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.

Club tourney practice

To give you a little history of this tourney the last time we were on these pools at about the same time of year it took about 18 to win and last springs tourney on one of the overlapping pools took over 17 to win so I thought just for sure that I needed to catch 20 lbs to win. So I set out to find 4lbers this is not a change from most people we are all out to find the most biggest and it is just that easy right???? I really started prefishing for this tourney way back in November. Since I didn’t know pool 6 and I am not a big fan of locking unless necessary I went to work to find them. I thought about all the places they might be and I kind of ruled out smallies as they will break your heart it seems. So I searched every nook and cranny of where I thought largemouth would be. I came up nearly empty handed. What I had caught in practice was two 3lbers and A BUNCH of little green fish. I could seem to put anything together. So I went down the day before the tourney and I told my wife I would be home when I found the winning school of fish. I pulled into one very small area that I had seen a few smallies on the previous week but couldn’t tell how big or how many due to the rain we were fishing in. When I pulled into the area I saw only 6 fish occupying about 10 beds. From what I could see they were the right kind (4lbers) I wanted to see how they reacted to the bait and this is where I might have made a mistake. I for some reason pitched a Josh Nelson rig (drop shot) to one of the beds and that was stupid because you can’t shake them off of a drop shot. As I was watching one fish on a bed a bigger one came over and smashed it. After a few minutes of wrestling I felt good and bad having landed a solid 4lb smallie however I was afraid I had ruined it for myself. Also I figured other fellas had found this spot and if they were that aggressive the next day someone was going to win it here no problem. At this point I headed for home with a giant sinus headache and wasn’t even sure if I was going to fish since I spent a few trips to the porcelain bowl before 10 o’clock