Goose Lake Greenhorn Tour 8/3/14

Goose Lake is up near the top of the list of my favorite lakes.  It's mostly a shallow, weedy, dirty lake that will test your froggin and flippin skills to the max.  I was excited to hit it immediately after my win on N/S Center, as I would be doing pretty much the same type of fishing.  I hardly had to do any re rigging which was also a plus.

Practice

I decided to call in a half day to work and head out there during the week for a few hours.  Kyle joined me since he works mostly nights now.  We started near the small launch and tried some topwater.  Walking frogs, buzzbait, and buzz frogs.  After awhile with no action we headed to the opposite side of the lake.  It didn't take long for Kyle's frog to get inhaled and it was a beauty.  It was his first bass on a walking frog and he did a good job of waiting on the hook set and reeling it through the heavy cover.

A few flips later I boated a nice one of my own on a craw tube.  I also caught a few on a scatter rap but not nearly the size of the frog/flippin fish.  It was a good option nonetheless.  From my experience on this lake, you might not get many bites, but they will usually be good ones.  During the Renegade Bassers tournament last year I only culled once maybe twice and had 16 pounds.

 We decided to head to the other deeper basin and check some stuff over there.  I hit my main area to see if it was still holding fish and on the 2nd pass it produced a solid 3 pounder.  That's all I needed to see so we left. We worked a slop bay nearby and a little bit into the channel just eliminating water.

We moved to another area similar to the first two that produced and the result was similar, a nice 3+ lb fish on a craw fatty.  They were all hiding in the pads.  The weedline tops out at about 6 feet so fishing shallow is pretty much the only option.  I couldn't get any bites out of the reeds.  It didn't seem to matter if there was milfoil or reeds nearby, the pads seemed to be the ticket.

From there we made a quick check of a deeper area that looked good, then we finished out the morning near the access without any more bites.  My guess is we had about 14 pounds fishing until noon.  And we would pretty much leave the good areas after catching one or two fish.  I was glad I made it out to check it out, we just needed to do it again come Sunday.

Tournament

We arrived at the resort access at about 5:15 after an hour drive which made for an early morning.  We remained status quo by drawing boat #10.  If we had a top 3 draw we were going to head to the deeper basin but since we drew boat 10 we decided to start on the shallow side.  We hit the area where we got 2 good ones in practice and managed 2 small keepers on a buzzbait and senko.  We ran to the opposite bank and worked it for awhile with no luck.  We decided to give the starting spot one more quick check before we hit the other basin.  And this is where things got interesting.

I flipped a few feet into the pads and something wasn't right.  I didn't feel the bite but I saw a pad move and I wasn't moving the bait.  I set the hook anyway.  Good thing I did because a 4 pounder had grabbed it and I got him the boat.  I told Ron how the bite was and that all I knew was something felt strange.  A few  minutes later I heard Ron say 'something felt strange' as he set the hook and his rod was bowed over.  I got the net under it after a good battle and it was an exact replica of the fish I had just caught.  Now we were rolling.  We just had to stick with it and the big bites would come.  We milked this area for all it was worth and caught our limit plus culled a couple times.  We got another 3 pounder and two that were just under 3 that were our smallest.

After going awhile with no action we decided to let the area rest, and head to the other basin and try our luck there.  We headed to an area that I've done well on in the past and caught a couple fish but no upgrades.  Ron picked up his frog when he saw milfoil and said 'where there's milfoil, there's frog fish' and immediately caught one but it didn't help.  I think it was our only frog fish we landed for the day.

We ran to another area with pads and had some interesting things happen.  First Ron had a giant blow up on a frog but didn't get a hook in em.  He threw back there again and it blew up on it again.  But again it failed to hook up.  We threw senkos and craw's in the area but couldn't get it to bite.  Then a few minutes later I made a flip and felt a bite, set the hook, and my rod broke in half!  I couldn't believe it!  We landed the fish but it didn't help.  I don't understand, the fish wasn't that big, and the cover I pulled it from wasn't that heavy.  It was a 13 Fishing rod made for cabelas.  Heavy action swimbait / umbrella rig.  After I tied my punch rig on another rod I got my lure back in the water.  I immediately got a hard bite and set the hook and it didn't even move.  I thought we were in business.  And wouldn't you guess it was a freaking dogfish!  Unbelievable.  My third one this year.  Then Ron caught another one that didn't help and we were going to head back to the area where the frog blow up was and see if it was willing to bite.  We looked and there was a canoe fishing right on the spot.  We would have been pissed if they caught it.  We waited until they moved on, then circled in behind them for another pass.  While we were trying to get big momma to bite we heard the guys in the canoe hooting and hollering.  We looked over and they were holding a nice 4 pounder at least.  From the area we had just worked!  Things were starting to go in the wrong direction.

From there we headed back to our main area.  There was all kinds of activity fish and bait fish jumping all over.  After catching a big pike and working it for 30 minutes or so without a bass, we decided the area was taken over by other species and it was carp surfacing all over.

A front was moving in and I was hoping this would activate some fish.  It was not to be and we worked the north part of the lake hard before heading in.  The sky looked menacing and with about 10 minutes remaining a major wind gust encouraged us to head in.  The rain held off until I was pulling the boat out of the water.  I saw a few smaller bags but apparently missed the big ones.  I was pretty confident we had at least 16 pounds and should get us a check.

We ended up with 17.3lbs which was only good enough for 6th place.  The big guns of the tour both had 18 pounds bags and the winner blew everyone away with 19 pounds anchored with a 5.9 big bass.  Apparently they needed a last minute jump in order make it back.  We found out we were doing the right thing as all top 3 finishers were throwing heavy jigs/punch baits and white frogs.  It's a little frustrating when the same 2 teams are in the top 3 every tournament in what is supposed to be the 'Greenhorn' tour, but I think part of it is a little jealousy, and part of it is knowing that we can compete with them but we just aren't able to go out and execute like we are capable of.  Hats off to them!

Overview

We had the chances to finish in the top 3 but couldn't seal the deal.  I think we both either had one on, or missed a fish that would have gotten us the money.  We were just one bite away which is all you can really ask for, it just wasn't our time.  It was certainly our best finish weight wise by far, even though we finished 6th on Forest.

As far as what we could have done differently, a few things come to mind.  At the weigh in, one of the top 3 teams were saying they caught their fish on 1/2oz jigs.  We were mostly using 1oz slither rig and punch baits.  I actually thought about switching to something lighter and maybe they wanted a different fall speed, but never did.  I'm not sure how that would have worked since most of the cover we were fishing was pretty thick and we probably would have had to just flip the holes in the grass.  Something to keep in mind for next time.  Also maybe deadsticking a senko?  It seemed like they got very inactive after 11am, and although painful to do, might have produced.  Another thought I had was to run and gun and hit more areas instead of wasting too much time in unproductive water.

This is the 2nd event in a row where I haven't upgrades past 11am.  I've had good bags so it's not that easy when you need at least a 3 pounder to upgrade.  Do you stick with what got you there, or try something different?  These are decisions that I need to work on.

Our finish did qualify us for the greenhorn toc on Cross/Pokegama, so that was a bonus!  Off to Vermillion next week for the Renegade Bassers out of town tournament and practice for state BASS federation tournament in September.

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