Chisago/S. Lindstrom and Coon Lake Tourneys

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…