Lake winona RABT

We kicked off the Rochester Area Bass Tour on Wednesday June 1 – we had a good showing of 9 boats and off we went – Team domination station or Mike and Ike or me and Idso ended up winning it but it started out slow. We started shallow on inside weedlines and managed one 12 inch fish – however the bluegills were there in full force spawning and I thought the fish would be there – (on a side note if someone wanted to go down there and load the boat with 10 inch gills it could be done in very short order). We fished that for an hour and then decided to head outside of the weedline – I marked a spot on the way to our starting spot where the contours looked promising. I started cranking and caught a walleye and idso poked a short fish on a beaver almost immediately. We gave this area a little more time and with nothing to show for it but bluegill pecks I then resorted to a jig worm just to see if anything was there. After a short time I felt something that was little more that a gill ripping on the tail – set the hook and immediately I saw that it was a good one – with some mad netting skills by Idso and she was in the well and nearly 4lbs!!! With 2 hours to go I knew if we could get a few more of those we would be right there – we made a small move of about 100 yards up the weedline and I got no more tugs on the jig worm and so I picked up the dropshot and cast to some of the stuff I had already fished after about 20th cast it felt heavy and the fight was on with another superior net job it was another 4lber in the boat. This one would’ve probably weighed 5 a week ago but she was very skinny from spawning. I made repeated casts to that same spot and caught yet another 4lber on the dropshot – this one was netted in mid-air as the dropshot came out of her mouth but my net man was there to tennis racket her out of the air!!!! So what if we hugged. We spent the next hour in the area with only small fish to show for it – so with 15 minutes left to go we went shallow – I threw a buzzbait over and around sunfish spawning beds and about 5 casts in had a giant blowup and the fight was on and there it was a chunky 3 ½ pounder!!!!! I kind of thought at this time we probably had it locked up but you never know in Lake Winona as the quality on this lake is at times staggering. We did indeed win with 15.5lbs and however we were not big bass winners as that went to Brent and Todd for bringing in a 5.3
slaunch donkey!!!! Next RABT is June 29th on Chester woods. Hope we have another good showing. sorry for the grainy cellphone picture

Overal the report was the that fishing was slow - usually lake winona is on fire in june but we were probably a bit early as this spring has been cold and wet. there were some nice fish caught throughout the night though.

Club tourney report

Well it is long overdue for a report and I have much to report!!! I took some time off of work recently and did quite a bit of fishing on the might miss. I figured out several things in preparation for the first club tourney. The first was – I couldn’t catch any smallies of any size. The second was since the tourney was I pools 7 and 8 I wanted to rule out one pool or the other – since fishing seemed more consistent on pool 7 I focused my time there (that and the day I fished 8 I caught nearly nothing). So off to pool 7 it was. I spent much time out there but it is such a big area I feel like I only scratched the surface – however I did learn that wherever you had current and hard/rocky bottom you caught fish. It was this patterned that seems to be always producing so I tried to find it in as many places as possible. The lure they seem to be eating was on what Kevin won the Classic on and since I only had 2 I fished look alikes until the time of the tourney because I had already lost the lure twice to Pike and found it floating on the surface a short time later. Here is a picture of a 4lber that was caught – (I never knew a 4lber could look so small but when the guy holding it is over 6’5” its understandable.)



Tourney day – this particular day I had the pleasure of fishing with Josh Kepp. From the sounds of things Josh had found some fish on Pool 8 and we were going to hit his fish first and then most likely lock through to 7. Well stuff happens – when Josh put his boat in the water that morning he found that his engine would only idle and was taking the gas when he gave it the gas – so we ended up fishing for a couple hours near the ramp I managed to boat two keepers and dropped a 3rd at the side of the boat – needless to say with Josh having a heavy heart about his motor troubles his mind wasn’t in it yet at this point. So we trailered the boat to a nearby marine mechanic – What we didn’t know is they were a Mercury dealer and since Josh had an Johnson/Evinrude they weren’t much help – in fact we found the loose connection while sitting in their parking lot waiting for help. Then it was back on the water. When we got back on the second time Josh was a whole new man knowing that he wasn’t going to have to pay thousands to have a motor repaired. We went to his primary area and we immediately started to catch fish – lots of fish and lots of different kinds of fish. The fish were absolutely choking down the crankbaits, we caught a lot for numbers but there was some size too. After it slowed down a bit we tried a couple other areas nearby just to give it a rest and then we were back at the primary area again. They were still there and they were still eating decently. We played this game and sat in this place for most of the remainder of the day – we only hit one other area to speak of which landed me one good one. At the end of the day some of the current had subsided and the shad were no longer being pushed – This is when Josh caught a few of his better fish on a deeper diving crankbait, which I didn’t have any with (such is the life of a back boater)
All in all a pretty good tourney – I didn’t loose any fish that would’ve made the weigh in team and whenever you can recover from adversity and have a good showing it certainly helps. I ended up placing 11th out of 20 some and Josh who weighed in a little more than a pound than me ended up in the top 5 – weights were tight and overall it sounded like most guys had a solid tourney.

River report

Made it down for a day on the water last Monday and fishing was ok – started out in some back water areas in the winona area – only to have come up with 2 baby ones by lunch – then time for a move – off to the lacrosse area – where I have a tourney in a couple weeks to start poking my nose in places. What I found most surprising was not the high water (which was to be expected) but was the clarity – even though the water was high I could see my lure 2-3 feed down and for the river that is amazing clarity this was not on the main channel of course this was in the back waters. I found a few fish that were willing to bit and they weren’t bad sized either. I think things are just a few warm days from being an onslaught of a slaughter.

ZVBM Schedule

Pools 7-8 – Pretty pumped about this one – Of course we may have some huge floods this spring it could make it tough but I feel like I have chance on the river especially these pools as many of our guys have only fished there when our club goes there – I feel like I learned quite a bit last spring on the river and have a decent clue of what to look for on the river in the spring. I am most likely going to try and target smallies because they grow big on the ol Miss and this time of year they are vulnerable and easy to get to bite if you can find them.

June 18 big marine – Kind of excited about this one – but pull out the spinning gear – my guess is everything will be post spawn and be relating to weed edges – I expect d.shots and jig worms to play key in this one but I will see if I can catchem turning the handle as well – probably will take 12-13 to win it with a mythical 15.

July 18 – Medicine – this one is an up and coming tourney lake for clubbers – it has been getting attention from many locals the last few years as being a lake with some slobs and the word has gotten out. I expect it to be pushing high teens for weights and probably off shore. (after last week’s club meeting there is talks of switching this tourney with Clearwater which wouldn’t hurt my feelings as I am not really looking forward to hitting up Clearwater in the fall – not that the fishing can’t be good but this lake will get plenty of duckin pressure and I know we will be driving home in the dark if we wait til fall to fish this one.

Aug 15 – Tonka – I would love to be able to fish this one as I think I could be a contender on Tonka after being shown a few things last year at state. This one will be one deep and could even be won crankin but I assure you a dock fish or two will be weighed in as well. A great time of year for Tonka

Fish hook – long – Really excited that I our club is going to these lakes as I have quite a bit of experience on them and like to fish them both. This is also over my birthday so I should do really good right?? I look forward to these events to say they least (UPDATE : Just found out that I have a wedding I will be in attendance on Saturday night – so the twodayer is not looking so good right now)

Clearwater – I have always wanted to fish this lake but now this will give me good reason to. I have seen the weights the last couple years and they are on the rise – I hope I can figure something out as it is a pretty big piece of water – we shall see – I have no preconceive thoughts or notions for this lake. I do know that if our club sticks with their decision to fish it in the fall that many of the reed points will be covered in duck hunters and that means some prime shorelines will be covered up until about 10. I am happy we are fishing it but I wish we would have done it on a year where gas is not suppose to be 5 dollars a gallon!!!

for all the results as the year goes on click here

KVD wins it

It is like Aaron Martens said - "he is on a whole different level than the rest of us... he seams to be a lot better than us... and if it weren't for him I would have 2 classic wins now."


look at that intensity
Job well done

Nice commercial, rap song thingy, and classic links

a few too OMG's for me but i got excited




also i will post some helful classic links as i find them - it seems like bassmaster site has become a bit a of a maze to find what you are looking for.

basscam-

Bass trakk

BassCast

Hooked up

Live real time leaderboard

Super tuning

I have been hearing some hype about super tuning so I decided to blog about it but really I am just going to send you to a link - I will say that if winter never existed neither would supertuning
Super tuning