Waconia Tournament

Tournament morning and I was pumped to go. I was lucky enough to have my good chum Idso in the boat with me as I didn’t draw a non-boater. I was one of the later boats in the draw and as I headed to my first reed spot I could see to other boats heading to the general area. As I approached the spot I could see a fellow club member dropping his t-motor right where I was going to start. So I went to the other end and started working it towards him. Anyway after fishing the entire sweet spot of the reeds I didn’t even get a nudge and neither did the other boat fishing the area. I knew the right fish were in the area so I thought that maybe the fish pulled out of the reeds as to the recent fishing pressure and cool nights. So I made my way towards the inside weed edge fan casting a sexy sunfish redeye shad. As I hit the first weeds I hooked up with a small bass. I also caught one on the very next cast but it was another shaver. Then on a long cast down the weed edge I hooked up with a good one. It was nearly three pounds and my first fish in the box. After casting the red eye many more times it came up fruitless and in that amount of time the water had slicked off and the wind had completely died. After giving it sometime in the area I thought that about this time the dock bite was maybe heating up. We moved to the docks and I caught 2 small keepers on the first two docks after running the next 8 docks fruitless and the wind had picked up I moved back out to the offshore. I thought I would try some deeper edges just to see – after wasting an hour out there I head back to the only area I caught a good one. I tried the reeds again and went way inside the reeds. I flipped a jig into about 18” of water and got a good thump I reared back and boat flipped yet another 3lber. After trying to make more out of the shallow bite than what was there we headed back off shore to the inside weed edge after pitching Texas rigs in the foil I connected with a good one – not quite three pounds. It was at this point when I had realized that maybe I should have never left this section of weeds. I fish it nearly the rest of the day boating a constant amount of fish all over 2lbs but most being shy of 3. At one point the wind picked up and it started to rain it was at this point that the wind switched and I fished the sweet spot in the reeds from a different angle than had up to this point and it paid off. I caught a real good one and to be honest I had no idea how big it was. It was an odd shaped fish and the first half of the fish was inordinately large but then it tapered quickly and was actually quite short. In fact at weigh in the fish was reweighed several times because the weighmaster though for sure it weighed more than the 4.5 it was showing. After I caught the big one there was only half hour left in the tourney and although I caught fish none of them helped. I was one of the later boats to weigh in and ended up with a little over 15 pounds and it was good enough for second place in the tourney. And congrats to Jeff on 1st place – my suspicions were correct – he found a spot similar to mine and just sat on it all day and mined it for all it was worth – which is probably what I should’ve done. I ended up weighing 3 fish on a ½ Texas rigged craw tube and 1 on a jig and 1 on the red eye. I don’t have any regrets and it was great that my home work paid off and it was fun when an on the water adaptation worked. I don’t consider myself much of a fall angler so this was a shot in the arm for my fall fishing confidence.
I will post soon next year’s schedule as we have already picked locations.

Waconia Prefish

Last tourney of the year and I wanted to do well as always but I needed to find some good fish to do it especially since it has taken as much as 20+lbs to win on fall tourney on Waconia. Typically there is usually a good shallow bite this time of year. Although I understand why the fish move shallow in southern impoundments I am not quite sure why it happens up north but I think it is for a few reasons – of which I won’t expound upon now.
So as I headed out for my pre-fishing endeavor I was going to look for shallow fish and for some good green weeds in 7-12 feet of water. I started shallow and found some fish in the shallow reeds almost immediately on the edge with a dt-6 and then on the best looking spot I flipped a jig into the reeds and it never hit the bottom and lifted a 3lb fish to the surface and on the next flip I hooked a 3lber and he wouldn’t let go so he made it into the Champ that made for about 6 bites in 200 yards. So I knew I was going to fish those reeds so I just left to go check docks.
I made it to the second dock and got bit and went to the second dock and got bit on that one too – I didn’t set the hook on either and just moved on. I tried for the next three hours to fish the deep stuff and never had a sniff. I could find lots of beautiful milfoil stuff that excites a guy but nothing not even a sunfish nibble. After that I drove around and looked at some stuff that I thought might play on tournament day and then I put the boat on the trailer.
Prefish Recap: I felt kind of weird only fishing for 5 hours but I didn’t want to burn any fish but I felt good about it what I found so why beat them up anymore than I needed to.