B3

ABA Two Day Event - Day 2 Big Marine + season ending updates

2010-11-17T11:18:00.001-06:00

Going into the second day on Big Marine I really wasn’t to sure what to expect. As stated my practice was not too great and really I was just hoping to get a limit. After getting a limit, my plan was to find a way to get a couple better fish in the boat. I started out in a shallow bay full of pads and was able to put together a limit in the area within the first hour or so on my All Terrain AT jig in the new faircloth’s craw color. I had a few other matted milfoil areas located on the lake and worked my way through these areas with no kicker fish to be found. I caught plenty of smaller fish that would not help my overall weight. I basically stuck to my guns and fished shallow to whole day and in the end came up 3 pounds short of the winner. In looking back at the event the few things that could have potentially helped me was a good fish that I lost on Bald Eagle the day before and exploring some deeper water on Big Marine. However, with only 1 day set aside to practice on both lakes, I can’t complain about the outcome.

I ended the Angler of Year in 2nd place by 2 points! Had I finished one place higher in the 2 day event or had the winner of AOY finished one place lower, I could have taken the top spot. It just goes to show how all the little things make a difference when the points shake out at the end of the year. If I don’t miss the Clearwater tournament due to an overheated motor, my chances at AOY go up even more. However, that’s fishing and sometimes you need more than a few good breaks to be on the top in the end.

Since the two day event I fished the Viking invitation on Minnetonka and took a top 20 finished out of 80 boats in early October. That was a really fun and well run event where I go to spend a good amount of time in the boat with a good buddy of mine. My final club event was on Big Marine lake in mid October. I ended up taking 2nd place fishing shallow all day with yes you guesses it, an All Terrain jig.

Today is a sad day due to the fact that my boat will be going into storage for the winter. I’m looking forward to doing some ice fishing and have already had a chance to take a doe with my bow this fall. I’m still looking for that elusive buck to fill my other bow tag and will be hard at it for the next month or so.

I’ve begun thinking about next years tournament schedule already, but have not nailed down anything yet besides fishing a few club tournaments in an attempt to qualify for the state tournament next year. I may update my blog here and there throughout the winter, but the action will most likely slow down here until the spring season comes again.

Thanks for all those that have followed along this year, I hope you have enjoyed it. It was a successful season and a step in the right direction. Have a great holiday season and be well!

ABA Two Day Event - Day 1 - Bald Eagle Lake

2010-10-27T11:22:00.002-05:00

Day one of the ABA two day event was held on Bald Eagle Lake. I have fished this lake in past for a club tournament so I had a few areas in mind going into the event. In practice I was fortunately able to figure out what I was going to do fairly quickly. All I would need was my 3/8oz All Terrain jig and a 3/4oz texas rig for punching some heavier cover. I had found fish up shallow the day before and knew that I would spend my entire day up near the bank fishing my strengths.

I started the day near some cattails, but a strong wind had muddied this area up pretty good and the fish that were there the day before wanted nothing to do with it. I then went up to another area with pads and quickly began to put together a limit. I put a couple solid 2.5lb-3lb fish in the boat along with a few swimmers. I found the conditions to be a little more difficult that the previous day, but if I stuck with it and put my head down, I found that the bites were coming every so often. With the need of some better fish, I ran back to a patch of pads a mere stones throw away from the launch. In practice I stuck a 4 pound fish there right before I put my boat back on the trailer to go home. I thought it would be a spot that many people overlooked and thankfully I was right. I was protected nicely from the wind and I had it all to myself. I started pitching down the edge of it with my jig and ended up putting a few more solid 2.5-3lb fish in the boat after fishing that stretch a few times.

After getting off the water I discovered that many anglers had a tough day on Bald Eagle. It was a tough bite with fish far and few between. My fish weighed just over 12.5lbs and to my surprise was good enough for the day one lead! I was excited to hear this knowing that we would be on Big Marine the next day. I needed a lead going into that lake. Big Marine has had my number the past few years. So it would come to down to one last day. If I win the 2 day event, I would have a great shot at AOY yet I was faced with a lake that I have struggled on in the past. Check back soon to see if I could overcome my weakness and claim the top AOY spot!

ABA Clearwater Lake & ABA TOC Preview

2010-10-12T21:46:00.005-05:00

It has been more than a month since my last post so this is a little overdue. It has taken me a little while to digest and think about how my season ended up this summer before I wanted to sit down and write about it. I'll start with the last regular season ABA event on Clearwater.

Well... unfortunately, there never was a final ABA event on Clearwater for me. I practiced all day on Saturday before the event only to have my motor get clogged with weeds, overheat, and fry many parts inside of it. After a few choice words, a payment of $60 for hotel room that I didn't stay in, a long drive back home and thinking about how missing this tournament may have cost me a shot at AOY, I was back in my own bed that night not feeling so great. On the bright side, I only slid to 4th in the AOY standings even though I missed the tournament.

In other good news, insurance covered the $3,000.00+ expense that it took to fix my motor; man was I grateful for that! After spending a nice weekend up north at the Cabin over labor day I was recharged and ready to go for the tournament of champions for the ABA that would be held September 11-12.

The week after I got back from my cabin I scrambled like a mad man to get my boat back in time for the tournament of champions. I got my boat back from the shop on Thursday, and took off work on Friday to practice. The TOC is a two day event on a different lake each day. So on Friday I fished both lakes in the same day; about 6 hours each. It's all the time I would have for practice so I was going to have to continue practicing during the tournament if needed.

Check back soon to see how the TOC played out...

Forest, Marion and Tetonka Tournaments

2010-08-27T10:44:00.003-05:00

The end of August is near and come September the Minnesota bass tournament scene will be littered with series championships and AOY titles. This means fall is soon to come and along with it the fish will be putting on the feed bags for winter. It feels like just yesterday I was taking off for Branson, Missouri for my first college event of the year.

In the last few weeks I’ve had three different events; an ABA on Forest Lake, South Metro Slop Hawg tournament on Lake Marion and a Lakes Area Bassmasters club event on Tetonka Lake. I’ll touch on each one a little bit and then fill you in on my upcoming schedule.

Forest Lake - ABA
On August 15th I had an ABA event on Forest Lake. I have a love/hate relationship with this lake. I have won an event on this lake in the past but I still do not like to venture out there unless I am forced to. My first practice day on the lake was very inefficient sue to the fact that my Trolling motor was not working at all. I would use the big motor to position myself on a spot and then would try and drift as best as possible… “As best as possible” was not working so well so I cut my day short after only finding one small area that would prove to be fruitless during the actual tournament. The Saturday before the event I had renewed confidence with a new trolling motor switch and fully charged batteries. However, after a long day on the water from 6am – 6pm and only 7 bites total, I was anything but enthused for fishing the tournament the next day.

Sunday morning on the drive up to the lake I was seriously worried about catching a limit, which doesn’t seem to happen too much in MN with our lakes that are for the most part full of fish over 12”. I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth it to beat myself up thinking about how tough the tournament could possibly be. My plan was to go into the event not putting any pressure on myself to perform well. I didn’t have any expectations and thought that if I just fish the conditions and work hard at it, then I’ll let the chips fall where they may.

I started my day on a steep weedline bank with a dropshot and quickly boated my first two keepers; they were just little ones though. The wind was pounding the bank and getting stronger and stronger by the minute. I had to act quickly in this spot before it got to the point where I would no longer be able to fish it. I pulled out a crankbait and began working it down the edge of the weedline. Within a half hour I had a limit in the boat. Two good ones ate the crankbait and I was stoked to have a limit in the boat this early!

I continued to work my way around to different areas fishing them as fast as I could while still trying to be productive. On a lake that was fishing tough I was looking for those bites that were going to happen as soon as my bait got into the strike zone. I felt like if I hit enough areas and spots that I would eventually run into some better fish. I made a few “hail mary” runs across the lake to hit specific docks and small areas that ended up resulting in a few good fish including two over 3lbs. Your confidence shoots through the roof when you make a 10 minute run from one end of the lake to the other just to fish one specific dock and on your first pitch you stick a 3lb fish that was sitting under the walkway in not much more than a 1/2ft of water.

I made one last move to a dock that was tucked way back in a canal, pitched my All Terrain jig up under the dock and landed one more solid 2lb fish that culled out my last smaller fish. I weighed just under 12.5lbs for the day and took 2nd place. I was more than happy with how my day went and would have never expected to finish that high with the way my practice went. This helped me tremendously in the AOY race and I now sit in 3rd place for the year with one regular season event left and then the two day championship in the held near the middle of September. I will have to have a couple more good finishes to stay near the top to compete for the AOY. The guys fishing these ABA events are top notch anglers with a lot of experience on the lakes we fish so it will be no easy task. I’ll work as hard as I can and see how things end up.

Lake Marion - South Metro Slop Hawgs
This past Wednesday August 18th we had our 4th South Metro Slop Hawg event on Lake Marion in Lakeville, MN. I do like this lake at times, but it has been stingy this year due to the amount of weeds that have been depleted from the main lake area. I teamed up with my good buddy Sam with the intention of having some fun running and gunning in the few hours that we had on the lake that night. We started on a point and Sam put one in the boat quickly on a drop-shot. We then ran to another spot with some coontail with nothing to show for it. After flying down a row of docks with no results we found a little back bay that was full of matted milfoil and coontail. Within the next hour and a half we put fish after fish in the boat from 2.5-3.75lbs on All Terrain black/blue jigs. It was a really fun evening with a really good buddy; it just doesn’t get any better than that. We ended up weighing in almost 17lbs and took first place along with a little cash. It was by far a top 5 fishing trip so far this year and was a nice change from the stress of fishing larger events.

Tetonka Lake - Lakes Area Bassmasters
On August 21st I fished with my club the Lakes Area Bassmasters on Tetonka Lake in Waterville, MN. To say the least, this event was brutally tough on a brutally scummy lake. I had never seen a lake that looked and smelled like such a slime hole. I’m not sure what kind of stuff was getting into that lake, but it was not pleasant especially when your white shirt is covered in green splotches at the end of the day. Without any practice, I was just fishing by the seat of my pants. I started out on docks and basically fished docks the entire day. There was not much of a weedline and I didn’t want to waste time finding deeper rock with the little amount of time that I had. I caught three decent fish off docks before I went to check out the channel between Tetonka another lake. This lake is part of the Cannon River so there was significant current flowing through the channel. After fishing through the channel I was working my way back underneath the bridge to Tetonka. I tossed my All Terrain jig up under the bridge behind one of the pilings, my line started to move off, I set the hook and much to my surprise a big smallie came up a jumped! Trying the control the boat in the current and having to duck underneath the bridge with a fish on was quite the fiasco I had going on. I boat flipped the 3lb+ smallie into the boat as my boat drifted out from under the bridge. After recollecting myself and getting lined up again I put my boat in a back eddy and made long casts up under the bridge with an All Terrain Finesse Jig. I would let the current do the work, my jig would swing by the pilings and on back to back casts I caught two more decent largemouth! It was a cool way to fish and thankfully I found that spot otherwise I would have been in trouble with how tough the rest of the lake was fishing. I ended up being the only one to weigh in a limit that day and took first place with just over 10lbs. I never got a bite after 11:00am and even though I won the event I’m not sure I will be heading back to Tetonka anytime soon. It looks like it could be a fun lake in the spring with all the overhanging willow trees, might be a better time to fish it then.

I’ve got my final regular ABA event this weekend on Clearwater Lake near Annandale, MN and then I’ll be off for a little bit until the two day championship in September. I’ve never fished Clearwater before so it should be fun to try and put the puzzle together on a new lake. Have a good weekend and a good Labor Day weekend. I’ll be sure to update sometime in the next few weeks!

Sugar, Coon, and Crystal Lakes

2010-08-06T11:22:00.000-05:00

It’s been a busy couples weeks since my last post. I’ve had three different events since then and will cover each one briefly. We have hit and passed the climax of summer, the days are getting shorter and fall will be on its way in just a few months. However, the fishing should stay just as good, so continue to check back for updates!

Lakes Area Bassmasters - Sugar Lake
My first tournament was July 24th on Sugar Lake up by Annandale, MN. I had not been to this lake since I had a junior tournament out there close to 6 years ago. Without any practice I would be fishing by the “seat of my pants”. I started off the day fishing the first few patches of pads that I came by, dropped the TM and started chucking a frog. I missed a few quality blowups before hooking up with my first solid fish. After scratching out one more small squeaker I moved up the lake to a good looking point with some deep water close by. The wind was blowing into the point and the 12-13 inch fish were STACKED right off the steep drop. I rounded out my limit on a drop shot, but like I said these fish were not too big. I proceeded to shift around to the other side of the point tossing a beaver to the weedline. I made a pitch to a bare spot on the steep drop, my line started moving off and my rod doubled over as I set the hook on what would be a solid 4lb fish. On a lake like Sugar where smaller fish are the norm, this fish was like gold. I now had 2 good ones in the boat and 3 swimmers. I hopped around to some other good looking areas and culled with another solid fish coming from some cattails on a beaver. With about an hour to go I made one last adjustment to a new area with cattails. I needed two more solid fish to have a good finish and I didn’t want to waste away my bag that had potential with that 4 pounder sitting in the livewell. I got right up close to the cattails and began pitching my All Terrain jig way back in the cattails. I was not getting many bites, but if I got one, it was a good fish. I ended up culling twice in the last hour and also lost another good fish.

At the weigh in I put 12.5lbs on the scales and ended up with my 3rd consecutive club tournament victory and enough points to win the AOY for our 2010 season. This win was probably the most gratifying of my three club wins this year due to the fact that I was able to fish the moment and make the right adjustments that day. Most guys in the club had limits and seemed to have a day full of catching a lot of fish. Sugar was a fun lake, however, it was also a little bittersweet in the fact that I still was not able to garner up enough points to qualify for the state tournament this September on Lake Minnetonka. I was really hoping to make it this year, but only fishing 5 events and missing meetings in the winter due to being in Iowa at school killed my chances on doing so. It really stinks, but that’s just how it goes I guess…

ABA - Coon Lake
My next event was an ABA on Coon Lake. If you have read some of my posts from the past, you will find that Coon Lake is one of my favorite lakes in Minnesota. However, it has changed drastically in the last 4 or 5 years. In the past the pad and cattail bite used to be awesome. With the lake being sprayed for grass and the lake level dropping about 2 feet, the areas where I used to catch them are now void of any fish. Even the area that I found them in last year was unproductive this year due to the lack of milfoil in the area. It was time to re-learn the lake again, the fish were still there it was just a matter of relocating them.

To put it simply, my practice day was tough, brutally tough, the toughest it’s ever been for me on Coon. I got a few good bites here and there but it was spotty and inconsistent. I went into the tournament day planning to hit a few areas to see if I could generate a few good bites right off the bat and then I would continue to practice in hopes of getting on some better fish.

After spending about 3.5 hours fishing a few of my starting areas with only 4 smaller fish and a newly found trolling motor problem, I knew I needed to make a move, settle down and try to find some better fish. I ran down to an area where I had a few bites in practice. This area had lots of matted milfoil and matted coontail in about 5ft of water. I only spent about 15 minutes in the spot in practice and didn’t think too much of it. However, on tournament day, the better fish were biting in this area. I caught a 4lb 2oz fish within the first 10 minutes I was there. Then another 3lb fish right after that, both on an All Terrain jig. After those two fish, I settled down and knew I would most likely spend the rest of the day in this area picking it apart. So I continued to move from mat to mat, pitching either my All Terrain jig in the ‘less thick’ mats or a t-rigged beaver with a 3/4oz weight into the thickest and nastiest mats. Over the course of the rest of the day I was able to continue to cull and up my limit pound by pound. By the end of the day I felt like I had a decent bag that would give me some much needed points, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be in the money.

Come weigh-in time it sounded like it was a tough day for most for Coon Lake standards. I weighed in 16.58lbs and was leading the event through the first few flights of guys that had weighed in. I continued to dodge bullet after bullet from other top guys that were weighing in after me until the last angler plopped 18.5 pounds on the scales…. It was bittersweet. It would have been great to get a win, but I will take a good check and 2nd place any day, especially after the way my morning started. It was a fun event that was mentally challenging at times. My next ABA event is on August 15th on Forest Lake. I need another good finish to make a run at a good showing in the AOY. I’ll be sure to have an update on how that event went.

South Metro Slop Hawgs - Crystal Lake
My third event in the last few weeks was just this past Wednesday August 4th on Crystal Lake in the south metro. We had our 3rd South Metro Slop Hawgs tournament that night. It was a fun event with a decent turnout. Out of 6 boats I ended up in second with around 11 pounds for 5 fish. Carl and Tim Spande took home top honors and a little cash with a solid bag of 13 pounds for 5, nice job guys!

Have a good weekend and go catch ‘em!

ABA - Lake Waconia, MN

2010-07-23T14:19:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I fished in my second ABA event of the summer on Lake Waconia, MN. I have done decent on this lake in my club tournaments, so I was looking forward to this one. I knew it was probably going to take around 18-20lbs to win, so I needed to catch them pretty good.

I practiced the day before the event with a little success. I fished out deep from 7am to 12:30 with only one fish to show for my efforts. Either I don’t know how to fish deep on that lake, or the deep bite was off. So fishing towards my strengths, I went shallow pitching matted milfoil, pads, and cattails. Within an hour I had about 15lbs, made up my mind what my plan would be and left soon after that.

On tournament morning we were greeted with a stiff northwest wind that didn’t make for a pleasant take-off. After taking a few waves over the bow of the boat we were off and running. I got to my spot, put the trolling motor down, hit the power button… nothing… great start! Trying not to panic, I just buried myself in the matted milfoil and went to work with a ¾oz tungsten weight and a beaver. In about the first 45 minutes I had 4 in the box, but they were just swimmers. After an hour I decided to take another look at my trolling motor situation and finally got it working!

This gave me a boost of confidence and allowed me to settle down a little more. I moved around to the back side of the matted milfoil and continued to catch them; however, this time they were a better fish. I landed a 4lb+ and 3lb+ fish on back to back casts; those really helped my bag.

Throughout the rest of the day I continued to pick apart every square foot of the matted milfoil (which was only about 30yds X 30yds big). I culled about 10 times throughout the day with my new culling beam; that thing worked wonders. Its amazing how easy it is to pass up fish in thick cover like that, it really paid off to be extremely thorough.

At the end of the day I didn’t think I would have enough to compete for a check. However, it seemed to be a tough day for others out there too. I ended up with 14.98lbs which was good enough for 5th out of 30 boats and a small check. The deep bite seemed to be off for most and the top 5 finishers caught all their fish up shallow.

I was happy with how the day went and was excited about the 5th place finish. However, there was one thing that was very frustrating; I lost sooooo many fish in the milfoil. I’m not sure what exactly contributed to that. It could have been the massive weight that I was using, the wrong kind of hooks, or just the fact that it was extremely thick cover. I bet for every bite I got, I landed 50% of them, it was that bad. I definitely need to figure out a different rigging method for this technique, who knows what kind of bag I would have had if I landed everyone that bit…

I have another club tournament coming up this weekend on Sugar Lake near Annandale, MN. It is our last club tournament that will count towards qualifying for the 2010 state tournament. I’m not sure if there is even a chance I can qualify with the amount of tournaments I missed due to school, but I’ll be sure to let you know how it went in my next post. Have a good weekend!

Lakes Area Bassmasters - Lake Minnetonka, MN

2010-07-16T10:36:00.000-05:00

Due to some scheduling conflicts and changes for the Lakes Area Bassmasters, “Tonka Cup” phase two happened much earlier than anticipated. With notification of the switch I made my way back out to Lake Minnetonka for a day of practice on the Monday after the 4th of July. It was a zoo on the lake by about 10am which came as no surprise. Thankfully a storm system blew into the area by mid-afternoon to reduce the number of pleasure boaters on the lake. It was a long practice day that yielded some good things offshore, but my day was full of smaller caliber fish.

On tournament day I paired up with another club member, Dan. Dan is a solid angler and usually does well in our events. I felt that if we worked together we could both come in with solid limits. Dan and I hopped around to various offshore areas near our launch site for most of the day in pursuit of putting some better quality fish in the boat. I started off with two small fish caught on a drop-shot and then put my third fish in the boat about mid-morning on a t-rigged beaver; this was a much better fish. We continued to hop around to a few different bays. I was able to get my limit that consisted of a few decent fish and one 4 plus pounder. Meanwhile, Dan was unfortunately struggling to put the hook into the fish. He had a few unfortunate events throughout the day that ended up hurting him in the end. A few straightened hooks and a breakoff in some rocks really put a damper on his day. It’s never fun to witness these kinds of things, but I know he will come back strong in the next event. To help matters somewhat, Dan just found out that he will be fishing the Federation North Regional’s this year! Good luck buddy!

In the end I came in with a limit around 12.5 pounds which was surprisingly good enough to win and to retain the cup. I anticipated the bite to be tough based on my practice, but I felt for sure someone would have caught them good, its Tonka, and the big ones definitely live there!

Overall I think most guys brought in limits which was good to see. Our next club event is on Sugar Lake up by Annandale, MN. I have not been to this lake since I fished a junior bassmaster event on it about 6 years ago so we’ll see how it goes.

I’ll be fishing an ABA tournament this weekend on Waconia. It should take some solid weights to be in the money in that event. I’m going to have to really catch them to have a good finish. I should have a write-up about that event sometime next week. Until then, have a good weekend and keep your line wet!

South Metro Slop Hawgs

2010-06-25T12:50:00.000-05:00

If you are interested in fishing a few laid back weeknight tournaments this summer consider fishing with the South Metro Slop Hawgs! This is a small tournament series that will feature small entry fees and a jackpot style payback. These will be very laid back and enjoyable events where we hope the tournament participants will be able to meet some new people as well as learn a few new things about bass fishing.

Schedule for July and August:

Crystal Lake – July 7th - 5:00 pm-9:00 pm
Prior Lake – July 21st - 5:00 pm-9:00 pm
Lake Marion – August 4th - 5:00 pm-9:00 pm
Crystal Lake – August 18th - 5:00 pm-9:00 pm

If we find that people are interested in fishing more events, we will accommodate for the interest by extending our schedule into September.

There will be a $10 entry fee per boat. You can fish by yourself or with two people in the boat. The payout will be per boat, not per individual.

These will be weigh-in tournaments. There is no length limit on boats as long as they have a functioning livewell.

If you are interested in fishing these events please send an email to southmetroslophawgs@gmail.com so we can send you a more detailed spreadsheet regarding the tournaments.

If you are not able to send an email for confirmation, that is fine, please just show up by 4:45 pm on the designated tournament date so we can take care of the entry fees and give you a quick run down of a few rules.

Additionally, if you are not able to arrive at 5:00 pm due to other obligations, please just call either me or Sam when you get to the lake so we can confirm your attendance.

Bob Cell: 651-276-1910
Sam Cell: 612-306-2675

If you have any other questions or concerns, feel free to contact us through the email address, phone or here on my blog.

Thanks!

- Sam and Bob

Lakes Area Bassmasters - Lake Minnetonka, MN

2010-06-23T09:19:00.000-05:00

On June 19th the Lakes Area Bassmasters held the first annual Tonka Cup on famed Lake Minnetonka, MN. The Tonka Cup was an idea brought up by Ted Weigand, a member of the club. Ted also supplied the now imfamous silver cup. I thought the idea was great and would also put a little more at stake than a normal club tournament; something more to shoot for.

With the cup up for grabs I made sure to spend some time on the lake for practice. However, it was probably the worst practice I’ve ever had on Minnetonka. I found a few little things, but nothing very solid and nothing with a whole lot of size. My plan was to run a few areas in the morning that I had found and then just wing-it from there.

In the morning we were greeted with a fairly strong wind already coming from the northwest. This wind would prove to be disaster for my shallow spot that I had found around the big island area. I wasted about an hour and a half running down and back to that area only to find out that it was blown out and not productive first thing in the morning. After I got settled down back closer to where we launched I began to put together a small limit on a jig and a t-rigged beaver fishing milfoil in 3-7 ft of water. After I had my limit I went looking for some bigger fish offshore in 10-12 ft of water.

In practice I had one key bite out deep that was around 3lbs. This single bite clued me into a bigger fish pattern. I fished deep in the area that I got the 3lb bite, but nothing ever materialized. I continued to move down the weedline with my t-rigged beaver and finally ran into a small school of fish. My first bite was a small 1.5lb fish, but on my next cast in the same spot a solid 3lb fish took my beaver on the initial fall. If I let this spot rest for about 30 minutes they would replenish on it regularly, but unfortunately they continued to be only 1-2lb fish that kept biting.

In an attempt to run a pattern in this particular bay I sat down and picked out another offshore spot on the ‘bird that I had not fished in practice. This proved to be a solid audible and yielded another 3lb fish and a 4lb 4oz fish as well on the beaver. I was fishing the beaver in the scattered coontail grass that was out past the milfoil. After I had beaten up that spot I found one more point on the GPS that I didn’t fish in practice, ran to it, and pulled a soild 2.75lb fish off of it on an All Terrain football jig with a double tail grub for a trailer.

The day turned out a lot better than I had anticipated, especially after the slow morning I had. Scrapping everything I had found in practice, starting over and just fishing with instincts proved to be the right decision. I ended the day with 14lbs 8oz which was good enough for first place and claim to the first ever Tonka Cup. I was also able to earn some much needed club points towards the state tournament that will be later this summer. I have missed quite a few tournaments this year and last fall due to being at school. I am hoping to make up for lost time in the final two tournaments that count towards this season in the coming weeks. Follow along to see if I can get it done!

ABA - Big Marine Lake, MN

2010-06-17T08:51:00.001-05:00

This past weekend I fished an ABA tournament on Big Marine Lake. This lake is notorious for being full of fish, yet getting anything over 2lbs can be challenging. In practice I was able to find fish both shallow and deep and I was shooting for 10-12lbs. The shallow fish were caught on frogs and the deeper fish on a dropshot, jigworm, and crankbait.

I started the event out on a deep point that had a little bald spot in the weeds in about 13 feet of water. The area had a hard bottom and had plenty of fish on it in practice (aqua vu’s work well in clear water…) My high hopes of this spot quickly ran out within the first hour after I had only pulled two fish off of it. However, one was a solid 2.5lb fish which gave me a decent start. I caught the other one up on top of the point where fish were busting suspended sunfish in the morning.

In practice I had marked about five areas that I was able to get better bites on out deep and proceeded to hop around to each one throughout the next few hours. On my second deep spot I was able to put a 2.75lb fish in the boat on the drop shot, another good addition to my bag. My goal was to try and get a limit of 2lb fish in the boat before I went shallow looking for frog fish.

After fishing a few more deep areas I was able to round out my limit with smaller 1-1.5lb fish. With a few hours left in the tournament I decided to go shallow. The shallow fish that I caught in practice were tucked way back in a bay that was barely accessible. However, the fish that I caught back there were all 2.5lb plus fish. The reason I didn’t start back there is because I was not getting many bites in that area. It was about a 1 or 2 fish area; a spot where I was planning on going to get a kicker fish.

I fished through the shallow bay and proceed to miss 2 blowups on my frog. I never saw the fish and don’t know if they would have helped my bag. That’s just how it goes sometimes.

At the weigh-in my bag was 8.58lbs and I believe it only took 10lbs to be in the money. The winner had around 13lbs and I believe the winning fish were caught deep on a jigworm. This tournament was a tough one to swallow. I felt that for sure I could get five 2lb bites out deep and then take a chance at a big fish shallow, but sometimes a plan doesn’t pan out.

So now it’s on to the next one this weekend on Lake Minnetonka with the Lakes Area Bassmasters club. I spent a few hours on the lake last week, but did not find a whole lot. However, I did have a “Carl Spande” moment when a 40” musky ate the small northern that had eaten my crankbait! That was quite the fight and possibly the biggest fish I had ever caught. Come tournament day I might be hopping around the lake fishing some memories so we’ll see how it goes…

Lake Area Bassmasters - Forest Lake, MN

2010-06-09T21:51:00.000-05:00

I was able to get out and practice for this tournament on Memorial Day. I spent a full day on the water trying to find a few key areas that would put me near the top in the standings. I was very surprised how far along the fish were in this lake already. I found some fish shallow, but not as many as I expected to find for this time of year. My best bite was actually on an offshore point in about 10-12 feet of water cranking an Academy Sports crankbait (A $3 bait that looks identical to a lucky craft! sweet deal).

We launched from lake #3 at 6:00am. I started off fishing shallow around a bed of cattails and was able round out my limit on an All Terrain Jig by 6:45. 2 of them were solid fish, the other 3 just swimmers. I then went out to the offshore point and fished right along side another guy in our club. I'm not sure if the school shifted or wasn't biting, but I was on one side of the point hauling water while the other guy was hauling in fish after fish. I finally caught one keeper that would cull a small fish on the crankbait, but thats all I would get off the point.

For the rest of the day I ran around the lake like a mad man trying to cull my two smaller fish. I ended up catching two more decent fish on an All Terrain Stick worm under docks that would round out my final limit that I weighed in. I had 9lb+ and ended up in third place, not great, but not too bad. First place (the angler who was fishing the other side of the point) was 11lbs, so I wasn't too far behing that mark; one 4lb bite and it would have been close.

It was a good first event for my 2010 club season and I was able to earn some much needed points since I have missed 3 events already for this season. Our next tournament is on Lake Minnetonka in a few weeks. I'm really looking forward to that one with the potential of a big bag coming from Tonka. Stay tuned and keep your line wet!

National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship - Lake Lewisville, TX

2010-06-09T21:32:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I fished my last collegiate event in my college fishing career. It was the Boat U.S. National Collegiate Championship held on Lake Lewisville in Texas, just north of Dallas. I have fished this tournament for the past 3 years so you would think that I would have learned a thing or two about this lake. I have learned some things, but this lake still seems to get the best of us every year. Last year we fnished 36th out of 129 and we were looking to improve on that this year.

We had a mediocre practice for Lewisville. We were able to manage cathing a limit each day, but we were not on the fish to win the tournament or even be in the top 5. Going into the tournament I was looking for a limit each day and hoping that we would get onto something during the day that would allow us to get some bigger bites. We only had one bite in practice that was 3lbs+.

We started off day one throwing reaction baits around floating boat houses and only managed one keeper before we left the area. In practice, my tournament partner Tyler caught a solid fish off one of these docks on a swimbait, but that bite never materialized that morning. After hopping around the lake for the rest of the day we were only able to scratch out two more keeper fish and finished the day in a dismal 105th out of 150 boats.

With a not so good day one in the books, we were going to change it up big time for day two. We decided to run to some shallow bushes way up north in the lake. This was the same area we fished last year when we took 36th. In hindsight, we should have fished there on day one. The frog bite was on fire and we had our limit by 9am. The morning bite was very critical due to the fact that our bite significantly slowed down later in the day. After the weigh-in we were left in 79th place overall, about middle of the pack. We definitely expected to do better, but thats how it goes sometimes. It was a good last college tournament and I can't say enough about the organizations and sponsors that help to put this event on evey year. It is by far the best tournament I have ever fished and may ever fish, I'll definitely miss going to Texas each year. To top it off, Forest L. Wood even spoke at the banquet the night before Day 1, that was really neat to hear and see such a pioneer of our sport talk to all of us.

Now it's time to more on beyond my collegiate fishing career and try my hand at some larger tournaments in the next few years around the midwest region. My plan is to first try and find a stable job and see if I can't make this fishing thing work in the next 3-5 years. Who knows, I may get a year down the road and decide to just fish local events for the rest of my life, but right now I would love to try and make a run a doing it full time. It can't be done in one year, a plan must be set and hopefully I can make a dream come true years down the road. In any case, I'll be fishing, so it can't be that bad :)

Arkansas Tech Invitational - Final Day

2010-05-21T10:44:00.000-05:00

Here is an essay I wrote for a class at school about our second tournament day, sorry its a bit of a cop out instead of writing a blog entry. Graduation and the process of moving out of Iowa City has been busier than I thought it would be.

All for a Little Green Fish

Dull yellow light spreads out onto the concrete from the tall street lamps disturbing the pitch black boat launch. Its 4:45 a.m. as college anglers from around the nation roll into the parking lot with big trucks and shiny bass boats in tow. Boat after boat is swiftly launched into Lake Dardanelle. The boats slip into the water, motors are started and smoke shoots out from the engines and rises into the cool crisp air. Seventy plus collegiate teams idle towards the long dock that parallels the bank and position their boats gunnel to gunnel. It’s the beginning of day two of the largest collegiate regional fishing tournament in the nation.

As I wait for the official take off at 6:30 a.m. my boat is tied to the dock. I sit in the driver’s seat with my legs and arms crossed and my chin tucked down into my jacket as I visualize the day ahead. Scenarios run through my head: If this happens, we’ll do this, if that happens, we’ll try this… We need to have a game plan, if the fish move we need to adjust with them. I’m trying to stay calm yet I abnormally have to pee every half hour. The butterflies in my stomach are growing to enormous proportions and want out.

“You boys from the Iowa team?”

I open my eyes, a bright light blinds me, naturally I shield my eyes with my hand. “Yeah, what’s up?” A man with a large TV camera stands on the dock looking down into our boat.

“We need to get some mics on you guys, your leading the tournament right?”

“Yeah, we are. You guys following us today?”

“Yes sir, the tourney is gonna air on the VS network next fall.”

My stomach turns again. I’ve never had a camera boat follow me around a lake before. It’s tough to catch an unpredictable fish with camera boat on you, especially when the camera men expect you to catch them. What if we fail? What if the fish don’t bite? That makes for a boring show. As they mic us up I take a look out past the break line, the wind is stiffly blowing against the current, creating huge rollers. Sweat begins to form on my palms as I wonder if we will even make it to our spot thirty miles upriver. Large waves and bass boats do not mix; think large pot holes in the road, only ten times worse.

The TV guy explains their plans, “The wind is pretty bad out there today, we’re going to trailer our boat up to your area and we’ll meet you there.”

Nodding, “I hope we can make it.”

The wind continues to pick up as an orange light breaks the tree line and the sun begins to rise above the Ozark Mountains on the horizon. College anglers sit in their boats, others pace up and down the long dock, while the hungry munch down breakfast sandwiches complimentary of the tournament staff as they all wait in anticipation for day two to begin. As takeoff time gets closer the boats dislodge themselves from the dock and a flotilla of watercrafts begin to fill up the small bay inside the rock break line that separates the boat launch from the main river.

As we drift out into the bay I prepare for our thirty minute ride up river to our spot. My old, silver mirrored, Spy snowboarding goggles made a resurrection from my youth this week to keep the wind and bugs off my face while we race up the river. To keep my hands from freezing during the cold ride I put on my leather gloves lined in a soft warm fabric, these usually only see the light of day during a Minnesota winter. Anglers and spectators rise and remove their hats in the final moments before takeoff. The colors are presented, the national anthem is sung. Anglers take one last moment to make sure everything is securely latched down before the boat numbers begin to be called off through the loudspeaker. As takeoff numbers begin to be rattled off, tournament boats quickly shoot out from behind the break wall towards the main river. College pride takes off 60 mph down the lake as school colors and logos on flags attached to the boats by steel poles flap in the stiff breeze. A lake wind advisory has been declared for the tournament anglers as they fearlessly make their runs to the best spots on the river.

Boat 48! That’s us, it’s our time. We clear the calm water behind the break wall and my nervous thoughts of catching fish and winning the tournament rapidly shift to controlling the boat in the large rolling waves that blanket the wide river. I lean forward and grip the steering wheel tight. My rain jacket flaps ferociously from the wind causing a loud beating noise that deafens any other noise around me. We make the first turn around a corner and the wind settles a little bit. I open up the throttle and we hit 61 mph, the beating from my jacket gets louder and the air flying by my ears sounds like I stuck my face in a wind tunnel. I turn the boat again to go around another point, the wind is streamlined down this stretch of the river and the waves get taller. The ride gets worse as I begin to bounce in my seat, a few inches in the air each time. My body feels like a rag doll getting tossed around at ease. A headache is setting in from the pounding that my body is taking. I slow the boat down but keep the speed up enough to stay above the big waves. Nearly every twenty yards the boat smashes into a big wave. My back is becoming tense and sore as I begin to question my passion for this sport. We nail another large wave going 40 mph and this one jacks the front of the boat vertically into the air. The front end points back down towards the water. I have a split second to realize what is happening before I get nailed right in the face with a five foot swell. My body is jolted back from the force of the water hitting my face and chest. Our ride becomes halted. Everything goes silent. The engine kills. We speared a wave and are under water in the cold muddy river.

Seconds later we surface with the boat just beneath us; my breathing is heavy and uncontrollable, my eyes blink rapidly. The water clears from my face and shit is floating all over the place. My beanie, goggles and shattered pieces of my windshield float right in front of me. Rods are strewn all over the front deck of the boat and tackle floats all around us. I stand up in the bottom of the boat and water still reaches my waist, the boat is completely full of water. Panic sets in as I fear for my life. I’m certain that my boat is going to sink. It’s completely submerged in the river and is somehow staying afloat just under the surface. I’m completely soaked, freezing cold, and shaking feverishly. I turn the key once, the engine doesn’t start. I’m seconds away from activating my life vest by the pull of a strap. I try again and it fires up. We plow forward with the tip of the boat in the air hoping to keep the boat afloat and out of the other waves that are crashing into its bottom side. I flip on the bilge pumps and water pours out of the boat. We plow forward with water still in the back half of the boat.

I yell over to Tyler, “You alright!?”

“Yeah man, that was ridiculous! Ya lose anything?”

“Looks like the windshield smashed, besides that I think everything is still here, which is amazing.” I pause for a second still in a state of shock with thoughts flying through my mind. I begin to question what I put myself through just to catch a little green fish, it’s ridiculous.

Tyler looks out at the river, “Dude, it’s gonna take forever to get to our spot.”

A pause, “I can’t believe the boat didn’t sink…”

Heavy breathing, “mother nature’s a bitch man!”

“We’ve gotta go, if it takes an hour to get there, it takes us an hour. We’ve gotta be mentally tough, pick yourself up, we have a tournament to win.”

Since I don't explain it in my essay, me and Tyler ended up in 5th place. Our fish either moved or were not interested in what we were throwing on day two - it still eats me up inside and I still have yet to figure out exactly why they were not there on day two. With the bad wind it also forced us to stay up in Spadra when we wanted to run to the strip pits, this was very frustrating. The main river was so nasty that they had to bring my truck 30 minutes up river to pick us up and trailer us back to the weigh-in. Talk about going from the best fishing day ever to the worst.

Stay tuned to the blog as I will be writing an entry about the National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship very soon. I leave for Texas on Sunday May 23rd and will be down on Lake Lewisville for the week. This will be my fourth and final time there so we are hoping for the best. Until next time, keep those lines tight.

Arkansas Tech Invitational - Lake Dardanelle, AR

2010-05-12T17:53:00.000-05:00

After our first few very cold stops at Lake of the Ozarks and Table Rock Lake I was more than ready to get to Lake Dardanelle for the Arkansas Tech Invitational. This is one of the biggest, if not the biggest regional collegiate events in the nation right now. We took 38th last year out of a field of around 60 boats. As I said before, we learned a lot last year and we were hoping for a much better finish this time around.

After last years tournament, we decided that this year we were not going to run around the lake like mad men in practice. We were going to put ourselves in high percentage areas that have been known to produce year after year. On the first practice day we started in the lower end of the lake. We tried the Illinois Bayou area as well as in the strip pits. The strip pits are very unique in the fact that they have deep and extremely clear water in them, much different from anything else you typically find on Dardanelle. Basically it is and old mining pit that is now connected to the lake. We were satisfied with out first practice day after catching plenty of fish and enough keepers to have a limit.

On the second practice day we trailered the boat way up lake to an area called Spadra. This is the area that we concentrated on last year, however, last year we were actually up spadra creek. This year we went past the creek and fished in and around the islands up by spadra creek. If you ever watched the Elite Series event from last year on Dardanelle, this is where a lot of the top finishers were fishing. We had some luck in the spadra area around dead pad stems and left the area soon after catching a few keepers to make sure we didn't burn up the spot. After that we ran upriver a little further to the same exact area that Mark Menendez won the Elite event last year. We were able to float across the road that he went under last year; the water was up a few feet higher this spring. We caught a few keepers in that area and then left it alone.

On day three of practice we concentrated in the midsection of the lake. This day was cold, windy and rainy; much different conditions from the previous two days. Once again, we caught our limit in practice that day and I also landed my personal best largemouth of 7lbs 1oz on a rapala DT3 Flat crankbait, it was ridiculous! Unfortunately the only picture we have of it is on a cell phone right now. If I ever get the photo from Tyler's phone, I'll be sure to post it. After we had enough of drifting around in the wind and rain we called it a day and went back to prepare for the first day of the tournament.

After analyzing our practice our game plan was to run up to the spadra area first thing in the morning to see if we couldn't get into some fish on spinnerbaits in the dead pad stems. It was a perfect morning besides some thick fog on the way up to spadra. The wind was nonexistent which made for a smooth ride. We got to our area with only one other boat up there already, however, they were a little farther back in the cut than we were fishing. After a few casts in we had our first keeper of the day in the same area we got bit in practice. We cut through to another spot between some islands and I landed our second keeper of the day on a spinnerbait again, a solid 3lb+ fish. We continued to mosey our way in and around the islands slinging spinnerbaits at every clump of pad stems available. As we made our way out of the cut into a deeper ditch we hit the mother lode. I caught our third fish on the spinnerbait, another solid 3+. I then retied, grabbed a sandwhich for something to eat, held in in my mouth and made another cast. Instantly another good fish nailed my spinnerbait. I fought it to the boat, sandwhich in mouth. One more and we would have a limit. We turned the corner around another clump of pad stems and I hooked up again with a solid 2.5lb fish on the spinnerbait, that was our limit and we were pumped. Not 10 minutes later further down the bank that was lined with a deeper ditch another good fish smoked my spinnerbait. Right as it hit I knew it was a good fish. After a short battle we landed one of our biggest of the day, a 6lb plus fish!

After deciding that we had done enough damage in that area we decided to make a 40 minute run back down river to the strip pits to finish out our day. We got into the area and it was full of other tournament boats, but most of them were up close to the bank fishing in shallower water. We backed off the bank some and as we were working our way out of one of the strips another 6lb plus fish ate my All Terrain Finesse jig. That was an awesome cull and would put us right in the thick of things going into day two. We fished one more small stretch on bank in the strip pits and made another good cull catching a 3lb plus fish using the finesse jig.

This day was becoming unreal and we couldn't seem to do any wrong. Its pretty cool when a plan comes together, but rarely does it happen like it did that day. With about 15 minutes left we made our way back to the launch site to weigh our fish. When our fish hit the scales it read 20lbs even! We had two fish that weighed over six pounds and we were both ecstatic about our day. After the scales closed, Tyler and I were leading the event out of 70 boats with a 4lb lead going into day two. You could say I was a little nervous...

Some pictures of our bag from Day One:

Lake Oz and The Rock

2010-04-21T22:32:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile since I've updated my blog. I decided to give myself some time to think about my 10 day fishing extravaganza before I wrote about it. Here goes...

My tourney partner Tyler and I started our trip south on March 19th, we were headed for the second Central Collegiate FLW event on Lake of the Ozarks. We had practiced two weeks before and only came up with one fish, however it was 4lb 12oz. Tournament day brought nasty cold weather and put simply, the fishing was brutal for us. We ended the day cold, soaked, and with a big goose egg for the event. I was happy that we weren't going home yet, that would have made for a bad fishing trip. Luckily for us, that was only the first day on our long trip, we had plenty of time to redeem ourselves.

After the tournament on March 20th, we headed a few more hours south for Table Rock Lake (we may have stopped at the Bass Pro Shops on the way too...) I was excited to get on Table Rock for the first time in my life. Its a lake that I've read about many times and to be able to fish it was pretty cool. The first day on "the rock" brought highs in the 30s, sleet, and wind. However, with the weather also came the fish. Table Rock is such a clear lake that the fish tend to bite better in nasty weather conditions. We fished rogues and lucky craft pointers in main lake pockets for most of the day and ended up catching a fair amount of fish. Tyler nailed some good spots right off the bat and eventually I got this 4lb+ largie later in the day. I just about got frost bit on my toes, but it was a fun day none the less.

A few pictures from Table Rock Lake

Our second day on the Rock was nothing special. The weather was awesome and I could finally feel my fingers and toes, but the fishing was terrible. Tyler boated the only fish of the day on a Lucky Craft pointer in the table rock shad color. Nice day to be on the lake, not such a nice day for fishing in a lake with extremely cold and clear water. However, I learned a lot those two days. I've never fished a jerkbait much in the early spring besides on Bull Shoals about a month ago. After catching fish on the jerkbait the first day, I gained a lot of confidence in that bait and its just another presentation to add to the arsenal. We got off the lake around 3:00pm, got everything latched down and we were now on our way Lake Dardanelle on the Arkansas River for the Arkansas Tech Invitational, I couldn't wait to get there.

It's been four days into an unforgettable fishing trip and the best is still yet to come...

Exciting Week Awaits!

2010-03-16T10:32:00.000-05:00

First an update of our first FLW college tournament.... On March 6th my buddy Tyler and I fished our first event of the year on Bull Shoals in southern Missouri. The fishing was difficult to say the least. 40-44 degree water temps made it tough to get bit. We only caught 4 fish all day. Tyler landed our only keeper in the last half hour of the day on a custom painted lucky craft pointer, it was a solid spotted bass. We only weighed in that one fish and ended up 16th out of 40 boats. The winners only had 3 fish which also shows how difficult it was. It's too bad we couldn't scratch out a few more keepers, those tough tournaments are always the easiest to win.

Even though we had a tough day on the water, I learned a tremendous amount about fishing in cold water. I learned more than I ever knew about jerkbaits and custom tuning them to perfection which will help me in future events.

We also prefished lake of the ozarks and found the bite to be tough there too. We found one area that coughed up a solid 4lb 12oz fish, but that's all we caught that day. We are hoping for warmer weather which may force more fish to move into the area we found. We'll see how it goes.

Now a look ahead... This Friday March 19th Tyler and I will be back on the road heading to Lake of the Ozarks for our second FLW college tournament set for Saturday March 20th. This will be my last FLW college event that I will ever fish, so we definitely need a top 5 to make it to regionals.

After the FLW tournament we are heading back down to southern Missouri to fish Table Rock Lake for two days. The is no specific reason we are fishing this lake besides for fun and to take up a few days. We're hoping for a good bite and with the warm weather they have been getting down there, we could hit it just right.

After Table Rock, we'll travel a few more hours south to Lake Dardanelle for a college regional tournament. We will be practicing for three days and then the tournament is Friday and Saturday. We fished this tournament last year and faired alright, but still not that great. We learned a lot last year and I expect to perform much better this year.

We've got a busy week ahead, but I couldn't be more excited. I've never taken a trip where I'll get the chance to fish 3 top notch lakes withing a week period. Hopefully the fish gods are with us next week. We're hoping for safe travels and even better fishing! Check back for a report once I get back.

Fishmas Season Eve

2010-03-04T21:03:00.001-06:00

It's almost here... I'll be leaving tomorrow morning for southern Missouri and the start of my 2010 fishing season. This will mark the earliest I have ever fished for bass in my life. Hopefully we run into a few fish so I can mark down the earliest I've ever caught a bass too, in open water.

My tournament partner Tyler and I will be fishing Bull Shoals lake on Saturday to kick off the FLW College Central Division qualifiers. The goal is to finish in the top 5 in order to qualify for the regional tournament. Last season we were fortunate enough to hold onto a top 5 spot on Lake of the Ozarks. After getting a taste of the regional event last year, we would reeaaally like to return. It could be tough on us this weekend seeing to the fact that we have never laid eyes on the body of water and will not be able to practice. However, this won't get us down and you can bet we will be giving it our best to try and compete for the top spots.

A cold winter has kept bass still somewhat in their winter patterns from what I've been reading. The forcast is showing a warming trend, so we will have to be open minded on the water to determine if the fish are making a move. We have a game plan set in terms of lure choice, it's more so just a matter of finding the fish (Like always right?!)

After Saturdays college tournament we will travel a few miles up to Branson, Missouri to watch the final day weigh-in for the FLW Tour pro tournament that is taking place on Table Rock Lake. That should be very fun and exciting, I'm looking forward to it.

Once the FLW Tour weigh-in wraps up we will be traveling a few more hours north to Lake of the Ozarks. In a few weeks we have our second FLW College event on Lake Oz, so we will be stopping there on the way home to spend a little time on the water on Sunday. I'll be towing my boat down to Bull Shoals so we will be able to use it on Lake Oz.

It should be a jammed pack weekend full of nothing but fishing, fishing, fishing. My reels are all spooled with fresh new line, the boat is ready to go, and I've got a terrible case of cabin fever. It should be an awesome weekend to kick off the season and scratch the itch!!

Back at it!

2010-02-18T21:58:00.000-06:00

I hope every ones winter season is flying by faster than mine has, spring can't get here soon enough! I was doing just fine dealing with the cold weather up until about a month ago; now it's really getting to me.

Hunting season has come and gone and I'm becoming tired of starring down through a hole in the ice. Luckily for the Iowa Bass Team and I, we will be heading 9 hours south in two weeks to fish the first FLW College Fishing event for the central division on Bull Shoals Lake. It has been an unusually cold winter for the southern states this year so hopefully it will warm up a tad bit by the time we get there.

Whether the fishing is good or not, it will at least scratch the itch a little bit until the ice thaws here in Iowa. Recent Bull Shoals local events have been kicking out some decent fish, so hopefully we can find enough to do well.

I'll also be towing my boat down to the event. On the way back to Iowa after the tournament, Tyler and I are going to prefish for the 2nd FLW College Fishing tournament from the central division on Lake of the Ozarks. It should make for a fun little trip to start off the year!

The Iowa Bass Team has scheduled a busy spring semester in terms of club, regional, and national events. I will do my best to try and give updates on how things are progressing with the bass team throughout my last semester here at the University of Iowa. The last four years have flown by, but I plan to make the best of it while it still lasts!

Buck Down!

2009-11-18T21:22:00.001-06:00

Very rarely does it happen where a plan comes together and works just right. Well, on November 11th of last week everything clicked and I was able to take down my first Iowa Buck! He came in chasing a doe, made a scrape, and moved into my shooting lane at 25 yards. I hit him well and he only went about 60 yards. The hard work and hours of sweating in the late summer to set up the stand definitely paid off!

He isn't the biggest buck, but I couldn't pass up the droptine. It was also taken on public land which made it that much sweeter. You can shoot decent bucks on public ground, just might have to move away from the pressure and do something others aren't willing to do :)

I'm heading back to Minnesota this weekend to bow and gun hunt up there up until Thanksgiving. I'll keep updates coming if I have any luck up there.

Here is a picture of mine and my buddies that he shot 2 days after I shot mine, it was an awesome week!

A year in review, recent happenings, and future plans....

2009-11-08T21:09:00.000-06:00

The colder weather is beginning to set in and in a month or so our lakes in the upper Midwest will be covered with a large sheet of ice... awesome. I will be hanging up the rods for year now that my tournament season is over and bow hunting season is now in full swing. First, an update on how some of my recent fall tournaments went.

On October 11th we had our annual Big Ten tournament on on Lake St. Clair in Michigan. What a massive lake! It was definitely overwhelming to begin with but we ended up finding some fish in the end. The hard part about this tournament is that I brought my own boat to use while most other Big Ten schools had volunteer boaters for practice and tournament day. The volunteer boaters (locals) were able to help out the college anglers in practice while we were left on our own with no help whatsoever. Basically whatever we found in practice, all the locals knew about these spots. In hindsight I would have left my boat at home and gone with a volunteer boater, but that's just how it goes sometimes. Here is a smallie from practice, you can see how big the lake is in the background!

In the end my boat caught 13lbs for 3 fish and as a school we had 19lbs and took 6th place out of 8 boats. Here is a picture of a 4+lb and 5+lb smallmouth that I caught during the tournament day. We were on quality, just couldn't get the quantity.

On October 30th-November 1st my buddy Tyler and I fished in the FLW College Central Division Regional Tournament that we qualified for. It was held on the famous Kentucky Lake. In practice we found the topwater and rattle trap bite to be very good in the backs of the creeks where ever bass we busting and chasing shad. On day one we caught 25-30 fish, but only two that went over 15 inches. We caught all these fish on spooks and red eye shads. We were left in 16th place out of 20 boats and decided on day 2 to run all new water that neither Tyler or I had ever seen in our lives. We ended up getting onto some better fish in the northern part of the lake on rip rap transition areas. We didn't catch as many fish, but we had three keepers for 7lbs 8oz which moved us up to 10th place in the tournament. I was happy with how we were able to scrap everything and make our day fairly productive. If we had only 4 more pounds we would have cracked the top 5 and made it to nationals... so close, yet so far. I can't say enough about FLW outdoors and the National Guard for these awesome college events that they have put together this year. I had an absolute blast fishing these events and will definitely be back next year. Oh yeah, they also gave us Z520 Rangers to use for the event, how sweet is that!? Here are some pictures of the boat, a 4lb practice fish and some of the tournament fish from day 2....

When I look back at the year I had it's definitely had its ups and downs, I've had a blast through it all though. In the end it's just fishing and you can't beat that! I feel like I have gained a great amount of experience in terms of fishing other larger bodies of water throughout the nation because of the college tournaments that I have had the opportunity to fish during the season. The fact that most of the college events are non-entry fee tournaments makes it that much better. I have been able to fish some great bodies of water this year including Lake Dardanelle, AR; Lake Lewisville, TX; Brookville Lake, IN; Arkansas River, AR; Pool 19 Mississippi River, IA; Lake St Clair, MI; Lake of the Ozarks, MO; and Kentucky Lake, KY. I basically got a crash course of what it would be like to be on the tour as a pro. It's a grueling lifestyle, but it's something that I would like to try and pursue after college is done. Once again, I can't say enough about how well run the college events are. It gives us as students the experience we will eventually need down the road if we have aspirations of becoming a pro someday.

I have already began planning for next year and have a few ideas of which tournaments I would like to fish. I know for sure that I am going to be fishing some more of the college events in the spring of the year and possible a couple in the summer. I will also be fishing with my bass club, Lakes Area Bassmasters, throughout the summer. In terms of larger events my goal is to fish some of the ABA events again, and if I can come up with the finances I would like to try my hand at the MN/WI Bassmaster Weekend Series. I like the looks of that schedule and its something that I have my sights set on if things fall into place.

Well, the deer are running like crazy in the woods right now. The rut is in full swing and I've passed on a couple opportunities to take some smaller bucks and does this past week. I'll be hunting hard for the next week or so to see if I can't put a big buck down. So stay tuned.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone who takes the time to sit down and read these posts every so often. I enjoy sharing my trials and tribulations that make up a season of tournament fishing and it also helps me to really study and learn things from each event that I fish when I can go back and re-read my old posts. Thanks again and have a good rest of the fall and winter; spring can't come soon enough!

Quick Update - It's been awhile!

2009-10-05T21:40:00.000-05:00

It has been awhile since my last post, with school starting up I've been a little bit more consumed in my studies rather than being on the water. However, even though the air temps are beginning to drop, my college tournament schedule is beginning to heat up again. I've got a full schedule of tournaments up until the first weekend in November and hope to write a little bit about each one. Here is an update of what has occured in the last month and what will take place in the month ahead.

During the last week of my summer, 3 of my college roommates flew up from Chicago to spend a couple days up north at my cabin. To say the least we had an absolute blast! They had some fishing experience before they got up there, but not a whole lot in terms of fishing "the way we do". It was really fun putting them on some fish, it was a trip I will soon not forget!

In late August I fished my first FLW college event on the Mississippi River out of Fort Madison, Iowa the weekend before school started. My tournament partner practiced for the event a couple weeks before the event and fared well. However, if you have ever fished rivers you know how fast they can change, and change it did. We didn't make the right adjustments and ended up with a big goose egg for the tournament. The fact that 21 other boats out of 40 zeroed as well made me feel a little better, but not a whole lot better,.

If you read my last post about Big Marine you know that my motor wasn't working after that event. Well, it ended up being that my starter went out on me. Thankfully I have an awesome Dad and he was able to replace it and install a new one himself! So, last weekend I went home to get my boat and do some fishing back in Minnesota. Friday the 25th was pretty good fishing on a south metro lake. My best 5 would have been 16+ mainly caught on jigs and frogs. On Saturday I went to visit my buddy in Winona. We spent the day fishing down there on the Mississippi River on Pool 5a. We fared alright, but it was a little slower than normal; swim jigs proved to be best that day.

This past weekend I fished in my second FLW college tournament down in Missouri on Lake of the Ozarks. This time we fared much better than the first tournament. Me and my teammate, Tyler, ended up using All Terrain finesse jigs, t-rigged baby paca craws, spro dawgs, and shakey heads to catch 5 keeper fish for 9lb 5oz. It proved well enough for a 5th place finish out of 40 boats and $1000 cash for the bass club here at the University of Iowa! Also, if you finish in the top 5 in any of the FLW college tournaments you qualify for the regional tournament. Therefore, we will be competing against 19 other regional qualifiers for a top prize of $50,000 on Kentucky Lake from Oct. 31st - Nov. 2nd. To say the least, I am absolutely jacked to fish this event!! I cannot wait! A big thanks goes out to Chuck Campbell for helping us get started on fishing Lake Oz! To follow these college tournaments, you can check it out at www.collegefishing.com

Coming up this weekend from Oct. 8th - Oct. 11th is our annual Big Ten Championship. This year it is going to be moved to the fall season and will be held on Lake St. Clair in Michigan. Both smallmouth and largemouth could come into play during the event. Whether or not the wind blows on this massive lake is really going to determine which species we will target.

So as you can see, I've been a little busy this past month and it won't slow down too soon. However, I wouldn't want it any other way. Be sure to check in frequently this fall on updates from the Big Ten Event and the FLW Central Regional tournament that will take place here at the end of the month. Also, I just purchased a new bow recently and am really looking forward to getting in the woods down here in Iowa once these tournaments are over and November rolls around. I may be giving some updates from my experiences in the woods so stay tuned!!

Club Tournament - Big Marine

2009-08-29T20:51:00.000-05:00

My club tournament on Big Marine Lake a couple weeks ago was definitely one to remember and not necessarily because of the fishing. I would describe it as a crazy, frustrating, scary, yet still rewarding tournament. I didn’t pre-fish for the tournament since I helped my buddy move into his college house down in Winona the weekend before. We may have also taken a cast or two into the Mighty Mississip while we were down there… fishing wasn’t too stellar though.

In past years I have had decent success on Big Marine and figured that I would just fish this one by the seat of my pants. I got to my first spot pitching a jig into reeds and cattails. It took about 15 minutes to get the first fish in the well, but it was a peanut. About five minutes later some major storms were on the horizon; in no time they had cleared the horizon and were right overhead. It started pouring rain and a bolt of lightning struck what looked to be the lake about 500 yards away, only problem was that I couldn’t get my big motor started! Other club guys were able to make it back to the launch, but I was stuck. Lightning continued to strike overhead and by this time I was a bit freaked out to say the least. With no big motor I crawled up onto the front deck on my stomach, put the TM on high and pushed the power button with my hand leading me into a mess of cattails. I figured it was the closest and safest place until the lightning passed. I laid on the bottom of my boat for about 45 minutes until the lightning started to disappear. As I laid there with my head under the console of my boat I couldn’t help but laugh and think to myself, “man, what a way to spend a Saturday morning!”

After the first storm passed I was a little shaken and un focused, but was able to get back to fishing. After a little while more in the cattails with no success I moved to a deep weedline that has been good to me in the past (finally got the big motor started). I caught one keeper right away on a jigworm, another swimmer though. I continued down the weedline catching a small fish here, small fish there. This weedline usually has held better fish in the past and no longer did that day. Before I got to the end of the spot another storm full of lightning was approaching. I got off the lake in a hurry this time and watched it from the bank before a nice guy named Dan let me come in his house to wait it out. Lightning once again came crashing down for a good 30-45 minutes. So there I sat, watching the weather channel, with Dan. Dan was a good guy, we had a lot in common which made for good conversation. After this storm let up I returned to my weedline with no success. The clouds cleared and now it was getting hot and really windy (what a goofy day weather wise).

With my weedline not producing I moved to a point close to the island. It was tough getting the motor started, but eventually it fired. With no success on the point I was going to move to the south end of the lake to get out of the wind. Well, this time my motor didn’t start. Two lightning delays, only two dinks in the box, and now a motor that wouldn’t start… I was a little frustrated. What happened is I ended up running down my cranking battery therefore ruining my chances of starting the big motor. In hindsight, it was probably a godsend that I didn’t get it started because my plan was to run to the south end of the lake, opposite of the launch ramp. If I had done that and then had the motor not start on me I would have really had a problem getting back to the launch. Thankfully I was only about a 2.5 hour trolling motor ride away from the launch and would be able to fish my way back. With the wind behind me and my trolling motor on high I just took out a big crankbait and fished my way back. The best part about it was that I was able to put a limit in the livewell on the crankbait and even cull a couple times! They were still all small, but it made me feel a little better. I hardly ever fish cranks and it gave me some much needed confidence in them.

With our weigh-in sight being at a different location than the launch ramp I needed to call our tournament director to let him know I wouldn’t be at the weigh-in. However, with all the rain we got in the morning, my phone got wet while in my pocket and wouldn’t work! I couldn’t dial out, but I could receive calls. Knowing there was no way I could get to the weigh-in with my predicament I just weighed my fish in a bag with a hand scale. My total came to a whopping 6lbs 2oz!

As I was driving home a club member gave me call to see where I was. Told him what had happened and also told him what I had caught. To my surprise they counted my weight and even more surprising, I came in 3rd place!?!? I was very surprised. It was a tough fishing day with powerful storms in and out of the area all day, but I didn’t expect it to be that tough.

So in the end it all ended up working out just fine and I was able to gain some confidence in another technique. I’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes it’s just not your day and when it rains, it pours…

Chisago/S. Lindstrom and Coon Lake Tourneys

2009-07-30T13:06:00.000-05:00

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…

Under Armour College Bass National Championship - AR River - Little Rock

2009-07-24T15:11:00.000-05:00

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!

ABA - North South Center - June 28th

2009-07-02T10:01:00.000-05:00

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.

Lake Independence - June 6th

2009-06-29T11:41:00.000-05:00

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

2009-06-22T18:40:00.000-05:00

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!!

Big Ten Championship - Brookville Lake, Indiana

2009-05-03T08:58:00.000-05:00

Last week my buddies and I from the University of Iowa Bass Team competed in the 14th annual Big Ten Championship on Brookville Lake in Eastern Indiana. This is one of my favorite college events because we can bring upwards of 10 members to the event which always makes for a good time. It's also one of the oldest collegiate tournaments (if not the oldest), so its pretty cool being apart of it.

Since we were having difficulties finding boats for our team we ended up only bringing 8 guys to the event. It didn't hurt us tremendously because the format for the Big Tens allows you to only weigh-in your 3 best boat's fish from your team for a total weight. Even though we cut our team by two guys we still only had two guaranteed boats that we were towing to the tournament. We had to rent a 14ft aluminium boat with a 9.9hp motor for one of our teams during the 1st practice day. The 2nd day of practice was even more interesting when we had to jam 8 guys into 2 boats... better be careful with your backcast!

Practice for us on Brookville Lake was just plain tough to say the least. Over a total of 2 days with a combined 8 guys fishing, we only landed 3 keepers! Brookville Lake was tremendously clear in the mid to lower portions of the lake. And as usual with most reservoir systems, we found some dirtier water up in the northern end of the lake.

On practice day one we found water temps that ranged from 50-63 degrees depending on where you were on the lake. We started in the upper part of the lake on shallow stump flats throwing moving baits and pitching a little bit to no avail. We moved down lake and caught some short fish on a shakey head with a straight tail robo worm off of small main lake cuts. It was brutally tough trying to get keeper bites, we just could not figure out what to do differently. At the end of the day we moved back up to the northern part of the lake and my buddy, Chris, finally caught a nice keeper off a laydown on a shakey head, now I had a little confidence.

After getting back to the ramp we found out that one of our other boats didn't catch any keepers and our rental boat guys had actually caught a nice 18 inch fish, also in the upper portion of the lake. It was a tough day on the water, it was time to go back to the drawing board.

On the second practice day we started off fishing the dam on the lower portion of the lake. I had read many times of the plentiful population of smallies that were in the lake and thought that we ought to give them a chance. Within the first couple casts I hooked up with a keeper smallie on a craw colored wiggle wart crankbait. We continued on down a rocky bank adjacent to the dam and Chris caught another smallmouth on a finesse jig. Things were already looking better for us and I felt that we may have found something. Our other boat didn't land any keepers on the second practice day, but recorded a couple short fish. After two days of practice our game plan was to start out in the lower portion of the lake trying to catch smallmouth and then just adjust from there. Our tournament day started off on the wrong foot when one of the volunteer boaters for out team didn't show up. This left us once again having only three boats and having to split 6 guys between two boats. Me and my partner John were able to fish by ourselves for the day. After we got everyone situated with boats it was time for take off. The wind had died down nicely compared to the two previous days which made for a nice launch. I had boat number 2 and was able to get to the dam first. However, it ended up paying no dividends. We fished around the dam and the rocky bank close by for the first 2.5 hours with nothing to show for it. I told John that we needed to scrap the smallmouth plan and get to the northern end of the lake. The previous day while driving on the north end I spotted a good looking bank with a bunch of laydowns. The water was dirty and much warmer. We never fished the spot on practice, but I told John that we were either going to live of die in the north part of the lake. I felt comfortable fishing that type of water and decided we would just grind it out there for the rest of the day. Besides the smallies, the north end was the only place we could catch keepers and I didn't want to mess with a bunch of short fish in the middle portion of the lake.

We got to that bank I was talking about and we starting flipping and pitching reaction innovations sweet beavers. After about 30 minutes I hooked into our first bite, a keeper! Man, that felt good to get that fish. After fishing that bank for awhile without a bite I was thinking, "Jeeze, another failed college tournament..." but things were beginning to turn around. After about 15 more minutes I landed our second keeper! After going all practice with only catching 1 keeper myself, I was pumped! Since its a team tournament, we can call our other boats to give them updates. We called one of our boats over to the bank we were on and they were able to also score a keeper fish on a sweet beaver. Things were definitely looking better. The water water getting up to 65 degrees and I knew fish had to be moving up to the wood and laydowns. With that thought in mind me and John made another small adjustment and went back to the exact same cove and stumps that we fished first thing on the first practice day. The water had warmed up the fish had moved up! In the last 45 minutes I bet we caught close to 10 fish pitching around isolated stumps with sweet beavers. However, only one of them went over 14 inches. We caught a lot of fish that were 13.25, 13.75, just a little to short.

We fished down to the last couple minutes that we had with no more keepers. I really feel that if I would have given myself about 2 hours in that cove that we could have scratched out a limit. But I'm also glad that we had the sense of mind to realize that fish were moving up because it had been so hot that week. It was an adjustment that paid off.

After getting back to the launch and finding out our team only had a total of 4 fish I thought we didn't stand a chance in placing that high. I figured since we were catching them pretty good at the end of the day that most of the other teams were too. However, I was pleasantly surprised. My 3 fish weighed just over 4 pounds and our other boat that had one fish pushed our team total to a little over 5.5lbs. After all teams had weighed in we found out that we had enough for 2nd place! I was shocked. I knew that the lake was fishing pretty tough, but I didn't think it would be that tough for the other teams too. From what I've read and heard, Brookville is a lake that can be very difficult if you've never fished it before. Its very different than anything I had ever fished, but I felt most comfortable flipping and pitching in dirtier water around laydowns and stumps (so fishing you strengths really does pay off!).

Overall, even though the fishing kinda stunk, this was probably the best college fishing trip I have been on since I started fishing these things. The guys that went on the trip were awesome and made it that much better. I think we had some good team chemistry. Even though it was brutally tough in practice we persevered and got it done on tournament day which always makes the ride home that much better.

Mississippi River - Pool 19 - Burlington, IA

2009-04-30T19:43:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks ago we had a boater/non-boater club tournament for our University of Iowa Fishing Team down on pool 19 of the Mississippi River out of Burlington. Each U of I member was paired up with a Lake Cooper Angling Association club member. Since it is extremely difficult to find boats to use for tournaments, the LCAA club helped us out tremendously.

I was really looking forward to this tournament because I had never fished the Miss. River this far down before and I also thought it would be a great opportunity for our U of I members to have a chance to get some experience and tips from some of the older guys that had been fishing tournaments for much longer than we had.

We (10 club members) left the Iowa City area around 4:00 am and started our trek towards Burlington, IA. After about an hour drive we arrived and got paired up with our boaters and got ready for the tournament. We launched at 7am and weighed in at 3pm.

Overcast skies and rain greeted us on tournament morning. The rain didn't let up once throughout the entire day which left for some wet anglers and rusty stored tackle box hooks at the end of the day.

Me and my partner, Tony, made about a 40 minute run down to the Montrose area of the River. We were fishing a backwater cut that was a couple degrees warmer than the main river channel. It was a really cool spot that was always replenishing throughout the day. The fish would swim by this little cut while on the main river, feel the warmer water, and swim into the cut. We went up and down about a 30 yd stretch most of the day and fished a couple other areas close by this stretch too. There was one specific laydown that would ALWAYS replenish. We would catch a fish off of it, come back 5 minutes later and catch another, it never failed and was really an awesome learning experience for spring time fishing (always replenishing in a transition area).

Tony was mainly fishing with a sweet beaver and a chatterbait. I caught all my fish on an All Terrain finesse jig in texas craw color with a green pumpkin trailer. I bet we caught close to 40 fish that day, but only 4 of them were over the length minimum of 14 inches.

We ended up weighing 4 fish for 10lbs 11oz which was good enough for 4th place out of 12 boats. The best part about this tournament was the amount of funds our club raised. We expected to raise about $400 going into the event, however, once the top finishers started donating the cash winnings to our club we ended up walking away with more than $1000.00! Its was an unbelievable event and we were greatly appreciative of the donations. It went a long way in terms of helping out with the Big Ten Championship. By the way, stay tuned, I'll be posting about the Big Ten Tourney here in the next couple days.

P.S. we ended up finishing the highest that Iowa has ever finished before! it was tough, but it worked out...

Lake Dardanelle - Arkansas Tech Invitational

2009-04-27T16:48:00.000-05:00

My bass tournament season officially began a little more than a month ago when me and a buddy of mine went down to Lake Dardanelle to represent the University of Iowa Bass Team at the ATU Invitational. We had high hopes while traveling to the event after reading about how many big bags this tournament has kicked out in past years. Limits were the norm and 20lb sacks were consistent in past years. We were down there from March 16-21, a week before the BASS Elite Series guys were down there. After picking up my boat in Minnesota with temps in the low teens we eventually arrived in Russelville, Arkansas with balmy 60-70 degree weather, definitely a good way to spend a spring break... Also, anyone ever heard of the Arkansas Grand Canyon? Yeah, me neither, but we drove right through it on the trip down, what a crazy drive! Its part of the Ozark Mountains and was a cool sight to see.

Practice Days 1, 2, and 3:
Basically me and my partner, Tyler, decided to break down this massive lake/river into three sections: lower, mid, and upper portions. On each practice day we fished one portion of the lake. At close to 55,000 acres we in no way were able to cover all of it, but we tried our best. The first two days of practice were brutally tough for us. We fished for both days with only catching 2 keepers. We caught some short fish, but even they were not that prevalent. On the third day of practice we decided to make a 30 minute run up to the spadra creek area of the lake. The third day presented us with overcast and rainy conditions for the first time since we had been there. Within the first half hour after making our run we were already noticing better results than the first two days of practice. We ended the day catching around 14lbs. We were mainly focusing on flats with stumps and also laydowns that were on bank closest to the creek channels that ran through these backwaters. Our main baits were spinnerbaits, jigs, beavers, and chatterbaits. Here are some pictures from practice.

Tournament Day 1:

On day one we put all our eggs in one basket and made the 30 minute run up to spadra. With sunny conditions and high skies we struggled to get a keeper in any of the spots that we caught the 14lbs in the day before. Eventually at about 12:30 Tyler hooked into a keeper fish on a jig off a laydown. That would be the only fish that we would catch that day.

Tournament Day 2:

On day two the forecasts were very similar to our third practice day which left us optimistic about our chances up in the spadra creek area. We got to our staring spot and within the first half hour I landed a keeper fish on a spinnerbait. I thought that it was going to be on after that fish. However, that would once again be the only fish that we would catch that day.

We ended the tournament only weighing 2 fish and that was good enough for 38th out of 57 boats(http://www.collegiatebasschampionship.com/uploads/2009%20ATU%20RESULTS_final2.pdf). Not great, but not terrible for only tow fish. It was tough on most of the Field, but as usual, a couple teams always figure them out. the winning team brought in solid limits each day and totaled 30+ pounds. They also were fishing up the river quite a ways.

One of the really cool things about this event is that a lot of the Elite Series guys attended the weigh-ins since they were going to be fishing the lake the week after us. Kevin Short was the MC for the weigh-in and it was cool being able to talk with him on stage. We also got the see guys such as Rick Morris, Pat Golden, Clark Rheem, Marty Stone, and even the zen master Rick Clunn. Following the Elite Tournament the next week on the same exact lake was even cooler. We were fishing very 5 minutes from where most of the top 12 guys were fishing; so close, yet so far. We also practiced in the same area that VanDam caught most of his fish on the 4th day of the Elite event, yet we didn't catch as many as he did (its amazing how good those guys are!)

All in all in was a fun event and a great way to spend my spring break. Stay tuned for more updates on my spring tournaments. I've had three already this year and I'll be writing about them throughout the week!

coming out of hibernation...

2009-04-27T01:27:00.000-05:00

hey all, its been waaay too long since I last wrote in my fishing blog and this will soon change. I was debating whether or not to continue writing this year and have concluded that I will once again blog about my summer fishing adventures. Keep tabs on my blog as I will be updating it this week with some tournament entries from this spring! There should be some good stuff coming, so stay tuned!!

Abu Garcia Revo's listed on eBay

2008-11-25T16:59:00.000-06:00

If your looking for some brand new reels at a great price I just listed three new revo's on eBay. One STX Revo for $115.00 and two Skeet Reese Revo's for $175.00. All three reels are left handed. My user name is uiowabass if you want to search for the reels. All proceeds from the sale will be going towards new jerseys for the University of Iowa Bass fishing Team. Check 'em out!

National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship - Tournament

2008-09-25T11:13:00.000-05:00

Tournament Day 1
The first day of the tournament greeted us with overcast skies after we had practiced three days with only sun. I didn't quite know what to expect. I knew that the weather would probably help our rattle trap bite, but thought that it might hinder our other patterns.

We started off the day throwing rattle traps in the 2-5ft range around smaller sticks that lined the bank. We moved through our first spot with no keepers, but continued down the bank. Finally at 8:30 Tyler caught a decent keeper on a Berkley frenzy rattle trap. I was overjoyed at this moment mainly because I have yet to weigh in a fish in a big college tournament. We continued down the bank and I caught a solid fish on a strike king red eye shad. He nailed it right at the bank, jumped three times, and managed to stay on. We now had 2 keepers in the box by 9:00 and things were looking way better than in 2007. However, that's where our keepers would stop.

We fished our marina pattern and our boat ramp pattern with no success. I couldn't believe it; well I could kind of believe it. We needed sun on those spots for them to produce. If the sun was out, the spots would move to the edge of the boat ramp slabs and we could catch them draggin plastics. We literally made one cast on two different boat ramps in practice and caught two keeper spots right away. So after a long afternoon, we manage only 3-4lbs and were stuck in 83rd place out of 100 boats. Not quite what I was shooting for. Some of the bags that were being brought in were nuts! I definitely underestimated the quality of the fish in Lake Lewisville.

One thing I would have done differently on Day 1 would have been to slow down. The area we fished in the morning had a couple other teams on it. One of them brought 16lbs to the scales... talk about a back breaker.

Tournament Day 2
On day 2 we had a better boat draw so we were able to get to our starting spot first. We picked up a couple small keepers before the other teams got there. I saw Tarleton State coming into the area and began to back off the spot. This was the team with 16lbs the first day and I figured they earned the right to fish it and had a better shot at making the top 5 than we did. However, I found out later that a different team ended up sitting on the spot most of the day and caught a couple 3-4lb fish. Too bad for the TSU guys, but I guess that's how it goes. We back over our starting spot again, but this time we started fishing the bigger/thicker wood outside of the sticks. Right away we began catching fish, but nothing that was big enough. In practice we didn't have a single bite on the big wood, but now they were on it.

We made a big run uplake to some other bigger wood after catching some on our first spot. As we were approaching the wood I was casting the red eye shad on a main lake point. I picked up our first keeper of the day which was a 13" spot. Nothing big, but a start. I then proceeded to pitch the wood with a ribbon tail worm t-rigged. I was getting bit on a lot of the trees that I was pitching to, but they were all 13"-13.75"...too small.

After running our marina pattern and boat ramp pattern again with no success, we just began to fish new water. I ended up catching about a 3.5lb fish on my red eye shad at about 12:00 and that's the last of the keepers we would see for the day. It turned out the be a tougher day in general for many teams. 14 team zeroed on day 2, so it made me feel a little better that we got two in the boat. We moved up 8 spots to 75th for the tournament. Its not the finish I had imagined, but we did do better than last year. I really learned a lot about fishing reservoirs and was able to talk to a couple local college kids that fished the lake quite a bit. They caught all their fish in the marinas and around the thick/bigger wood.

I feel that we were around the right areas, but just didn't capitalize or fish slow enough in them. However, getting to meet and talk to pros such as Kelly Jordan, Luke Clauses, Shawn Hoernke, Jeff kriet, and Tommy Biffle is something I will never forget. We also received so many perks from the sponsors of the tournament it was crazy. Free pair of frog toggs, ranger hats, $50.00 swiss army knives, free shirts, couple packs of the new biffle-o's...the list goes on and on. If we qualify for the championship event this upcoming spring/summer, you can bet that we will be back.

National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship - Practice

2008-09-22T19:50:00.000-05:00

I just got back from Texas a couple days ago after a fun, but at times stressful, week. The trip down to Lake Lewisville took us 14 hours, but most of it went without a problem. I traveled down with my fishing partner (Tyler) and one other car that had another 2 person team from our school. We got down to the lake, got our licenses that night and went to bed exhausted.

Day 1 Practice:
In the first hour of practice I was already having better success than in 2007. We found some good areas and covered a lot of water. We fished the main lake and also ran all the way up the lake into the muddy water. We focused on the western part of the lake and were able to eliminate a lot of water.

Day 2 Practice:
On this day we focused on the eastern part of the lake and once again ran a lot of water. We were able to expand on what we found the day before and also figured out another pattern that was actually working in 2007. We also began to have boat motor problems on this day which was a real drag. That night we spent time with Mark Gintert from The Bass Federation in a parking lot working on my fuel lines and fuel filters until about 11:00pm. It was a god send that Mark helped us out that night, unfortunately we would find out we hadn't solved the problem.

Day 3 Practice:
On Day 3 of practice we tried to expand on what we had found the first two days. We found a couple more areas, but our day was cut short when I couldn't get my motor to start. We ended up getting towed in by Boat U.S. (good thing I'm a member!). We then took the boat to a shop to get a compression test and found out that we had a blown head gasket. Well, $140.00 later it was fixed. If it weren't for the boat motor problems this trip would have gone fairly smoothly, it was really a drag worrying about whether the motor would start. It was hard to concentrate on the task at hand, and that was finding the fish.

Our main patterns:

Strike King Red Eye Shad in sexy shad color

Dragging a storm hot craw on a football

Targeting areas that had sticks on the inside edge with bigger wood outside of that. You could picture it as a weedline, but it was wood instead. We were catching most of our fish in the smaller sticks, not as much in the bigger wood.

We also had success around marinas. I used a gamakatsu wacky head with a pink trick worm, an All Terrain Swim jig and an All Terrain senko to catch these bass that were suspended under the docks. The docks ranged from 25-40ft deep.

Our bonus pattern was fishing boat ramps with a shakey head, hot craw, or tube. They changed the rules this year so we could bring in 12" spots. Last year it was 14". We pulled up to two boat ramps in practice and immediately caught two good spots right were the boat ramp slab ended in about 7-12 ft of water. We figured we could bank on these areas to finish out a limit.

Picture of the Gamakatsu wacky head

I will try and post about the actual tournament in the next day or two so stay tuned!

Silverado Pro/Am - Lake Minnetonka

2008-09-15T21:25:00.001-05:00

I fished my last silverado tournament of the year this past weekend on Minnetonka and it ended up being a pretty fun day on the water. The information about the tournament will be short and sweet due to the fact that I'm in texas right now and don't have much free time to write.

I started off the day by plunging into the water to put my pro's plug in his boat because he forgot to do it at the launch. If anyone has tried to put a plug in a bass boat while its in the water, you know that its not easy and your pretty much going to get soaked. My pro thought since I had shorts on I'd just be able to hop in, bend down a little and put the plug in. Well... three minutes later I was soaked neck to toe and had to fish in drenched boxers, rain pants, and a sweatshirt with no undershirt for the morning. Talk about being cold... I had never been so miserable to start off a tournament and to top it off I forgot that my cell phone was in my pocket. Yup, you guessed it, it no longer works...

So after a wet start, the morning bite didn't lighten up my day much more. It was slow to say the least and we pretty much caught one fish here, one fish there, with nothing to really talk about. Things finally started to pick up in the afternoon when we pulled up to a lily pad spot.

I started pitching my trusty all terrain jig and went on to stick four good fish that were all between 2-2.75lbs. My pro put a couple good fish in the boat on a spro frog and that pretty much sums up our day in terms of what we caught our wiegh fish on.

We ended up weighing 15.88lbs which was better than I expected. We finished in 19th place, which put me in 35 place out of 70 amatures for the season. Thats not the type of finish in the AOY race that I wanted to have, but its hard to dictate where you will finish fishing as an Amature and not being able to make many decisions on the water. Overall I had a tremendous time fishing the silverado's this year. Billy Hildebrand and his staff are truly class acts and run one heck of a tournament. I will hopeully be back next year!

Quick Update

2008-09-10T21:49:00.000-05:00

Some things to get you up to date on what's happening in my world of fishing....

On labor day I bought my first bass boat (with the gracious help of my parents). It is a 1989 Ranger 361v with a 175 horsepower Envinrude. I can not wait until next summer to use this thing!!

Tomorrow I will be driving back to Minnesota for the fourth and final Silverado Pro/Am tournament. It will take place on lake Minnetonka on Friday. If your interested, come check out the weigh in at 3:00 pm at Lord Fletchers.

After the tournament I will drive back to Iowa City on Saturday. On Sunday morning at approximately 5:00 am I will be leaving for Lake Lewisville, Texas for the National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship. There will be 108 boats representing 56 schools from around the nation competing in this tournament!! I am excited to get down there and will also get to use my boat for the first time during that tournament too.

I have been extremely busy the past 3 weeks with school and trying to get work done before I have these tournaments. I have a couple other things to do and then its time to go fish for a week straight! Can't get much better than that!

Be sure to check my blog periodically throughout the next week as I will be giving a report from the Minnetonka tournament as well as updates from the College tournament down in Texas.

Tournament Day - Lake Waconia

2008-08-27T14:57:00.000-05:00

Going into this tournament I had very high expectations of catching a good bag of fish. When I practiced the week before I had found fish up shallow in the reeds and cattails on the north side of Waconia. I caught a couple 2 pounders a 3lb fish and also a 5lb 2oz piggy. I wasn't pounding these spots either. I would catch one fish, start up the motor move down the patch of reeds 100 yards, catch another one and do the same thing. At times I find there are sweet spots in the patches of reeds, this is what I was looking for, but it seemed like in practice they were just all over the place.

We launched at 7:00 with a little breeze already stirring up the lake. I started the morning in a patch of reeds on the north side and put together a small limit by 8:30. I caught all these fish and the rest of the fish I caught that day throwing a green 3/8oz All Terrain jig with a blk/blue trailer. As the morning progressed I began to upgrade my limit. A half pound here, a couple ounces there. I could never get that big bite! I tried moving to a different patch on the NE side of the lake, but the wind was pounding into this area and the water was pretty muddy. I caught one little fish there, but nothing else. I went back to my starting spot and continued to catch fish but they were all cookie cutter 2lbers.

I tried out deep some, but with the wind and my small boat, I just wasn't being very efficient. I know there are some big fish out deep on this lake, I just didn't have to time to find them. I truly beleive being efficient is one thing that you have to be at all times during a tournament. I constantly ask myself throughout a tournament day whether I believe I'm being efficient with my time. Should I zig or should I zag. Am I around the right kind of fish? Am I giving myself a good shot at winning?

Well, during that day I felt I was around the fish, but they turned out a little smaller than expected. It was really cold the night before and we were left with a sunny, windy, high pressure system during the tournament that I beleive shut off the some of the bigger shallow fish. I just couldn't get even a 3lb bite!

However, to my surprise, most everyone else in my club had a tough day as well. I ended up winning the tournament with 10lbs 6oz. For Waconia, thats not that great. It took 19lbs to win out there the weekend before for a Fishers of Men tournament with many other bags over 10lbs. But, I won't complain about a win. It was a great way to finish off my summer in Minnesota. I really did have a good time out there and caught a bunch of fish, just nothing over 2.5 pounds.

I will now take a little bit of a break from writing in my blog now that school has started up again... If I happen to get on a good bite down here in Iowa, I will be sure to post about it. And make sure to check back in mid September to see how the National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship is going. I will possilby post about practice and will definately be giving updates during the actual tournament. I'm really looking forward to getting down to Texas. Last year I couldn't have done worse, and I'm looking to turn it around this year.

Thanks to all who have been reading throughout the spring and summer!!

Silverado Pro/Am - Alexandria Chain of Lakes

2008-08-20T10:58:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I had my third Silverado Pro/Am tournament on the Alexandria Chain of Lakes, also known as Le Homme Dieu. My pro and I drew boat #58 out of 59 boats so we were just a little bit behind everyone else. However, on a chain of lakes as big as this one it shouldn’t matter too much.

We started off the day throwing crankbaits on a weedline. I ended up catching 4 small bass before I got one that finally kept. After this spot we had 2 fish in the livewell that I had caught on a crankbait. On the next spot my pro got a decent fish on a t-rigged craw tube. We then proceeded to hit docks, reeds, and pads the rest of the day without much to show for it in terms of quality fish. We finished out our limit and culled twice but still only ended up with 8lbs and some change for 6 fish which is pretty brutal.

I wasn’t very happy with how the day turned out and would have probably done some things differently had I been in charge. This tournament kind of left a bad taste in my mouth and motivated me even more to try and fish as a pro next year. If I can get a suitable boat and afford the entry fees I might take a run at it.

I stayed at a friend’s cabin on Friday before the tournament and brought my boat up there to do a little fishing. I was catching a lot of fish on frogs way up under trees in about 1-2 feet of water which was really fun and made the weekend a little better. And wouldn’t you know…one of the top finishers in the Silverado tournament on saturday caught most of his fish up under trees in very skinny water.

I was also graced with the presence of 14 Skeet Reese Revos and 14 Elite Tech Rods when I got back to my house Saturday evening that Pure Fishing had sent to me. Talk about being excited!!! These rods and reels will go to our bass fishing team down at the University of Iowa. I went out to Lake Waconia on Sunday to do a little prefishing for this upcoming weekend and that skeet reese revo is awesome! The fishing wasn’t too shabby either.

I will write about the Waconia tournament next week sometime when I will be in Iowa and back at school. Summer break has come to an end and I’m not liking it! :)

Tournament Day - Miss. River, Wabasha, MN

2008-08-11T12:05:00.000-05:00

When I first saw the Mississippi River tournament on our club schedule earlier this year I was a little worried because I had never been on the river before. I was scared the current would be strong and that I wouldn’t know how to run the river and avoid the wing dams. However, when my uncle took me out and showed me around a little bit my worries were gone. It’s easy to run the river if you just be smart about it and stay between the markers. The current for mid to late summer wasn’t that strong either; which is probably the norm for this time of year.

With my worries about the river behind me, it was now time to catch some fish. My uncle fly fishes the river for smallies, so we fished the main river quite a bit during practice. I had a 4lb smallie in practice a couple 1.5-2lbers and also a solid 3lb largemouth. My practice day went pretty good and I felt fairly confident that I could catch 5-10lbs to wrap up the AOY title for my club.

I started the day on a wing dam in the main channel hoping to get into some smallmouth. I was throwing a silver zara spook and a rapala skitter pop. I fished a wing dam that had fish on it during practice for about 45 minutes with no luck. As I was pulling away from the wingdam going upriver I threw one last long cast with my popper and a good smallie nailed it. I was happy to have one in the boat. I was hoping to have about 2-3 in the boat after that spot, but the top water bite just wasn’t happening like it was the prior week.

I next went to an area where I caught the 3lb largemouth in practice. It was really a sweet spot that gave up a lot of fish for me in the tournament. It was a channel off the main river channel that had some good current flowing though it. It was 2-3ft deep on top and quick dropped of into 10-15ft of water. On the drop was both rocks and weeds. I ended up finishing my 4 fish limit (wisconsin rules on the river) in this spot with an All Terrain Finesse Jig and an All Terrain Rattling Jig. One went 18inches and the others were about 15-17 inches. I also caught fish in this spot on a drop shot with a white fluke and a texas rigged white tube with and EZ-tube inserted weight.

I would throw my lure up on the rocks or in the grass that was in the stronger current. They would either hit the bait on the initial fall or as the current washed the bait into the deeper water. I probably pulled 10-12 fish of this little spot. They were just schooled up in the current right on the steep break. Now, this spot wasn’t phenomenal, but it definitely has some potential. I was able to finish the day with a little over 9lbs for 4 fish. On the river I’d say that’s mediocre to decent. I lost one good 2.5-3lb fish on a drop shot that jumped off right in front of me that would have helped, but I still had enough to earn my second consecutice AOY title for my club which felt really good. I didn’t have as flashy of a season this year as 2007 when I won 4 in a row, but I felt I fished solid this year and scrapped out decent limits during the tougher events.

Carl Spande took first in the tournament with 10+ pounds in the countless backwater areas. He really had a nice bag for 4 fish and I believe some All Terrain Stick worms caught some of the fish he weighed in J. Nice job Carl!

I really had a fun time out there and will definitely be going back in the future. I won’t be able to fish the state tournament down there this year, but really wish I could.

Here is a list of lures that worked for me:
All Terrain Jigs: both finesse (1/4oz) and regular pitching (3/8oz) jigs
Colors: brown/amber/blk and black/blue
All Terrain Tubes: rigged with an ez-tube weight insert in 1/16oz. I really felt this inserted weight helped to keep me from getting hung up on rocks, grass and wood. I used a 3/0 EWG Gamakastu hook.
Drop Shot: 1/8oz weight, stand-out hook, white zoom fluke (“the fluke”, not the super fluke or the fluke jr. the mid-sized one)
Rapala Skitter Pop: Had a white underbelly like the minnows and shad in the river.

Upcoming Tournaments and Report

2008-08-06T14:23:00.000-05:00

My summer is beginning to wind down and come to an end with school approaching much faster than I want it too. School starts in a couple weeks here on August 25th for me. However, my tournament season is not quite wrapped up yet.

This weekend I have my final B.A.S.S club tournament on Pools 4 and 5 of the Mississippi River for the current year. My uncle and I went out and pre-fished for the tournament this past Saturday. He loves to fish just as much as I do and I really enjoyed being out on the river with him. He used a fly rod all day which was pretty cool too. I had never been on the river before and I had a blast. We caught a good amount of fish, but I think just having a change of pace besides fishing lakes all the time is what I liked so much. Getting a couple big bites will (as with any tournament) be a big factor down there this weekend. I’m shooting for my second consecutive AOY title and hope to wrap it up granted I don’t stumble too badly. The MNBF state championship is on the same water this fall, but I won’t be able to compete in it for the third consecutive year because of school which is kind of a drag.

The following weekend I have my 3rd Silverado tournament up on the Alexandria Chain of Lakes. This is another area I have never fished before and look forward to learning some stuff about the chain and making a good finish. I’ll finish up this tour in September when we visit Lake Minnetonka.

The last weekend before school starts I have another club tourney out on Lake Waconia which will count towards next years standings. I really like this lake and have won a tournament once out there before which always help in terms of confidence. After this tournament I will be making the drive down to school and my summer will be complete!

Here’s a quick report: I’ve been able to get out a couple times this week since the weekend and have found the fish both deep and shallow. A drop shot with a 4” zoom finesse worm has been good to me by deep weed lines and rocks. An A.T. jig has been the ticket up shallow around pads. Check back next week for a report on the Miss. River tournament!

Coon Lake - Tournament Day

2008-07-29T10:05:00.000-05:00

This past Saturday I had a club tournament on Coon Lake. We launched from the East Lake at 6am under clear skies with an air temp of about 60 degrees. As I took off for the West Lake in the morning I got to see one of the best sunrises I’ve seen this summer coming up behind me. A nice big red sun to start of the day, just perfect.

I had pre-fished the lake on July 20th only to find out that there was an ABA tournament the same day. I was fortunate enough to still find some fish that day and had about 18-19lbs. It was by far the best practice I’d ever had and I felt like I didn’t even put a dent in the areas I had found. I was just praying the whole week that the fish would stay in the same areas and be willing to bite on tournament day.

I started off the day in the west lake around some cattails with a black spro bronzeye frog. After about 15 minutes into the day a fish inhaled the frog. It buried itself in the cattails, but I was fortunate enough to get it out. It ended up being a nice 4 pound fish. I continued to work my way around the cattails and stuck another good 3lb fish on a green pumpkin texas rigged Gander Mountain brand beaver. After awhile with no more fish in this area I moved to another spot with cattails and caught one more 2.5lb fish on a frog.

In my next spot I filled out my limit with two smaller fish on the beaver. This was an area with pads that had produced a 4lber during practice. I stuck around this area hoping for a big bite, but it never came. Next I moved back into the east lake to a pad spot where I stuck a 5 pounder in practice. I switched my beaver color to black/blue here since the water was much dirtier in the east lake than the west. On about my third pitch with the beaver into the pads, I saw a flower from a different pad stem move about 5ft from where I put my lure. I lifted up my bait, felt the weight of the fish and laid into in. After a good battle I had landed a nice 4lb 12oz fish and big bass for the day. On the next pitch I caught a solid 2.5lb fish on the beaver. I had now culled out the smaller ones from the other pad spot. After working the spot once, I went back over it with a 3/8oz blk/blue All Terrain Jig. On my 2nd pitch going back over the spot I stuck another 4lb fish about 10ft from where the 4lb 12oz fish came from. This spot had now given up a 5lb, 4lb 12oz and 4lb fish in the two times I had fished it that week. It was just one of those magic spots that you need to win a tournament.

I now had a 4lb 12oz fish, two 4 pounders, a 3lb and 2.5lb fish. This is what I would end up with for day. I was pushing hard to try and get that 2.5lb fish culled, but that 3lb bite never came. I ended up with 18lbs 6oz for the day and it ended up being my best 5 fish limit to date. I felt good to finally get a 1st place finish this year after three 2nd place finishes so far. If you asked me whether I thought I could duplicate what I caught in practice, I would have said no way. I just didn’t think I could catch that much again. But it happened. That’s now the 3rd tournament I’ve won out on Coon. That lake and I have a good thing goingJ.

Sorry about the lack of pictures….I really need to get a camera!

Here are some notes on the gear I was using:

Frog:
7’ MH Fenwick HMG Casting Rod
Pflueger Trion Casting reel
50lb Power Pro braided line
Spro Bronzeye Frog (black)

Jig:
7’ MH St.Croix Avid Rod
Pflueger Trion Casting Reel
40lb Stren Superbraid line
3/8oz black/blue All Terrain Tackle Jig w/ Gander Mtn. brand craw trailer

Beaver:
7’ MH St.Croix Avid Rod
Pflueger Trion Casting Rod
50lb Power Pro Braided line
1/4oz Tru-Tungsten bullet weight
3/0 Gamakatsu Superline EWG hook
Gander Mtn. Brand Beaver (Blk/Blue and Green Pumpkin)

Recent Reports and Pre-Tournament Thoughts

2008-07-25T08:43:00.000-05:00

I have taken a bit of a hiatus from writing a post since my last Pro/Am tournament a couple weeks ago. Since then I've had some memorable fishing outings and other ones that I would rather forget about. Summer patterns are beginning to really set in and this is one of my favorite times of the year to fish because things are usually pretty consistent in terms of fish not moving around a whole lot.

I've also been talking with our Collegiate Bass Fishing Sponsor Pure Fishing about the upcoming season during the school year and it promises to be a good one. They want start promoting newer products through us and even start including us in the research/testing behind some of their products. I can't explain how excited I am about this opportunity to work with such a well known company such as Pure Fishing. It should be a good experience, and being able to get product from them such as Skeet Reese REVOS and Elite Tech rods will make it that much better.

This weekend I have another club tournament on Coon Lake. I've won two tournaments on this lake in the past and have a lot of confidence going into it. I just hope the fish stay where they were a week ago when I was up there practicing. This is probably in the top 5 of my favorite lakes in Minnesota. It just seems to fit my style of fishing really well. Check back next week for a report on that tournament, hopefully I don't fall on my face now that I just wrote about my confidence going into the event! :)

Silverado Pro/Am - Lake Minnewaska

2008-07-14T18:54:00.000-05:00

HOLY WIND! It was a constantly taking water over the bow, "hey come stand on the front deck so we can hold", can't hardly cast 30ft, try not to fall out of the boat kind of WIND that we faced on Saturday for the 2nd Silverado Tournament of the year. However, we stayed right in the thick of it until about 12 before my pro thought we should try and make our way to a calmer area of the lake, just so we could make it back safely. They were forecasting 55mph gusts, and we didn't want a to be a part of that. 25-35mph in the morning was good enough for us.

I may sound like I have a couple loose screws in my head, but I actually enjoyed it! It helped that we were catching fish, but my pro said "Its taken me years to just not let it frustrate me and just fish in it" until I really realized I just had to forget about it and concentrate on fishing and not on the wind.

The pattern we were on was fishing "deeper" weeds in 8-12ft of water. Right in the morning I lost a decent 14-15inch fish, but soon after, my pro landed a smaller one on a texas rigged creature bait. We fished the shallower 8ft weeds with only a couple fish to show for it. We then moved out to the 12ft area and I caught a good one that went almost 4lbs on a texas rigged strike king wild thang creature bait.

We continued to fish this area and every so often the fish would get active. At about 10:00-10:30 my pro set into a good 3lb fish, I set my rod down (my bait was still in the water), netted his fish, picked up my rod and set the hook on another fish! My pro threw back out and stuck another good 3lb fish on the next cast. Talk about a 5 minute flurry! At about 11:30 the same thing happened again when I caught 2 on back to back casts.

By now we had a decent limit and it was about 12:00. We started heading back to the calmer side so we didn't risk losing any fish making our way back if the wind got worse. We ended up fishing some reeds on the way. I caught one more 3lb fish in the reeds on an All Terrain Green Pumpkin Jig that really helped, but we still had two 2.5lb fish in the well that needed to go. My pro had on about a 3-3.5lb fish in the reeds that got off, in hindsight this fish would have put us in the money. Man, that one really hurt, but we were probably not the only ones that had something like that happen to them that day, that's just part of tournament fishing.

With one hour to go, we fished a break line out in front of the weigh-in site along with about 25-30 other boats. Yes, this was the calm side of the lake. If you wanted to, you could have watched the tournament from shore. We were able to put some smallmouth in the boat on that spot using tubes, but nothing that would help.

In the end we finished with 16.25lbs in 16th place out of 59 boats. For most of the field it was a tough day and I think the wind attributed to that (HOLY WIND!). The last spot in the money had 16.60lbs, so one more fish over 3lbs and we would have been right there.

I learned a lot in this tournament. More so about not getting frustrated with the wind. Up until then I always got mad when the wind was strong (mainly because I fish out of a smaller boat), but now I hope that I can ignore it from here on out. I went out on Sunday in the wind mainly because I was motivated to do so after this tournaments (I told you there is a couple loose screws in my head). As you may know already, the fish still bite in the strong wind! Its just being able to hold in it which is the hard part.

Did I mention that it was windy that day? :)

All Terrain Tackle News and Collegiate Fishing

2008-07-09T21:11:00.000-05:00

All Terrain Tackle has just joined the guys at Wire2fish.com and will begin to advertise on their website in the near future. This is very exciting seeing that All Terrain is a local company based out of Savage/Prior Lake, MN. I also have had the opportunity to be on their field-staff for this summer. Here is a small article on the announcement: http://wired2fish.com/WhatsUp.aspx?ArticleID=252 Be sure to check out some of their jigs at www.allterraintackle.com They truly have some top notch jigs for every jig fishing situation.

Also, two guys from our University of Iowa Bass Fishing Team are competing in the Under Armour Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship this week down in Arkansas. Live weigh-ins are online at 3:30, and day one was completed today. The lake their on is a little stingy as you can see from the results on www.collegebass.com but its still an exciting event for college bass fishing. check it out!

4th of July Fishing

2008-07-08T20:42:00.000-05:00

Today is officially the first day that I have not wet a line in the past 10 days. The nine days prior to today have been nothing short of fantastic fishing and spending time with great people. I had the opportunity to take a week off from work over the 4th of July to spend some time up north at my cabin. I will keep the Lake name hush for now, but for your reference its about 45 minutes south of Walker, MN and 45 minutes north of Brainerd, MN.

The fish up there were in a postspawn mode, but they were really starting to feed up well. The water temperatures were anywhere from 72-78 degrees depending on the day and how cold it got during the night. I know the lake pretty well, so I was able to nail down various patterns throughout the week. The most reliable ones were as follows:

Texas rigged plastics fished right in the weeds on a steep dropoff. I would pitch to the inside edge and drag the plastic (tubes, creatures, worms) right through the weeds. The best weeds were coontail and northern milfoil that was in about 6-10ft of water. I've really struggled in the postspawn in the metro area this year and will hopefully be able to apply this technique next year when the time comes.
Spinnerbaits, flukes, senkos fished in the reeds (3-5ft). This pattern was the best in the mornings and evenings with lower light conditions.
Tubes and crankbaits around rock piles. Rock piles that were in about 2-4ft of water and dropped very fast into about 12-15ft of water. The fish were right on the edges.
Docks. Anything worked under docks as long as you fished them from about 12pm-6pm. This is where a lot of my bigger fish came from.
Creature baits, Jigs, and frogs in the pads and rice patties. The pad bite was starting to heat up the last couple days I was up there which was fun.

Some fish surprisingly still had eggs in them, but most fish were very skinny. Here are some pictures that show the difference in the prespawn and postspawn fish. Note: I caught these fish within 15 minutes of each other on the last morning I was up there on frogs.

Postspawn\/\/

Prespawn \/\/ (same fish in next two pictures)

Not only was I able to fish a lot, I was able to get out on the water with my Grandpa, Mom, Dad, and even my 85 year old Grandma was able to get out and watch me fish one evening with me and my Mom which was pretty fun. I'm not sure I will ever get the opportunity to fish with my grandma in the boat again, so that was pretty special. We also took a small trip to "pike lake" - a lake in the middle of nowhere that probably gets fished maybe 5 times a summer. It has no boat landing and has been known to give up some big northerns. Its always and exciting trip because of the potential fish, but more so for the adventure. Here is a picture with a pike my Mom caught on our "pike lake" trip: (cell phone picture..)

This one went about 8lbs, not huge, but a pretty good one in my book. Better yet she got it on an old silver weedless Johnson Spoon!

Metro Area Report:

Yesterday I was able to get out with a couple buddies on a south metro lake and we were able to catch them pretty good in the pads on jigs and creature baits. The fish were starting to get fat too. That was nice to see since it seems like this spring was sooo long with the late ice out this year. It was good to get out with some friends too, I find its always more enjoyable to fish with others in the boat.

I've also got another Silverado Pro/Am coming up this weekend on Lake Minnewaska so check for a report on that sometime next week! Hope everyone had an enjoyable and safe 4th of July!

Rush Lake - Tournament Day.

2008-06-28T21:58:00.000-05:00

My Tournament today went fairly well, but it was definitely a grind. My goal going in was once again to catch 10lbs to keep me in contention for AOY. The temperatures dropped a fair amount and the morning started off a little colder than normal.

I started by throwing a spinnerbait around bulrushes with nothing to speak of. I was getting hung up in stringy shallow weeds on almost every cast and in the back of my mind I had thoughts telling me to move. I left the area and went down to the middle of West Rush to fish some large flats that were out in the middle of the lake. The flats had milfoil on them and I was burning a booyah spinnerbait over the top of them. After about 30 minutes I had put two fish in the boat. One was decent sized (1.5lbs), the other one was just a little swimmer(12 inches).

After I had hit the flats for awhile I moved to another patch of bulrushes, but this time I backed off. There was a curlyleaf pondweed weededge outside of the rushes and I was throwing to the outside edge of that. Most of the outside weedegdes around the lake were in the 10-12ft range. However, this spot had a hard bottom and this weededge only went to about 6 or 7ft. I pitched my All Terrain Jig to the outside edge of the weedline a caught a good fish right away, about 2lbs. I fished the area for a little longer with no bites, but finding this spot would come in handy later in the day.

I then went back to the flats area and picked up one more swimmer (barely went 12") on a spinnerbait. Knowing that I needed some bigger fish I went to fish some docks that I've had luck on in the past. On the second dock I threw to the edge of it and a pretty good sized bass came out and sucked my All Terrain Stick Worm right off the hook. I rigged up another one and on the next cast I landed a nice 3lb fish. I now had my limit and it was 9:45am. However, I had two little guys in the livewell that needed to go.

I proceeded to run around the lake and try many other areas without any luck. It was a grind going that long without a bite. All I needed was two more good bites, so I just kept my head down and continued going. At 1:00 I landed my next fish, about 1.5lbs, on a jig next to a dock. This would cull one of the small ones. Then, with 15 minutes to go until check in I went back to the hard bottom weededge. On my first cast, my jig started swimming off to the side and I stuck a good 3 pound fish, I was a little overjoyed at this moment even though I still didn't have a spectacular limit. I did what I needed to do though, and that was to get rid of the two little fish I had. This would cull out the other small one and help me reach my goal of catching 10lbs.

Overall I ended up in 2nd place with 11lbs and some change. If I were to fish the day over again I would probably spend more time fishing that one hard bottom area that I had found. With the wind blowing into that spot later in the day I think it could have been good had I left myself more time to exploit the area.

My next tournament is with the Silverado Pro/Am Tour and I will be spending the next week up north. I hope you all have a good 4th, and maybe even have a chance to catch a fish or two over the holiday!

Wisconsin Trip, Tournament Preview, 4th of July

2008-06-26T20:16:00.000-05:00

My trip to northern Wisconsin was much needed. Not necessarily from a fishing perspective, but more so for relaxation. It was nice to get away from work and out of the metro area for awhile. My buddy Sam has a cabin on a small lake that is very close to the Turtle Flambeau Flowage; a large reservoir type system that is known for its walleye, muskies, and football looking smallies.

The first day up there, we put the boat in at the "Flowage". We started in a spot that was shallow with plenty of rocks and wood and the fish were biting right from the get go. We were catching them mainly on weightless flukes and zara spooks, man was that a blast! I got one picture of a smallie I caught, but haven't got it sent to me yet (I'll post it if I get it). I swear once these fish hit about 15-17 inches, they don't get any longer. Just wider! They looked like deformed footballs. As a storm blew though the area we parked the boat on an island and waited it out for a little bit. I was still throwing a zara spook from the bank and proceeded to miss two more fish during the storm, made for some excitement at least! After the storm we moved to another area that had muskies in it last year as well as some smallies. Sam and my other buddies, Matt and Adam, were chuckin and windin for muskies while I was throwing a fluke. I ended up getting one more smallie before another much stronger storm came in that forced us off the lake. Overall it was a very fun day on the lake chasing those smallmouth. Oh yeah...Sam also caught a walleye on a fluke. He asked himself at the beginning of the fishing trip whether a walleye would hit a fluke, I guess he answered his question! I thought that was pretty cool.

After a fun filled night, we hit the lake that Sam's cabin is on the next day. We ended up catching some largemouth on frogs and tubes up shallow and Matt also landed a nice Smallie from under a dock that day too. I really enjoyed my weekend up there and I couldn't think of anything better than spending time with good friends on a deserted lake in the north country.

Looking ahead to this weekend... I have a club Tournament up on Rush Lake near Rush City, MN. I have fished the lake a couple times before and was able to prefish it two weeks ago. I'm not sure fishing it two weeks ago helped me much in establishing a pattern for this weekend, but it was good to get out on the lake to familiarize myself with it again. Not quite sure what to expect, but I have some ideas and all I can hope is that those ideas pan out...we'll see.

I'm also heading up to my cabin on Sunday. I will be up there for an entire week and I can't wait. Over the 4th the fishing can be good up there at times. Its also a good place to practice and gain confidence in new techniques mainly because its not a tournament situation and most times I have a general idea of where the fish are since I've been fishing the lake since I was in diaper.

I will try and get a quick post in on Saturday night about how the tournament went before I leave for my cabin on Sunday. Until then, boat one for me!

Recent Fishing Report

2008-06-19T08:21:00.000-05:00

Its been awhile since my last post and I thought I'd log an entry here before I take off for my buddy's cabin in Northern Wisconsin tomorrow for a fun filled weekend. I'll be about 30 minutes from the UP of Michigan, should make for a nice relaxing time. Hopefully we'll be able to catch some muskies, smallmouth, largemouth, and possibly a couple walleye.

Since my last post I have been able to get out a couple times on some south and north metro lakes. I have found that the fish are still sort of in between all stages of the spawn here in the metro area of Minnesota. I have caught postspawn fish that are very skinny, some other postspawn fish that are getting chunky, and also a couple fish that still even have eggs in them.

Most of my success this week has come in the form of faster moving baits on offshore cover/structure, compared to the past couple weeks where I have caught them mainly on weightless plastics up shallow. "Offshore cover/structure"; by this I mean anything out away from the bank. This doesn't necessarily mean its deep water though. I have caught some fish on offshore shallow rock piles and also around weedbeds that have been offshore. However, some of the areas have also been deeper in about 10-12ft of water.

The main baits I have been using are a rapala DT3 flat, a basstrix swimbait, and an XR50 rattle trap type bait made by Xcalibur. I hope to get out tonight one last time before this weekend. I plan on slowing down on the outside weedlines to see if I can't connect with a couple more fish. If that doesn't work there is one shallow inside weedline that still might produce a few pre-spawn fish if I'm lucky, we'll see.

Hope everyone has a good weekend and lays into a few fish too! Tune in next week for a report on how my Northern Wisco weekend went (alliteration? hah).

Silverado Pro/Am - Green Lake

2008-06-10T18:12:00.000-05:00

The site of my first Silverado tournament was on Green Lake in Spicer, MN. I was able to leave work a little early on Friday and made it to the pre-tournament meeting right at about 4pm. I was pretty excited to get out fishing the next day knowing the kind of fish that Green Lake offered. Last year I was fortunate enough to win a pro/am event on the lake with 27 some pounds for 8 fish, mostly smallmouth, which made it even better. This year went a little different.

We lanched and took off from Melvin's at 7am. I randomly drew a younger pro for this tournament who sounded like he was on some fish, so I was pumped for the day ahead. He said he had located some crusing and spawning smallmouth and that he would be sight fishing most of the day while I would be throwing faster moving baits to pick off crusing fish.

We got to the first spot in the morning and within the first 20 minutes I landed a nice 3lb smallmouth on a booyah spinnerbait. After that fish I thought it was going to be just like last year. However, it slowed down after that. I proceed to put two more fish in the boat on a spinnerbait in the morning hours, but they were much smaller fish. We ended up moving once the sun came out to another spot where my pro had found some smallmouth up shallow. When we got to the spot, there were fish everywhere! So many fish were crusing and also some on beds, but they were unbelievably spooky, which turned out to be the story of the day.

I switched to a smoke colored grub on a ballhead jig and began swimming that in the shallows and picked up another smallmouth. So now we had 4 fish in the livewell. My pro hadn't put a fish in the boat yet and I was starting to feel bad. We were definately around a lot of fish, but he couldn't get them to commit.

Eventually we moved to some small weed clumps later in the day and caught some largemouth on weightless senkos and texas rigged plastics to fill out our limit. We ended the day only culling once and had a total of 11lbs and some change which put us around the 50th spot out of 59 boats.. The winners ended up with 22lbs and many guys had 15-19lb bags. The top guys were catching them on a variety of lures, but the key for most of them was that they were targeting prespawn fish off the first deeper breakline. So we kind of missed the boat on the whole prespawn bite, but hindsight is 20/20 and that's just how it goes sometimes.

Even though we didn't finish too high in the standings, I really did have a fun time out there. My pro wasn't a slump either, he won a Denny's Event out on Lake Minnetonka a couple weeks ago, it just didn't go our way this time. It was fun fishing with him and I learned a little bit about how to go about catching spawning smallmouth, we just didn't do much catching :).

The one thing I gained from this event was motivation. Not only motivation to do well in the next tournament, but motivation to try and fish the pro side next year. This is the premier circuit in the state right now and after that tournament I'm driven to try and be able to compete with those guys next year. I'm not saying I'm going to do well if I do compete against them (they are pretty darn good!), but I'd sure love to try. The experience was really fun fishing against the best in the state of MN. The guys running the Silverado events do a great job and are truly a class act. Overall it was pretty good experience and I'm definately ready for the next one.

Fishing Report:
I have been able to get out the last two days since the tournament on some local south metro lakes and have found that the frog bite is starting to heat up. All the fish I caught on a frog except for one, were all postspawn and skinny as rails! It was still fun to get on some topwater fish though. I've also been catching some on weightless plastics in shallow water, but I believe most of the fish are out from the bank recouping right now from the spawn in the lakes I was fishing. However I did catch two big ones that were still full of eggs that had redtails (spawning fish). I definately wasn't seeing as many fish up shallow compared to a week and a half ago though. The water temp was in the low 70s.

I still believe we are about 1 to 2 weeks behind this spring compared to most springs. Most of the time the bass are just ending their spawning rituals around bass opener; at least in the south metro lakes. However, I have learned a lot about the stages of spawning fish this spring because of the colder water temps, which has been pretty cool.

I have a couple week break from tournament fishing since I won't be at the next club event this upcoming weekend. I'll also be in Northern Wisconsin chasing some muskies, walleye, and smallmouth in about 2 weeks which should be a good time. Hopefully I'll get some fishing reports from around the metro on the blog before I leave for that trip. Thanks for reading!!

Lake Minnetonka - Tournament Day

2008-06-03T19:26:00.000-05:00

My second club tournament of the year took place on the famed Lake Minnetonka. Going into the tournament I expected it to be fairly tough considering our tournament was the day after the Minnetonka Classic boasting a 100+ boat field. My goal was to get at least 10lbs to keep me in contention for angler of the year. After looking at past years results, if you can average 10lbs a tournament you have a pretty good shot at winning AOY.

We launched at 6am out of Maxwell Bay and I first headed into North Arm to begin to the day. In practice the week before I had found fish crusing the inside weedlines and this is where I began the day. I was throwing a 4 inch zoom centipede in a pumpkin color on 6lb flourocarbon. I expected that the fish would be a little skittish after the big tournament on Saturday so I downsized both my line and lure.

By 8:05 I had finished out my limit using the centipede. It wasn't anything special though, maybe 8lbs. I was making the longest casts possible along the inside edge of the weedline to make sure I wasn't spooking the fish by having them seeing me. And beleive me, I saw a lot of fish crusing, and a lot of fish that wounldn't bite because they also saw me. I continued to work down the bank and kept upgrading little by little throughout the day.

I wasn't doing anything real special or out of the ordinary. The keys were making sure the fish didn't see you and I also think the slow fall of the centipede in the shallow water also helped. It was a typical spring inside weedline type pattern. I was seeing a few fish that were spawning, but once again I couldn't get them to bite because they saw me too. I did find a few areas that seemed to have some better fish that were crusing a little deeper than the rest of the smaller fish. On one point I saw many 3-4lb fish a little deeper. I backed off and let the area rest for a little bit then came back with a long cast about 15 minutes later. I had one pick up the centipede right away and on the hook set I snapped my line at the knot. That one hurt. But I guess you can expect that to happen at least once with 6lb line and a hard hokk set. I could never get another bite off that point.

After fishing the inside weedlines for almost the entire day, I decided to move to a shallow flat that had sparse lilypads scattered throughout the entire area, this was in Maxwell Bay. At this point I had just about 10lbs and was looking to upgrade so I threw a 5" All Terrain stick worm in hoping that the bigger profile would entice some bigger bites. In the last hour of the day I was able to cull three more times and upgraded my final weight. This was an excited little hour of fishing, nothing like catching them pretty good with the countless floatillas of Lake Minnetonka all around you. That lake can be flat out awesome in the morning, but after everyone gets out of church on Sunday, I'd rather be any other place than at a crowded boat lauch waiting 30 minutes to put my boat on the trailer. Hah, I guess thats just how it is though.
My final weight for the day was 12lbs 13oz which for Minnetonka, isn't too much. But I was happy with it. It was good enough to put me in 2nd place for the day, and I'll take that whenever I can. I had a goal set in mind going into the tournament and fullfilled it. After a 1st place on the St.Croix River last fall and now two 2nd place finishes so far this year in the club, I feel that I'm continuing where I left from last year. It stinks losing by 1 ounce in the first tournament and now by 7 ounces in this last tournament, but thats how it goes sometimes. Who knows whether that fish that I snapped would have put me over the top. All in all it was a beautiful day on the water and it sure beat anything I could have been doing.

Gear used
Centipede: 6'6" St.Croix Avid Rod (Spinning), Diawa Regal Reel, 6lb Berkely 100% flourocarbon, Gamakatsu 3/0 light wire EWG hook, 4" zoom centipede (pumpkin)
A.T. stick worm: 7' St.Croix Avid Rod (Spinning), Shimano Sahara Reel, 6lb Berkely 100% Flourocarbon, Gamakatsu 4/0 red EWG hook, 5" A.T. stick worm (blue/blk swirl)

Centipede Picture:

Side note: I have my first Silverado Pro-Am tournament next weekend on Green Lake in Spicer, MN. We will most likely be chasing smallies as well as possibly a couple largemouth. I'm really looking forward to this tournament. Check back next week for a report on how it went.

Quick Report: I got out to a south metro lake yesterday evening and there were still some fish shallow. Lots of empty beds though, and many sunfish that had begun spawning. Caught most
of my fish on an A.T. stick worm weightless. Water temps were 66-71 depending on where you were on the lake. Not too many big ones, but enough to be a fun evening of fishing.

MN Bass Fishing Opener Report

2008-05-26T21:00:00.000-05:00

Overall I had a pretty good opener for the 2008 season. I was at my cabin just north of Outing, MN for Saturday and Sunday and then got out to Lake Minnetonka today to do some pre-fishing for a club tournament that I have out there next weekend.

Up north the water temps varied vastly from one area to the next. In the shallow bays the water temp was up to 65 degrees in the afternoon and the main lake was in the 50-55 degree range depending on where you were. This left me with a pre-spawn situation, with a few fish just getting ready to spawn.

The lake I fished up north is made up of three basins. One basin is quite shallow and heats up the fastest. Therefore I spent most of my time there. I was catching plenty of fish in the shallow bays and also crushed them pretty good with a big swimbait on shallow flats on the main lake that had just a little bit of weeds on them.

One really cool thing that happened this weekend was seeing Jim Moynagh fishing the same lake!! I thought this was so cool! A random lake out of the countless lakes in MN and he was on the same one I was. It was even cooler to see that we had found the same fish and at times were fishing right next to each other!

The main lures I was using were watermelon red flake All Terrain stick worms, pink zoom flukes, tennesse shad redeye shads, and a 3:16 bluegill swimbait. I absolutley crushed them on the 3:16 swimbait on windblown flats. The last hour I was there before going home I got 14 in an hour all 15-18 inches, it was nuts!

Heres a picture of the 3:16 Bluegill:

Today I got out to lake Minnetonka for some prefishing. Our club tournament will be interesting considering it will be the day after the Minnetonka Classic... a 100+ boat field. Talk about pressure. I found some fish today and kind of figured out what they are doing, but a lot will change in the next week with the spawn going on and the big tournament on Saturday. We'll see how it goes.

Beaver Dam Lake - Tournament Day

2008-05-19T18:16:00.000-05:00

Having never been to this lake before, I was a little nervous on how my day would go. However, I seemed more relaxed than I usually am before most of my tournaments because I hadn't practiced and therefore didn't have anyfish located. I wasn't going into the tournament wondering whether or not the fish would be in the same areas where I caught them in practice. I was able to fish by the seat of my pants.

I started off in a shallow bay casting a strike king red eye shad in tennesse shad color. The water was stained to clear in color and 53-55 degrees in this area. After combing a small 50 yard stretch with no bites I picked up a booyah spinnerbait and caught a 13 inch bass on my second cast. Not big enough, but this gave me a little confidence. I continued back over the 50 yd stretch again and hooked up with a nice 17 inch fish, 1 fish in the livewell. After going over this spot a couple more times without a bite I went through into another bay where I threw a spinnerbait, All Terrain Stick Worm, and the redeye shad. I caught a couple more short fish in that bay along with some smaller northerns, but nothing to write home about.

I moved back out the area where I caught the 17 inch fish and moved out deeper into about 7ft of water casting the redeye shad. I immediately caught another keeper at 15 inches but decided to throw it back. I figured it was early in the day and with the no cull rules in Wisconsin I didn't want to burn a spot in my livewell. This decision wasn't easy. I continued fishing the redeye shad in 6-7ft of water with no luck. However, I did hook into about a 20-25 inch brown trout! I thought I had a monster smallie and was freaking out, but it ended up being a big trout.

After fishing for 1.5 hours with only one fish in the livewell I decided to find some new water. I just wasn't seeing the kind of action and quality of fish that I needed to do well. I made a long run into another portion of the lake. I had to go under a culvurt that my boat barely fit through, but it was worth it. I began cruzing around the other part of the lake and noticed the water was murky on this side and also 57-60 degrees. I continued to run around the area and then found the jackpot. I found about a 100yd bank loaded with laydowns and sunken trees.

I didn't know wether this spot would hold fish, but I thought I'd give it a try. On my 3rd pitch with an All Terrain Tackle green 3/8oz jig I caught a good 17 inch fish, 2 fish in the livewell. I thought to myself, "if thats any indication of whats to come on the rest of this bank, then it could get really good in a hurry". I continued down the bank and proceeded to put another 16 inch fish and a 17.5 inch fish in the boat, 3 and 4 fish in the livewell. This was heaven for me, I love to pitch jigs around shallow cover.

The rules we had set for the tournament is that we could weight our best 4 fish, but we could fish for a 5th fish and use it to replace one of the 4 already in the livewell come weigh-in. I proceeded to fish this bank loaded with wood for about 3-4 hours catching many 14-16inch fish. I threw them all back hoping to get a big one by the end of the day. During the last hour I finally hooked into another 17 inch fish and then headed back to the ramp since I had five fish in the livewell.

I took this pattern and expanded it to other laydowns in the dirty water. Even single isolated trees were holding fish. They were just flat out relating to wood. I was catching some in between the wood by pad stalks on a spinnerbait as well, but the main deal was the jig around wood. These fish were all either prespawn or spawning fish. Some were full of eggs, some half full with red tails. Overall I ended up catching 24 fish. 16 on an A.T. jig, 6 on a spinnerbait, 1 on a redeye shad, 1 on an A.T. Stick Worm.

I ended the day with 11lbs for 4 fish and was beat by two ounces by another guy in the club who had mostly smallies (some really nice smallies). I happy with how the tournament went and if I could do it again I wouldn't change a thing. I think the key for me was continuing to milk the area I had found with my jig. I think this is one thing too many people miss; they don't exploit an area to the fullest extent. They will fish a bank once or twice catch a couple fish and then move on. I bet I fished this bank at least 6 times and caught fish everytime I went down it. I've done this so many times, especially when fishing slower baits like a jig, to try and really exploit and area for all its worth on one day tournaments.

Heres some notes on the gear I was using
Jig:
7' MH St.Croix Avid Series rod (casting)
Pflueger Trion reel
50lb Stren Superbraid line
3/8oz Green All Terrain Tackle Jig
Spinnerbait:
6'6" M St.Croix Avid Series rod (casting)
Pflueger President reel
14lb Trilene XT
1/2 oz chart/orange/green spinnerbait

Beaver Dam Lake Pre-Tournament Thoughts

2008-05-15T09:41:00.000-05:00

Beaver Dam Lake located near Cumberland, Wisconsin is the designated location of the first club tournament I will fish this year. I have been extremly busy studying and taking finals this week for school and you can't beleive how excited I am to get back home to Minnesota to do some fishing. One more test and I'm there...can't wait!

I'll be driving home tomorrow and the tournament is on Saturday. So as you may have guessed, I have not prefished at all. I also have never once made a cast into Beaver Dam Lake. Should be interesting....

However, the good part is that we are in a springtime mode right now which will really help in eliminating a lot of deeper water. I'll be able to run many shallow bays throughout the lake with reaction type baits in hopes of getting on some fish by the end of day. If this doesn't pan out then hopefully I'll have time to find some offshore breaks that would have prespawn fish on them waiting to move up. I personally think that there will already be fish up shallow from what I'm hearing in terms of water temps in the area. I hope this is true, because it will make it a lot easier to find the better areas faster.

Check back next week to see how the tournament went!

Iowa Bass Fishing Team Qualifier

2008-05-07T17:59:00.001-05:00

We had our first Qualifier this past weekend that will count towards the National Collegiate Bass Fishing Championship to be held next fall down in Texas. With the turnout of last years National Tournament, theres only one way I can go in the standings, and that is up.

Our qualifier was being held at some catch and release ponds/lakes that are about 15min from campus. The lakes offer good size bass and if you like the pitch and flip in heavy cover this place is for you. I started out the day pitching an All Terrain Jig around brush in a shallow cove only to find that they weren't in the same spot as one week ago. I proceeded to hit my areas that I usually catch fish in and ended up empty handed. (Sometimes fishing past memories can be a mistake)

After moving into areas that I had never been to before I started catching fish. The key was finding areas that had wood were there was shallow water with deep water close by, not typical of a spring time bite where they are usually up on flats. I was pitching an All Terrain jig around heavy wood cover for the first few hours and ended up with 19", 17", and 16" fish. As the day wore on the water was warming up and the bass were beggining to get skittish. I threw my jig at this one peice of wood about 15 times to see if I couldn't get a reaction bite. I finally put down the jig, picked up an All Terrain Stick Worm, and BAM! first cast one came shooting out of the cover and grabbed it. A nice 16.5" fish. That just goes to show that alot of the time the fish are in the area, its just finding the right bait to entice them that counts.

We ended the day at noon and I only had those 4 fish. However, my 4 fish held up to take the top spot in the tournament for the day. I was nice to get my confidence back up even though I had already qualified for the tournament through default of being the president of the club. I'm looking forward to getting back down the Texas next fall for the National Championship. I definately learned somethings down there this year that will help me out next fall.

Here's a look at the gear I was using for the Qualifier:

Jig Setup: 7'MH St.Croix Avid Series rod (casting), Pflueger Trion reel, 50lb Stren Superbraid line, 3/8oz All Terrain Tackle Jig (Blk/Blue)
Stick Worm Setup: 6'6" St.Croix Avid Series rod (spinning), Diawa Regal reel, 6lb Berkley 100% Flouroarbon line, All Terrain Tackle Stick Worm (Blk/Blue)

All Terrain Pros Making Some Noise

2008-05-07T17:34:00.000-05:00

A couple of the All Terrain Tackle Pros have been on fire as of late on the Professional level in both the BASS and FLW tour circuits.

Two weeks ago Minnesota's own Jim Moynagh took 2nd place down on Lake Norman by fishing an All Terrain Tackle Stick Worm around docks to catch finicky post-spawn bass. During a tournament that left most wondering how to put together 5-10lbs of fish per day, Moynagh was able to put up an average of about 12lbs a day. Not to mention he's got quite the hair-do going right now as well! Hey, if its not broken, why fix it?

On the BASS side Texas pro Todd Faircloth continues to tear it up on the Elite Series. His finishes for the first 5 tournaments have been 8th, 23rd, 41st, 1st, and 7th. He has yet to miss a cut and hasn't missed a cut for the last 10 BASS events he has fished. Talk about consistency! He took his second Elite Series win on Lake Amistad two weeks ago, and with the help of an All Terrain Tackle Jig he was able to finish 7th at Clarks Hill Resevoir this past weekend. With the great start that Faircloth has had this season he has moved himself into first place in the Angler of the Year race!

Hopefully these guys can continue to produce the rest of season like they have been so far! I'll be rootin for them

Spring Success!

2008-04-29T22:46:00.000-05:00

It has been nice to finally get a little revenge on those little green creatures since the face plant I took at the Big Ten Championship. I've been able to get out to some local ponds here in Iowa and have faired well in the past couple weeks.

The key has been looking for those shallow flats with a small break off the edge of them. So far it has been a total reaction type bite with most of my fish coming on a blue crome and green crome Strike King Redeye Shad, and a chart/white/orange colored Booyah Spinnerbait. I have also caught a couple nice fish on a green pumpkin Yum Dinger. Last Thursday I almost hit the 30 fish mark but came up short with 28 bass caught that afternoon. Here are a couple pictures from that outing:

This upcoming weekend we have our first qualifying tournament for the Iowa Bass Fishing Team that will count towards going to the National Tourament next fall in Texas. I will be sure to give an update on how that went after this upcoming weekend. It will be held at a place that is notorious for giving up nice fish when pitching jigs around heavy wood cover. You can bet on it that I'll have my All Terrain jigs rigged and ready to go come Sunday Morning!

Practice Day 3 and Tournament Day

2008-04-14T13:22:00.000-05:00

Practice Day 3:
On the third day of practice I had paired up with my partned for the official tournament and we got off to a good start when he landed a 3.5lb largemouth early in the day (oddly enough it was caught on the main lake, a place where no one was catching largemough). We quickly headed out of that area and began heading to the south end of the lake. It was once again windy which meant that you better be wearing your rain gear if your making the treck across the wind swept lake. The high temp for the day was 40 with on and off rain. I personally didn't think the fishing would be that great but we ended up getting three more fish for the day; one smallmouth and 2 largies. After this practice I knew exactly what I wanted to do during the tournament day and I was the most confident I had ever been going into a college based tournament.

The Pattern:
Alright, now that the tournament is over I will spill the info in terms of how we were catching them... First of all we were dealing with 44-49 degree water temperatures, not very warm to say the least. On the south end of the lake there were boat and marina channels. These areas held the warmest water temperature on the lake and also held the best bet for catching largemouth. I was catching them in the channels on spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, crankbaits, jigs, and a dropshot. On the main lake you were looking at 44-46 degree water and the main fish were smallmouth. I caught all the smallmouth on jerkbaits (x-rap and strike king wild shiner) in 4-7 feet of water wherever there was rock. A wind swept bank also helped.

The Tournament:
This is the hard part about keeping this blog up...writing about things you don't really want to write about. To start off, we ended up doing terrible. Our entire Iowa Team consisting of 10 guys accumulated 2 fish (thats not a typo). 2 fish! I stuck to my guns on tournament day and it just didn't pan out. It was the coldest weather I had ever fished in (high of 38) with snow flurries every now and then. The wind had shifted to coming from the north instead of the SW like the other days. I could sit here and complain some more, but we just didn't catch them, theres no excuse for it because some other teams caught fish.

The only thing I would have changed in this tournament is getting a faster boat. Some people beleive that the boat doesn't matter in fishing, the fish don't care, and most times (almost always) it doesn't, but for this tournament it did. When you have small channels where all the fish are biting, more than one boat is going to go there (how about at least 20 of the 30 some boats in the tournament). I got passed by boats going to the channels and literaly watched other boats catch fish right in from of me for the first hour of the tournament. I fished behind them and finally picked up one 13 inch fish on a drop shot with 6lb flourocarbon, not a keeper though. In the channels on the first practice day I caught 5 five, 4 of which would have kept. So I know I would have been able to catch the fish had I been there first, but thats just how it goes sometimes.

I have no excuse for the smallies. I just didn't catch them. We tried adjusting and fishing windy banks, but I think with the wind coming from the North instead of the Southwest it changed things up and we just couldn't get bit on the main lake. I beleive that I am officially cursed in college based tournaments. 3 big college tournaments and I have yet to weigh in a fish. I have zeroed 4 times ever in tournaments, 3 of them in college tournaments. However, I still got to fish for 4 days straight and had a real fun time in practice attempting to break down a new lake. It sure beat being in class and its always good to be humbled every now and then, I just hope the trend doesn't continue during the next college tournament.

Practice Days 1 and 2

2008-04-11T18:23:00.000-05:00

The first 2 days of practice are complete, and now its time to get ready for the snow storm/official practice day and the tournament on Sunday (no I have never fished open water in the snow, could be interesting). Thankfully I've been able to locate both largemouth and smallmouth during the past two days on the lake. So I know the general area some fish are in, it will just be a matter of finding them again when the weather changes.

The first day of practice was one of the worst days I have ever fished weather wise. It rained all 9 hours that I was on the lake except for maybe the first half hour. The winds blew 20-30 mph, and with my smaller boat, it makes the lake fish a lot smaller, I don't mind fishing in the wind, but my boat just can't handle it when its that strong. However, the fishing wasn't too bad. I caught all my fish in the afternoon, and everyone of them came on a different bait, not too much for a pattern.

Today was much tougher fishing wise with post frontal conditions. I only caught 1 fish and one nice 18inch walleye for a bonus fish. I didn't hit my spots from the first practice day and was able to eliminate a lot of water which was a plus. The wind blew worse today (didn't think it could get any worse!), but higher temperatures with no rain made it a little bit more pleasurable to be on the water.

Tomorrow I'm looking to mix it up a little bit in hoping I can find some backup spots. The spots where I did catch all the fish on practice day 1 have been getting hit hard by other fisherman. I'm optimistic about the next two days as long as my fish don't change too much. However, the fact that its supposed to be a high of 38 degrees with snow and wind the next two days, has me wondering whether anyone will bring anything to wiegh in on tournament day. I guess we'll wait and see. Hopefully the mental battle with the weather conditions will thin out the field a little bit, thats half the battle!

First Tournament on the Horizon

2008-04-07T18:15:00.000-05:00

My first tournament of the 2008 season is coming up this week from April 12th-13th on Lake Maxinkuckee in NW Indiana. The tournament is the Big Ten Championship. This is the oldest Collegiate based bass fishing tournament in the nation and its great to be apart of the tradition. The tournament is on Sunday but I will be leaving on Wed. afternoon skipping out on a couple days of school to go prefish for the tournament (does it get much better ?).

I'm really excited to get back out on the water for the first time this year. Right now if the weather predictions hold up it could make for a tough tournament. They are predicting that it will get colder until the tournament day from here on out. They are even calling for a possibility of snow on tournament day which could make things interesting. We will probably be looking at a prespawn situation. Right now I have absolutely no clue how I will catch them. I've never been to the lake before and I won't know where these fish will be until I put the boat in the water and get a reading on the water temperature. I have an idea of many different things that I think will produce, but I don't know for sure what I will do until I get on the water. I think trying to figure out the fish is the most fun of fishing these tournaments and thats what keeps me coming back for more. Anyways, I have to get some school work done tonight before I leave this week, but check in throughout the week for updates on my practice. I'm going to try and post each day after practice and then a final post after the tournament day, so stay tuned!

Looking for a better Jig?

2008-03-02T19:51:00.000-06:00

Look no further than the jigs made by All Terrain Tackle. These jigs have had help in design from top touring pros such as Jim Moynagh (the football jig king himself) and Scott Martin to name a few. All Terrain has a great selection of jigs for any of your bass fishing situations that come about.

The Rattling A.T. jig, perfect for flipping and pitching wood, docks, reeds, and cattails. I have personally won 7 local and club tournaments in the past 2 years on this particular jig!

Jim Moynagh's Football Jig, designed and tested by Jim Moynagh himself on the FLW tour. This jig is a good bet when fishing deeper off shore structure. The "Terrain Tread" on the bottom of the jig helps to actually grip the bottom to help you feel whats down there. The football jig is becoming a hot commodity on the pro tours these days, and this one is quietly being used by a lot of pro anglers.

The A.T. Finesse jig. Perfect for those tough fighting smallies and also for when you need a little bit more of a finesse presentation on lakes that get a lot of pressure. I used this jig to win a club tournament on the St.Croix River last fall while fishing for smallmouth. Team it with a double tail grub and your good to go!

The A.T. Swim Jig. Designed with a lighter weed gaurd and lighter wire hook makes this the perfect swim jig that allows more solid hookups. A great bait of choice for spring bass that are on the move in shallow water.

Scott Martin's Grassmaster Weed Jig. The name says it all, this jig is meant to be flipped and pitched into the nastiest vegitation in the lake. The pointed, bullet shaped head makes for easy penetration into the thickest mats. This jig was tested by Scott Martin in the weed infested waters of Florida so you know that its going to perform in the right way while fishing for those big bass that are just buried in the weeds.

As you can see, All Terrain Tackle has every jig niche covered with their wide array of jig types for every jig fishing situation. However, this isn't even all that they offer. Be sure to check out their website (allterraintackle.com) to look at their "mighy jigs" for jigworm type applications, their tube jig heads, 4" flippin tubes, and their A.T. 5" Terrain Sticks for a senko type soft plastic stick bait. Their jigs and soft plastics are top notch and I will not go out on the lake whether it be fishing in a tournament or just for fun without at least one of these models tied on. Start the season off right by adding a couple of these products to your tackle collection.

Jones Takes 2008 Classic!

2008-02-24T22:09:00.000-06:00

Congratulations to Alton Jones on winning the 2008 Bassmasters Classic! I was rootin' for the hometown classic rookie Casey Ashley, but a Day Two stumble held him from getting into the top spot. Watch out though, he's a good fisherman and one of the better young guys that will be a force fishing the 2008 Elite Series this year. I really enjoyed following the classic this weekend and thought that ESPN did a great job on coverage throughout. Its definately tough to cover fishing as a live sport, but they did a good job with their bass blogs that were updated throughout the days of the tournament. I also felt that they showed a lot more "on the water" coverage this year than they have in the past, which is always nice.

It was amazing how many different patterns were being applied this weekend by the classic anglers. Football jigs were being dragged slow and deep, guys were pitching finesse jigs up under docks, they were crankin both shallow and deep, small finesse worms on a drop shot. Jigging Spoons were even being applied when the bass were schooled up and busting bait on the surface. It was really exciting to watch.

One thing that I really thought was amazing (and this separates the best from the average) is how these pros adjust their techniques from day to day depending on what the weather and fish are doing. I knew before this tournament that the pros always applied this type of "fishing the moment" mentality, but watching this tournament really drove home that fact.

All in all it was a great and exciting tournament!

Bass Tournament Schedule 2008

2008-02-05T21:46:00.000-06:00

I have just recently finalized (roughly) my tournament schedule for the upcoming 2008 season. I'll be taking part in three different tournament "circuits" this year, which means it will be the most tournaments I have fished in during the course of a year.

I will be fishing 4 (potentially 5) tournaments on the Sliverado Pro/Am Tour as an amature, 9 tournaments with my local bass club (Lakes Area Bassmasters), and at least 2 College based tournaments. The first two circuits will be held in both Minnesota and Wisconsin, with the College tournaments occuring in Indiana and presumably Texas (but this is not finalized).

I am really looking forward to this season in terms of growing my fishing ablilites, my tournament experience, and meeting many new great people involved with this sport. During preparation for the tournaments I will try and write about my practice and also how I ended up.

The first tournament will be the Big Ten Championship in Indiana sometime in April. Last year we (The University of Iowa) finished 3rd and hope to better that this year. It should be a fun tournament where we will probably looking at pre-spawn, spawn, or post-spawn conditions depending on what the weather does between now and then. Stay tuned in April for more info on how that tournament went.

Berkely's New Baits

2008-01-31T20:16:00.000-06:00

Has anyone seen the new lures that Berkely has just come out with? They have recently released some new baits that they hope will help out their pro-staff anglers in the upcoming Bassmasters Classic on Lake Hartwell later this month. There is some pretty interesting stuff such as jigs, sinking worms, and the ever popular swimbait. I really liked the look of their swimbait (named the Hollow Body), which looks much like the basstrix paddletail that everyone is trying to get their hands on. As the name states the body is hollow which helps tremendously in more hook-ups and more fish in the boat. I went ahead and pre-ordered a couple packs of these baits in hopes that they will arrive in time for the season. I have a tournament in Indiana in which we may be looking at prespawn conditions. If those fish are up on the flats chasing a reaction type bait, this just might do the trick.

Heres a picture of the Hollow Body:

First Installment

2008-01-30T23:00:00.000-06:00

Hey guys, my name is Bob Downey. As you may have already noticed this is my first post on my new blog. Pretty exciting stuff huh!? A little about me...I was born and raised in Minnesota and absolutely love the outdoors and all it has to offer. Specifically, I like to hunt and fish the most. While not fishing or hunting I attend the University of Iowa and am currently studying to earn a degree in business.

Ok, you may now be wondering why I have created this blog. My title "Bob's Fishing Blog" makes it pretty self-explanatory, this will be a blog about fishing! Specifically bass fishing, but I do some multi-species fishing as well. Everything from the tournaments I fish, how to fish certain techniques I like to use, the professional tours, to new products in the fishing industry, and just talking about fishing in general will be covered here on my blog.

I hope you take an interest in to what I have to offer in this vast world of fishing. I think it will be both fun and interesting if you follow along.

Bob Downey