This past weekend I had back-to-back tournaments on Saturday and Sunday. One good thing is that both tournaments were fairly close together; one on Chisago/S. Lindstrom and the other on Coon Lake. I was able to spend the night in the forest lake area in between tournaments which gave me a little extra time in bed before waking up on Sunday. I was able to also get out on Coon one last time the evening before the event after I had my club tourney on Chisago.
The club tournament on Chisago didn’t go nearly as well as my practice went one week earlier. On the Saturday before the tournament I had a total of 87 inches and fell much shorter than that on tournament day with a total of 75 inches. I was able to catch a lot of fish, probably close to 25, but any fish over 16” didn’t want any part of being in my boat. I fished deep the first 2 hours of the day and had one 14” fish to show for it. I resorted to moving shallow the rest of the day in about 3-5 ft of water. I caught 70% of my fish on an All Terrain swim jig just burning it over the top of milfoil patches on windy banks and also caught some other fish on an Argon jointed crankbait in a bluegill color and a t-rigged beaver. I took 7th for the day and was a little unhappy to say the least. I just couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong in terms of getting a bigger bite. Some of the guys who finished higher were fishing docks and buzzbaits around milfoil. It sounded like I was fishing the same type of stuff that the top guys were fishing, but just didn’t find bigger fish like the week before. I’ve come to the conclusion that when it’s not your time, it’s just not you time. My justification was that I was just saving my big bites for the ABA on Sunday.
After my club tournament I went straight to Coon Lake to practice for a couple more hours. I found one deep spot right away that I thought had great potential. I was pretty pumped when I found that spot because practice the week before had been real spotty and inconsistent.
One tournament morning I drew boat 15 out of 25; not great, but not terrible. My plan for the day was to start on the deep spot I found the day before and then go from there. Well… I got to my deep spot first thing in the morning to find two other boats right on it. I stuck around and casted around the sweet spot for about 20 minutes, I couldn’t get to where I needed to be without crowding the other boats. I decided that I needed to make a move. I needed to get away from that spot and go to my shallow water and fish my strengths.
I went into the canal between the two lakes and picked up a small fish in the pads on an AT jig. A small start, but a start nonetheless. From there I went to my matted milfoil bank only to find two other boats also on it. My initial thoughts were “man… not again!” I pulled in behind the guys and tried my best to pick up the sloppy thirds. My better mat was at the opposite end of the bank that I started on, but I didn’t pull in there because the other boats were moving towards it. To my surprise, after the boats got past the docks with matted milfoil, they just ignored the milfoil out past the docks about 200 yards; my better area.
Once they moved through the area I went to my better mat and stuck a solid 3.5lb fish right off the bat. In practice I caught one fish off this spot and had another bite, then moved on, not really knowing what was completely there. I pitched in there again and once my AT jig hit the bottom another good one sucked it up, a 4lb+ fish. The mat that I had found had deeper water in one spot, a drop from 3 to 5 or 6ft, and the bigger fish were loaded in there. The deeper area was only about as big as two boats sitting next to each other gunnel to gunnel. I sat on that spot for 4 hours and culled my way to a goo limit, left it for 1.5 hours to see if I could get a kicker, then came back and picked up two more 3lb+ fish in the last 1.5 hours. The big fish were just concentrated in the area, which made for quite a fun day. I basically just sat my boat in one spot and as long as you didn’t disturb the milfoil you would get a bite every so often. It was like fishing an offshore spot where you consistently get bites throughout the day, except this was a spot in shallow water.
I ended up with 17.90lbs and took 4th place for the day. This tournament on Coon was different and a little more satisfying than past years when I could run to my old faithful shallow pads and cattails. With the water being down quite a bit I had to re-learn the entire lake this year. It felt good to have “fished the moment” and to find new areas that were holding fish which led to another good finish on Coon. Not sure why I seem to do well on that lake, but I really like it! First place had 22lbs and a 6lb+ fish doing the same thing that other top finishers and I were doing. 22lbs!! Talk about fun…
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Under Armour College Bass National Championship - AR River - Little Rock
On July 5th I left my cabin up north in northern Minnesota and drove 7 hours to Iowa to pick up Tyler for the Under Armour College Bass National Championship. We left for the Arkansas River at Little Rock on the morning of the 6th and 10.5 hours later we finally arrived. We made a quick stop into an awesome tackle shop called “fish N stuff” owned by Vince Miller. It’s probably the best small tackle shop I’ve ever been to, they had everything! Not to mention the fact that Vince was letting us borrow his boat for the week of the tournament, what a guy! It was awesome not having to worry about towing a boat down to the tournament.
As one can imagine, it is much easier writing about a good finish in a tournament than a bad one, so I’m going to keep this one kinda short and sweet…foreshadowing? You betcha.
The first evening we got down there we put the boat in and took a quick stroll down the river to the areas that Tyler fished when they took 4th two years ago on the same pools. Pools 5, 6, & 7 were the tournament waters. After seeing similar grass still in the areas, we felt confident going into practice. First day we went north of little rock, and the 2nd and 3rd day we went south. We stayed in the Little Rock pools all three days of practice, found some stuff, but it would be a grind.
We faced 95-100 degree days without much wind all 5 days we were down there with water temps anywhere from 85-92 degrees. It was steamy... Complaining? Yes and No. That’s just AR in mid-summer, and it resulted in the most difficult fishing conditions I’ve ever fished in; ever… It was a grind everyday, but everyone had to face the same conditions.
The most difficult thing that I found about that river is that it was hard to run a solid pattern that produces bigger fish. You could go down the bank and pitch wood and grass all day long and catch fish, but they had to be 15 inches to keep, which was a back breaker for us. The river was full of grass and wood, but you had to put your trolling motor on high and cover a bunch of water in practice hoping to fall upon better fish. Its kind of like fishing milfoil clumps and mats back home in Minnesota, you can go a long time without a bite and then happen upon a pack of fish, why they are grouped up their? Who knows. Unless to came across said pack of fish, you were hurting (at least we were).
We tried the same weed clumps where Tyler did well two years ago and came up empty handed for keepers. We ended up catching 16 fish on day one with none over 15 inches and had less bites on day 2 with the same results. Teams that did well found small sweet spots in the backwaters and a couple teams found fish along the many rock and wood jetties on the main river.
If I were to fish the tournament all over again I would do a couple things different. We went into the event thinking it was going to be tough, so we didn’t set the hook on anything, unless we couldn’t help it with moving baits. I would set the hook until we caught a keeper fish. We stayed in the Little Rock pool the whole time; I would lock through next time. Not sure if those things would have made a difference, but who knows.
It was a long week in Arkansas, but if I can fish it again next year, I probably will. Even though the fishing was tough, these events are always fun in terms of the many perks the college anglers receive. We had a cool Q & A session with Scott Rook, Kevin Short, Mike McClelland, and James Niggmeyer. Also got to talk with k-pink a little bit about his win in the mighty mississip, which was very cool. Our banquet was in the “fish factory” where they film “The Bassmasters” TV show for the elite series, also very cool.
As you can possibly imagine, I was eager to get back to Minnesota and catch some fish. I’ve been out quite a bit since I’ve been back, fishing lakes such as orchard, chisago, and coon. I’ve got a clubber on chisago this Saturday and an ABA on Coon on Sunday. Coon has been very good to me in the past, but practice wasn’t to stellar, water is down quite a bit and has left my better areas too shallow, we’ll see how it goes, I’ll be sure to give reports. Until then, may your line be tight!
As one can imagine, it is much easier writing about a good finish in a tournament than a bad one, so I’m going to keep this one kinda short and sweet…foreshadowing? You betcha.
The first evening we got down there we put the boat in and took a quick stroll down the river to the areas that Tyler fished when they took 4th two years ago on the same pools. Pools 5, 6, & 7 were the tournament waters. After seeing similar grass still in the areas, we felt confident going into practice. First day we went north of little rock, and the 2nd and 3rd day we went south. We stayed in the Little Rock pools all three days of practice, found some stuff, but it would be a grind.
We faced 95-100 degree days without much wind all 5 days we were down there with water temps anywhere from 85-92 degrees. It was steamy... Complaining? Yes and No. That’s just AR in mid-summer, and it resulted in the most difficult fishing conditions I’ve ever fished in; ever… It was a grind everyday, but everyone had to face the same conditions.
The most difficult thing that I found about that river is that it was hard to run a solid pattern that produces bigger fish. You could go down the bank and pitch wood and grass all day long and catch fish, but they had to be 15 inches to keep, which was a back breaker for us. The river was full of grass and wood, but you had to put your trolling motor on high and cover a bunch of water in practice hoping to fall upon better fish. Its kind of like fishing milfoil clumps and mats back home in Minnesota, you can go a long time without a bite and then happen upon a pack of fish, why they are grouped up their? Who knows. Unless to came across said pack of fish, you were hurting (at least we were).
We tried the same weed clumps where Tyler did well two years ago and came up empty handed for keepers. We ended up catching 16 fish on day one with none over 15 inches and had less bites on day 2 with the same results. Teams that did well found small sweet spots in the backwaters and a couple teams found fish along the many rock and wood jetties on the main river.
If I were to fish the tournament all over again I would do a couple things different. We went into the event thinking it was going to be tough, so we didn’t set the hook on anything, unless we couldn’t help it with moving baits. I would set the hook until we caught a keeper fish. We stayed in the Little Rock pool the whole time; I would lock through next time. Not sure if those things would have made a difference, but who knows.
It was a long week in Arkansas, but if I can fish it again next year, I probably will. Even though the fishing was tough, these events are always fun in terms of the many perks the college anglers receive. We had a cool Q & A session with Scott Rook, Kevin Short, Mike McClelland, and James Niggmeyer. Also got to talk with k-pink a little bit about his win in the mighty mississip, which was very cool. Our banquet was in the “fish factory” where they film “The Bassmasters” TV show for the elite series, also very cool.
As you can possibly imagine, I was eager to get back to Minnesota and catch some fish. I’ve been out quite a bit since I’ve been back, fishing lakes such as orchard, chisago, and coon. I’ve got a clubber on chisago this Saturday and an ABA on Coon on Sunday. Coon has been very good to me in the past, but practice wasn’t to stellar, water is down quite a bit and has left my better areas too shallow, we’ll see how it goes, I’ll be sure to give reports. Until then, may your line be tight!
Thursday, July 2, 2009
ABA - North South Center - June 28th
This past weekend I fished my first money tournament as a boater in an ABA event on North South Center. I was able to practice on Friday afternoon after work for a half day and found some fish that left me feeling somewhat confident for the tournaments. I wasn’t getting a lot of bites, but the ones I did get were better fish. Looking at past results from other ABA tournament on North South Center it looked like it usually took 11-13 pounds to either win or finish in the money. I thought if I worked at it I would have the potential of catching that weight.
In practice I was catching post-spawn/early summertime fish anywhere from 3-12ft of water. The area needed to have either rock or weeds to hold fish. Some fish were up shallow under matted weeds that had been uprooted while others were offshore or on steep sloping banks. As some may know, our lakes here in the metro part of the state are under a drought . The boat launch at North Center was ridiculously shallow which made for quite a sight during the launching and loading for our tournament. Someone should have had a video camera… some good footage to be had. Definitely a lack of water in that lake.
We launched at 7:00am on tournament day under bluebird skies with a decent amount of wind already churning up the lake. I drew boat 13 and took off towards the north end of the lake. On about my third pitch to a deeper weedline I stuck my first keeper of the day on a blk/blue t-rigged tube. Next pitch, same thing, another good one. This was a decent surprise, didn’t even have a sniff on this weedline in practice. I moved down the bank to a spot where I caught a good one in practice and put two more in the boat; one good one and one swimmer. I worked my way back to my starting weedline and put another good fish in the boat. I had my limit by 8:00am and had about 11 pounds in the boat; not great for most lakes, but for NSC I felt good about it. All these fish came on the blk/blue t-rig tube. At this point I felt that if I could get a 4lb bite and maybe one more solid fish I would have a chance at the money.
After I caught that quick limit I proceeded to run around the lake for about 3 hours with only smaller keepers to show for it. In practice I had fished a long, deeper point in NC that came way out into the lake, hooked up on my first two casts, and left. At the beginning of the tournament there was about 4 boats on the spot already so I decided not to fish it right away. After running around the lake catching a bunch of runts I decided to finally fish it. There were still 4 boats on it when I pulled up, but it’s long enough that many boats can fish it and have their own space. On about my third cast with my all terrain finesse jig I hooked up with a good fish. I was able to cull out the small one from the morning and now had at least 12lbs. This point was loaded with fish. You could literally watch other guys on the point catch fish after fish. Once you got the school fired up they really bit. However, I wasn’t able to get many over that 2.5lb mark. I was forced to fish the shallow part of the point with the other boats out on the deeper end.
After my trolling motor batteries just about died from trying to stay on the windy point I had to move off it and go try my other starting spot. I didn’t get another bite there and had to end the day with what I had. After pulling up to the weigh-in I found out that the guys that were deeper on the points really caught them good… 19lbs good. Wow, I was a little disheartened after hearing that and soon found out that I probably didn’t have enough to be in the money. I weighed in with 12.94lbs, which on any other year at NSC would have been a money finish. However, the fish bit pretty good that day and many guys brought in 14-15lb bags. I think the fact that we had some really warm weather the week prior to the tournament finally got the fish schooled up on deeper summertime spots. It looked like most of the fish out deep had just got out there (empty bellies). You couple that with a lake that hasn’t got fished much this year because of low water and its going to kick out better than normal weights. The standings have yet to come out, but I think I’ll finish in at least the top 10 out of 26 guys so I can’t complain too much.
After having time to think about this one, I definitely have learned a lot:
#1: never be satisfied with what you have. I didn’t feel like I had the fish to win, but with past results I thought I would be in the money.
#2: start on your best spots and stay there. I should have started on that point and fished it all day long. Those deep fish seem to turn on at random times and you need to be there when they do.
#3: I have a lot to learn. I realized that I had a lot to learn before the event started (if you know everything about bass you’d be a millionaire), but now I realize that I have a LOT more to learn, primarily about fishing deep water.
These guys are good and I’ll have to step up my ‘game’ if I want to try and contend with them. I’m glad I fished the event and will hopefully be back for more!
Be sure to stay tuned. I’m heading down to Little Rock, Arkansas on Monday to fish the Under Armour National Collegiate Bass Championship on the Arkansas River. This is another one of our National Championships for college fishing. My partner took a top five on the same pools were fishing two years ago and so I feel a little confident going into the event. It will probably be a very tough bite, basically like every other lake they put us on for college events, so I’ll try to stay “cautiously” confident. As we all have experienced, this sport sure can humble a fella pretty good.
In practice I was catching post-spawn/early summertime fish anywhere from 3-12ft of water. The area needed to have either rock or weeds to hold fish. Some fish were up shallow under matted weeds that had been uprooted while others were offshore or on steep sloping banks. As some may know, our lakes here in the metro part of the state are under a drought . The boat launch at North Center was ridiculously shallow which made for quite a sight during the launching and loading for our tournament. Someone should have had a video camera… some good footage to be had. Definitely a lack of water in that lake.
We launched at 7:00am on tournament day under bluebird skies with a decent amount of wind already churning up the lake. I drew boat 13 and took off towards the north end of the lake. On about my third pitch to a deeper weedline I stuck my first keeper of the day on a blk/blue t-rigged tube. Next pitch, same thing, another good one. This was a decent surprise, didn’t even have a sniff on this weedline in practice. I moved down the bank to a spot where I caught a good one in practice and put two more in the boat; one good one and one swimmer. I worked my way back to my starting weedline and put another good fish in the boat. I had my limit by 8:00am and had about 11 pounds in the boat; not great for most lakes, but for NSC I felt good about it. All these fish came on the blk/blue t-rig tube. At this point I felt that if I could get a 4lb bite and maybe one more solid fish I would have a chance at the money.
After I caught that quick limit I proceeded to run around the lake for about 3 hours with only smaller keepers to show for it. In practice I had fished a long, deeper point in NC that came way out into the lake, hooked up on my first two casts, and left. At the beginning of the tournament there was about 4 boats on the spot already so I decided not to fish it right away. After running around the lake catching a bunch of runts I decided to finally fish it. There were still 4 boats on it when I pulled up, but it’s long enough that many boats can fish it and have their own space. On about my third cast with my all terrain finesse jig I hooked up with a good fish. I was able to cull out the small one from the morning and now had at least 12lbs. This point was loaded with fish. You could literally watch other guys on the point catch fish after fish. Once you got the school fired up they really bit. However, I wasn’t able to get many over that 2.5lb mark. I was forced to fish the shallow part of the point with the other boats out on the deeper end.
After my trolling motor batteries just about died from trying to stay on the windy point I had to move off it and go try my other starting spot. I didn’t get another bite there and had to end the day with what I had. After pulling up to the weigh-in I found out that the guys that were deeper on the points really caught them good… 19lbs good. Wow, I was a little disheartened after hearing that and soon found out that I probably didn’t have enough to be in the money. I weighed in with 12.94lbs, which on any other year at NSC would have been a money finish. However, the fish bit pretty good that day and many guys brought in 14-15lb bags. I think the fact that we had some really warm weather the week prior to the tournament finally got the fish schooled up on deeper summertime spots. It looked like most of the fish out deep had just got out there (empty bellies). You couple that with a lake that hasn’t got fished much this year because of low water and its going to kick out better than normal weights. The standings have yet to come out, but I think I’ll finish in at least the top 10 out of 26 guys so I can’t complain too much.
After having time to think about this one, I definitely have learned a lot:
#1: never be satisfied with what you have. I didn’t feel like I had the fish to win, but with past results I thought I would be in the money.
#2: start on your best spots and stay there. I should have started on that point and fished it all day long. Those deep fish seem to turn on at random times and you need to be there when they do.
#3: I have a lot to learn. I realized that I had a lot to learn before the event started (if you know everything about bass you’d be a millionaire), but now I realize that I have a LOT more to learn, primarily about fishing deep water.
These guys are good and I’ll have to step up my ‘game’ if I want to try and contend with them. I’m glad I fished the event and will hopefully be back for more!
Be sure to stay tuned. I’m heading down to Little Rock, Arkansas on Monday to fish the Under Armour National Collegiate Bass Championship on the Arkansas River. This is another one of our National Championships for college fishing. My partner took a top five on the same pools were fishing two years ago and so I feel a little confident going into the event. It will probably be a very tough bite, basically like every other lake they put us on for college events, so I’ll try to stay “cautiously” confident. As we all have experienced, this sport sure can humble a fella pretty good.
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