White Bear Lake Greenhorn Tour 6/8/14

Practice on Memorial Day With Emma 

Water Temp = 67 - 70 degrees
Bass shallow.  Caught some right up on the bank.  Pretty sure they were in full spawn mode.  Saw some Smallies roaming shallow.  Caught one good largemouth on watermelon senko. 
Deep weeds are coming in.  5-7 feet.   Not much shoreline structure, lots of rocks.  Saw a bunch of big carp up shallow in some areas.  We went swimming / wading near an island.  Couldn't find many sunnies for Emma.  Next time we need to bring some real worms instead of the Berkeley stuff we've been using.  Got to spend some quality time with my daughter and familiarized myself with the lake as I'd never been there before. Caught some fish too!  Bonus....

2nd Practice Day

I had the chance to pre fish alone for just a few hours one morning.  I decided to hunt for some brown bass early with topwater in a likely smallie area with lots of rocks.  I started with a spook and caught a small largie fairly quickly.  I kept working the spook when I got a monster blow up.  I debated throwing the senko in there but decided to throw the spook back instead.  It barely hit the water when it was inhaled by a beautiful 4 pound smallie.  I just left the area and added it to the top of the list for tournament day.  Searching for deep weeds was next on my list.  Everywhere I went there was bait and sunfish busting the surface.  I couldn't get any bites on moving baits I had to slow down with a tube or senko.  I found a couple decent areas with not much size though.  The last spot I checked on I caught a chunky 3 pound largie on a tube.  I had a dead starting battery so I had no electronics and had to jump my starting battery with the jump box every time I wanted to move.  I just stayed in the bay near the access and used the trolling motor for the most part.  Turns out my battery charger was dead and didn't charge the starting battery but there was enough juice for the trolling motor.  My take after practice was that if the Smallies were biting we would be ok.  I had a couple decent areas and was hoping Ron did too.  Looking at past results I figured 12 pounds would get us a check.

Tournament Day

This is our first Greenhorn tournament of the year with my new partner Ron Mohr.  I fished the Wednesday night Greenhorn series two years ago and it was a pretty well run series with minimal cost.  We would be using Ron's boat which is nice because all I have to focus on is catching fish.  And it's a lot nicer than mine and faster too!  I don't mind fishing out of the back of the boat, the only problem is trying not to bring too many rods.  He did well in his Thursday series last year and I did well last year so we figured we'd make a formidable team. 

The day started with a fog delay.  It always sucks to have a delay when you are all pumped up and ready to go.  But I understand that it would be totally unsafe to blast off in those conditions.  We started throwing topwater in the area where I caught a nice smallie in practice.  Nothing doing.  We ran over to one of Ron's areas and worked it hard for awhile.  This was a popular area as there were at least 2 other boats nearby.  We threw the book at these fish.  Topwater, moving baits, tubes, and finally I decided to slow way down.  I got bit on a watermelon wacky rigged senko.  It was a nice smallmouth just over 2 pounds!  Finally after almost 2 hours we had a fish in the boat.  We worked this area awhile longer without another bass. 

We headed to a deeper area that I found in practice.  After a few casts I set the hook on a keeper on a tube.  Nothing big but at this point we had to put keepers in the well.  We continued to work the area until we finally had a limit.  Not much weight but plenty of time to upgrade. 

We decided to move shallow and see what we could do.  I caught another wacky fish in a small bay that was good for a small upgrade.  There was a canoe near us that we were trying to let by, but they kept adjusting to whatever we were doing and blocking us off.  They saw me catch one near a dock and immediately moved in to the other dock and put their anchor down.  Then when we started moving out they blocked off the reeds we were gonna hit.  It looked like they were fishing for dinner so they clearly had priority over us. 

We headed to another area with docks and shallow weeds.  It was almost noon at this point and things were looking pretty bleak.  We probably had about 8 pounds and time was winding down.  We were getting frustrated because we hadn't had many ouldn't figure them out. 

I decided that a reaction bite was the way to go since they weren't eating anything we threw.  I tied on a rat-l-trap and proceeded to try to get it stuck it the weeds and rip it out. This worked for two small bass and a pike. 

Then we ran back to the area where we caught the smallie earlier in the day.  Nothing home.

We decided to had back to the deep area where we had the most success so far and finish the day there.  We caught a few small fish and got our hopes up on a couple of pike bites but no significant upgrades.  Time to head to the weigh in. 

The 1st bag we saw weighed in was 16lbs all Smallies!  We weighed in 8.2lbs pounds ended up 13th out of 18.  If we could have scraped together one more pound we could have moved up 5 spots, it was pretty tight in the middle of the pack, every ounce counted.  At least we caught our limit and we weren't last.  A lot of people struggled and a few found em and put the smack down.

There was some drama at the boat ramp as a guy dropped his Larson boat on the ramp.   I was in line waiting and I saw him up there dicking around with his boat for like 10 minutes when he pulled the boat out and obviously forgot to take his trailer straps off.  I didn't see what happened next but I heard about it pretty quickly.  Ron came up to the truck and told me that when he headed back down the ramp after taking the straps off he didn't quite make it in the water.    He had roller bunks and didn't connect the front strap and he pulled up so far that after he disconnected the trailer straps and tried to back in, the boat slipped of the trailer and onto the ramp.  Apparently his trailer came off the ball and ended up in the back of his suv.   Some guys from the tour helped him slowly winch it back into the trailer with a hand which that someone had with them.  I also heard that the lady driving the truck almost ran over some helpers when the told her to pull up a couple inches and she went a couple feet.  Once they got it back on the trailer he actually asked if he should just put it in the water.  They suggested he take it out to inspect.  I pulled up next to him after pulling Ron out and his lower unit had a big hole in it and the oil was draining out the ground.  He was asking someone for a plastic bag and I had one so I gave it to him to try to catch some of the oil in.  As he drove away the boat was sitting very crooked as well.  What a mess!  I'm sure he was rushed because there were at least 15 trucks and trailers waiting in line for him.  But still no excuse for that.  It proves that anytime you rush most of the time it takes you longer and you make mistakes, sometimes major mistakes.

Overview

Sometimes things just don't go as planned.    It was a lot tougher day than I expected.  The fish didn't really tell us any kind of pattern seemed like one here one there.  Our best pattern was fishing the tube on a Texas rig slowly lifting it off the bottom in areas with weeds 8-10 feet.  The 3rd place finishers said they were catching them in 16 feet so I think we were fishing too shallow.  Looking back we should have spent more time targeting Smallies.  This is the 2nd tourney in a row where I kind of thought Smallies would win it but gave up on it too quickly.  I've decided that from now on anytime there are Smallies in a body of water that I'm going for them, especially in the spring.  I also didn't get to put in as much time as I like when practicing.  I like to get at least 2 full days in but that just didn't happen this time.  Things change so fast in the spring that you have to be able to adjust to the conditions and today we didn't do a very good job of it.  So what I take way from this is:  Always target Smallies in the spring if they are present, and fishing deep early in the season is an option.  On to Forrest lake, not one of my favorites but looking forward to trying to figure it out.

Weather

Results

Lakes Washington & Stella Renegade Bassers 5/31/14

Practice

MN Bass Opener.  We started off heading to Stella to try to find some smallies but no luck.  Three hours without a bite.  Kyle finally caught a small largie on a dock.  We decided to had back to Washington and try to figure out something else.  It was pretty windy so we decided to hit the windy shore, caught one dink on a spinnerbait.  Finally we had to get out of the wind and we ducked into a protected bay.  Finally we saw some activity.  We saw some beds and quickly realized we had been fishing too deep.   I rigged up a frog just to see if I could get them to show themselves.  I caught one fairly quickly on the frog.  Then caught a decent one on the senko.  We scouted for beds and looked for other similar areas and had some pretty good success.  We checked some deeper areas without a bite.  I decided to give up on Stella in hopes of finding a decent limit of largies in the productive areas before they get beat up.

We'll see how it works out...

With Kyle Rodriguez.   Water Temp 64-69.  Fish caught 7 or 8.  Krod=1.  Frog, senko, swimjig, spinnerbait.

Tournament Day

We have had very warm temperatures all week and I knew things would be different and the fish would be on beds or already done spawning.  Water temp My plan was to hit my primary areas on Washington and if I had 10 pounds or more I would go searching for brown bass in Stella.  We launched from the south access on Washington Lake at 6 am.  I was second to last boat and turned out last boater couldn't make it so I had the pleasure of directing everyone at take off.  On my way to my starting spot I immediately saw a bunch of vegetation that wasn't there during practice.  I got to my area and was slightly surprised that no one was there.  I started throwing rebel pop r and immediately got bit before I even twitched it.  It was a decent fish so I was pretty pumped.  I continued to fill out my limit within the next 30 minutes with the pop r, swim jig, and senko.  I moved on to my second area after the bite slowed and working the same pattern I had around 10lbs by 7:30 or so.  When I went to make a move to my next area, someone was already heading in there.  It was pretty obvious there was plenty of fish in the 16-17 inch class and finding a 4-5 pounder might be challenging.  I figured my best bet was to go Smallie hunting so I headed over to Stella.

I caught a small one fairly quickly but nothing else.  I made a move and saw a few other boats fishing close to the shore.  I decided to try something in the 6-8 foot range.  I finally hooked into a decent Smallie on a tube.  It was about a 3 pounder.  It was good to finally catch one but it would be the only one.  I saw a few more but couldn't get them to bite.  I worked the area for quite awhile without another keeper and the sky was looking pretty bad.  I decided to had back to Washington and look for some more largies.  I didn't really want to be stuck in Stella if a bad storm came and it's not like I was crushing em anyway.

When I got back to Washington it started down pouring right when I pulled up on my spot.  I fished some docks during the rain with no luck and once the rain stopped I headed to a small bay that I wanted to check earlier.  I caught one on a swim jig that was a small upgrade.  I had been catching fish at pretty much every spot but they were all the same size!  The sky looked pretty bad again and I wanted to hit an area by the launch before others got there.

I hit a quick lay down on my way in that I had caught a decent one on earlier, but no one was home.  I headed back to fish some reeds by the ramp.  I drove right through them because they weren't up yet when we were there last weekend.  Right when I put the trolling motor down the rain came again.  This time there was thunder and lightning.  I caught probably 5 more fish all the same size with one small upgrade.  Eventually there were 5 or 6 boats fishing in the same area and I was  waiting for someone to make the move so I could go in I didn't want to be the 1st one.  It was about 1:30 by this point and I didn't feel like a was going to find that kicker during this downpour anyway.  Finally a loud thunder clap and close lightning sent most of us in a few minutes early.

At the weigh in I could tell right away taking to people that I was in trouble.  I heard rumblings of 15lb bags.  I thought I did fairly well and that maybe my 3lb smallie would help propel me to a decent finish.  I was hoping that everyone struggled and was having the same problem with the same size fish.  I knew someone would smoke them, they usually do.  And you can never be sure until the fish are weighed.  I knew I had at least 10 pounds maybe 11 or 12 at the most.  I ended up weighing just over 13 pounds and had 1 dead fish good enough for 10th place.  Wow, I think the days of catching 10 pounds for a decent finish are over.  13 pounds gets me 10th place.  We sure have a good group of sticks.  And some of our top guys didn't even finish well.  It's not horrible but since I'm not fishing all the tourneys this year, it puts me in a tough spot.  Time to step up my game I guess.  Congrats to Ozzy on the win and big bass with 17 pounds and a 4 pound smallie!

Overview
Well, I caught plenty of fish.  It was a blast.  Any day besides tournament day and I would have been extremely happy.  I should have concentrated more on finding more Smallies.  I didn't spend enough time out there to realize there were not many 3+ pound largemouth.  I had a feeling that Smallies were going to take it but I let the comfort of a limit blind me to stick with what I knew it would take to win.  Also I assumed most of the guys were going to go after Smallies and sometimes I just want to do something different because I don't want to fight for spots.  Live and learn!

Results

Weather