go and fish these new lakes in totally opposite ends of the country. There is a learning curve that comes with it and after fishing the lake for 3 years I finally feel like we ARE learning something about fishing Texas reservoirs. My goal going into the event was to finish in the top 40% and we more than achieved that. If we qualify/are eligible to fish the event next year we will definitely be back!

Thanks again to all the sponsors!!! And thanks for reading!!