West Lake Osceola Practice

I had the chance to go scout out, or "practice" on my next tournament location on Memorial Day.  Dave Jordan was my partner for the day, and as usual we had a good time.


Our biggest fish of the day came on an Optimum Furbit Frog



My upcoming tournament at West Lake is a big one for my partner Doug and I.  We need a top 3 finish, as we struggled at our last series event failing to be in the top half. 

Those of you that have fished West Lake know that it can be feast or famine.  We had a good day on the lake and I think I know where the fish are living...for now.  This time of year can tough because the fish are done spawning and they can be in one foot of water or the deepest realms of the lakes. 

We caught around 25 bass for the day, and had 5 keepers, which is a good day anywhere.  What I really like about the day was the quality of the fish we caught.  The biggest of the day weighed in at 3.75#, we also caught a 3.50# and one that was 2.50#.  The other two were right around two pounds. 
As for the secret bait...well there wasn't one.  Here is a list of what we caught all our bass on; swim jig, Dirty Craw Hot Rod Baits Tube, Black/Red Tube, jig, spinnerbait, crankbaits and an Optimum Furbit Frog.  Needless to say, the Quantum rods and reels were busy!
If Doug and I can adjust to the bite next weekend, I think we will have a nice weigh-in.
On this day, I cannot close before saying, THANK YOU TO ALL who have, are or will serve our country.  This country may some some problems, but we all can wake up each day knowing we will be safe and we can work to make our dreams come true.  We couldn't do that without our armed forces.

"Binge" Fishing

Every once in a while I find myself going fishing several days in a row.  I had that opportunity this past weekend.  I took Friday off to head up to Okoboji for a tournament I had on Saturday.  Two days on probably the best lake in Iowa, I was excited and a little apprehensive too.  I had never fished this body of water in the spring before, but was pretty sure my partner, Doug Chaloupek and I could catch a limit of 3 bass in the tournament.

Our practice day on Friday went well, we had three different areas on the lakes that we caught several bass in.  Two were close to each other while the other one was about a 15-minute boat ride away.  We had decided if we got some early bites in the two locations that were close, that is where we would spend the entire day.  Well, we spent the entire day there, as I put three keepers in the boat in less then 30 minutes.  So we had all day to upgrade our catch.  We did use all day to upgrade, catching about a dozen keepers that day.  We weighed in 3 keepers for about 8.50#, I figured that would put us in the middle of the pack...I was off, we ended up 15th out of 21 boats.  I have asked myself over and over this week...should we have gone to that "other spot" to try and catch a bigger bass?  I guess I will never know.  I do know that Doug and I fished a good tournament, and we stuck to our game plan.  We also picked up a lot of knowledge about that body of water in the spring months of the year.

That was the first two days, now for day three of fishing.  Before fishing however, I had a few things to do.  I was directing a tournament that day, the Hot Rod Baits Bass Series at Rock Creek Lake.  The tournament got started without a hitch, and then it was time for David Bowles and myself to go chase some crappies.  We grabbed some minnows and hit the lake in search of crappies.  16 boats were off to catch bass, and I was off to catch crappies...it was a little weird for me that was for sure.  It took a little while, but we found the crappies.  Once we found them, it was all about the catching!  We caught about 60-70 crappies in about 4 hours.  All were very shallow getting ready to spawn, we picked off the male crappies that hit our minnows one foot below our bobbers.  How relaxing was that...TOTALLY!  It reminded me to take advantage of the panfishing in the area and to go out fishing for them more often.  "Binge-Fishing" you should try it! 

Watching your bobber go down is sooooo fun, I need to do it more often.
This is a typical 9 inch crappie from Rock Creek Lake.