Medicine Lake Renegade Bassers 6/29/13

Practice-
I didn't have much time to practice for this event even though I would consider Medicine my home lake as it's only about 10 minutes from my house. I was at a resort up on the Whitefish chain the week prior and also had to hit Sylvia / Twin to pre fish since they were back to back Saturday Sunday events. I was there once before the bass opener throwing spinnerbaits and crankbaits for 'pike' but didn't put much stock in it because things change quickly in the Spring.

Me and my non-boater for the tournament Ryan Ploof got out the Wednesday night prior for a few hours. While I was tied up at the dock waiting for him these guys with the same boat as mine were cracking me up. First they asked me 'Why you got so many rods?' I explained it was so I didn't have to change lures and retie all the time. I told them I liked their boat and it took them a minute to realize it was because I had the same model only a few years newer. Then they kept asking me where the crappie hole was at even though I told them I only fish for bass. They proceeded to put their boat in the water without the plug and held up everyone while they screwed around trying to fix the problem. By this time Ploof was there and we headed out. They were still saying I was holding out on them as we drove off. Good stuff. Even if I knew where to catch crappies did they think I would tell them?

We started out deep scanning the structure scan for some good looking cover. We almost did more looking than fishing which I have been meaning to do but it's hard for me to drive around and look instead of fishing. But it paid off as we found a couple good areas to fish and caught a 4 plus pounder on one of them.  We only had a few hours so we only made a few casts on each spot and moved on. We really didn't find that many fish but we eliminated some water and formulated a plan.

Tournament-
A few days before the event, the cities of Plymouth and Medicine lake declared a 'no wake order' because of all the recent heavy rains.  Which is ironic because in the past we have been unable to fish tournaments here because of the low water levels which made access difficult. So we had to decide if we were going to make a last minute change or fish the event as planned with the 'no wake' in effect. We decided it was too late to switch and we would continue as planned.  I was definitely in favor of fishing it even with the no wake since I have the slowest boat in the club it would level out the field as far as running to spots. Also it is so close to my house I could use the extra sleep, and I felt confident that we had a decent game plan.

We woke up to pouring rain with no sign of it letting up.  There was no lightning so I knew we would fish anyway.  It did let up some by the time we got on the water and eventually cleared up for most of the day.  Usually blast off is pretty dramatic with 10 or more powerful bass boats stomping on the gas and racing to their first spots (and me getting swamped out by everyone's wakes and just trying to get out of the way).  But not this time because of the no wake.  It was pretty lame.  Everyone just sort of started heading in different directions at the same time not doing much more than 5 mph. I enjoyed every minute of it!

Ploof and I decided to try some shallow stuff that was relatively close first before heading out to our main deep spots.  We didn't want to spend too much time zig zagging back and forth to spots because of the 'no wake'. There was nothing going on shallow so we headed out to our deep stuff. After awhile with nothing going we decided to head to the other end and fish some reeds that were usually productive.  On the way there the graph was showing lots of fish and we saw some surface activity as well.  We looked at each other and figured we might as well give it a shot.  It's a good thing we did!  We ended up putting the smack down on some good fish for a solid hour or more. It was one small area and we had to be in just the right spot in order to get bit.  While we weren't catching them every cast it was very consistent and every time we thought we should leave one of us boated another one. By the time I had my limit and was culling the area was getting crowded.  Ploof had three or four fish at this point.  One angler was fishing the reeds where we were originally headed and another boat was heading down the weedline towards us.  We hung out for a little while longer before we left and headed back to our prime deep area.

This time the deep spot produced.  Not long after we got there Ploof hooked into a big pike and while he was dealing with that I set the hook on a good fish on a tube.  Since Ploof was hooked up with his fish, I had to net this fish myself and it was a good one. After a few heart-stopping jumps I finally got her in the net. Boom!  It would end up being the big bass of the tournament at 4.56lbs.  At this point I had a good limit and had only culled twice. We worked the area for awhile longer but couldn't get any more fish to bite.

We went back shallow and looked for some fish in another area we found in practice but couldn't find the sweet spot.  We were heading to one of the back bays to check it out back there and on the way Ploof hooked into his big bass on a jig of 4.05lbs and filled out his limit. We turned the corner and saw other guys fishing in the bay and decided to just turn around and head back towards the access.  We hit some other areas near the access with no luck and heading in for weigh-in.

At the weigh in I discovered one of my fish was dead.  I'm not quite sure how that happened I think he was hooked in the tongue but I can't believe it died.  I did notice it was bleeding when I put it in the box but never really though about letting it go since it was a decent fish and bites were pretty scarce.  I knew we both had good bags but this lake can pump out some big fish so I didn't think I had quite enough to win. I weighed in fairly early with 15.13lbs and a .25oz penalty so officially had 14.88lbs. As more and more guys weighed in, me and Ploof stayed near the top. After I dumped my fish back in the lake, Pat Porter said he beat me by like .10oz because of my penalty. I was pissed! A dead fish was going to cost me the win. I wanted to wait until everyone weighed in before getting too pissed and was actually relieved when Brian weighed in last and beat all of us with 15.24lbs. Way to go Brian! At least I didn't lose because of a dead fish penalty, that would have really bothered me. Especially since I try to take good care of my fish and use additives and monitor them frequently. It turned out I finished in 3rd place with big bass of the tournament! And Ploof was right behind me in 4th with 13.47lbs, I love it when my non-boaters do well (just not too well). It was a great follow up to my 2nd place finish on Sugar.

Overview-
I was relieved to have a top 3 finish on my home lake. Looking back I would have started on our deep stuff instead of shallow but sometimes you have to just figure stuff out as the day goes by. The decision to stop and fish where those fish were busting on the surface was the key. We never meant to fish there it just sort of happened. Who knows, maybe if it wasn't 'no-wake' we would have blew right past it. Without that, we may not have even had our limits.

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