My partner Darin Sorenson met me at my house at 6am and we headed to the Carson Bay launch. This would be our third time fishing this tournament together. We made it to Maynards by 7 am and hung out with other guys from our club that were there as well as checked out Nick Madisons new Phoenix bass boat, very nice, I'm jealous. Our club had 4 teams competing in the event with a total of 85 teams. The tournament is hosted by the Viking Bassmasters, another MNBFN club. The proceeds raise money for their club and they donate a lot of food to the food shelf, it's a well run, casual tourney for a great cause.
We were boat #8 and started where we usually do in St. Albans bay and caught one flipping a mat pretty quick on a blk/blue Berkeley craw fatty. Not a giant but a good start. Little did we knew it would be a long time before we boated another keeper. This crazy bird wouldn't stop harassing us and kept going after or lures and diving under the boat. It was starting to piss me off so we left. (Plus we weren't catching anything anyway.)
Our next stop was in Gideons bay where we thought would be our best spot. Nothing here besides a million pike and a couple shorts that Darin caught. Then we went back into a small bay to try shallow but got just one bite that we didn't see what it was. We were trying to determine if shallow or deep was our best bet and time was ticking.
From there we headed to a main lake spot that we fished earlier in the week. I caught a decent one pretty deep on an Outkast RT jig bruise color in about 15 feet or so. That was it for that spot. By this point we have two small fish in the box and its almost noon. With nothing figured out we ran to North arm to see if we could get the flipping bite going.
On our way we decided to stop and flip some pads that I have done well on in the past. That proved to be a good decision because we popped two quick keepers. One on wtr/blk/red biffle bug and one on blk/blue craw fatty. We quickly worked through that area and then headed to another stretch near some docks to flip some milfoil mats. No more action flipping and we had time to hit one more spot on the way back.
On the way back, we decided to stop at a deep hole with good weeds on the edges where I caught fish in practice on multiple trips. We needed one more fish to fill out our limit. We only had about 20 minutes before we had to head back to weigh-in. I took a few casts with a tube and nothing. I was pretty much checked out at this point and my 'never give up' attitude was really being tested. It was a grind, crappy weather, and the bites too few and far between. It was difficult to stay focused. I decided to pick up the rat-l-trap (rapala clackin rap) expecting to only catch a pike on it. My 2nd cast I got hit and just assumed it was a pike until it jumped. It was a good bass! Finally, we had our limit and it was our biggest fish of the day. It was funny because Darin said I should have told him that I had a fish so he could get the net but the way our day was going I honestly thought it was a pike. While we weren't going to compete for a trophy, it was nice to have our limit and have at least a 3+ pounder.
After a few more casts it was time to head back to Maynard's for weigh in at 3. I think we were the 2nd or 3rd team to weigh in and we ended up with 9.83lbs and big bass of 3.31. Not totally horrible but I expected to do better with all the time I put in practicing. This lake is tough to figure out and things definitely change from one day to the next. Also it seemed like it was always only one fish per spot. I rarely caught more than one fish per area. I hope we get it voted in as a club tourney next year so I can put some more time in, even though I will try to anyway. We hung out for the results and raffle afterwards. Good friends of mine from our club Nick Madison and Ryan Ploof ended up winning with 16.22lbs. Mad props to them awesome work for the win! Pat Porter and A.J. Madison from our club had 11.07lbs and Steve Walker and Jesse Cermak had a couple small fish but didn't weigh in. Darin won a gift bag in the raffle and we headed back to the ramp. It was a rough ride and we got soaked. Perfect way to finish the day.Overview-
Overall I'm not really sure what we could have done differently. Deep and shallow bites seemed to be tough. I think the winning fish were caught deep but I still had confidence in the flipping bite shallow. One thing I think we should have done differently is run more spots and give up quicker on unproductive spots. Even though going in I knew this, we didn't really stick to it. It's hard to give up on productive looking spots after a few minutes but I really believe it would have helped to cover more water. I also think we should have spent more time doing different things until we figured something out. For example one of us flips shallow, and the other one hits the deeper water / weed line on the opposite side. Or when fishing deep one of us cast shallow and one work deeper until we develop a pattern.
This is the third tournament in a row that my partner / non boater failed to boat a keeper. I'm starting to think it's my fault. One positive from the day was my new Onyx rain gear. I finally decided that I needed some better rain gear especially some bibs since every time I sit down with regular rain pants my butt gets soaked. They kept me dry and warm the entire day. I would definitely recommend them.
Results
Weather-
Water temp 62 degrees. 4 degrees colder than when I last practiced.
Weather Underground Weather Report
Very well written Daryl look forward to reading more blogs
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