Club Tournament #2

This past weekend was my second club tournament up on Pool 9 of the Mississippi River.  Trent Beier and I were able to hit the water on Saturday for some practice.  We spent about 11 hours on the pool looking at different types of cover and structure trying to figure out where the bass may be hiding during these flooded conditions.  To say the least, the Quantum Rods and Reels were getting a work out!
After a few hours we pretty much decided that the bass were located near the newly growing weeds.  Coontail, and eelgrass seemed to be the key for us to getting bites.  We had several good areas and felt pretty good about the event the following day.


A nice largemouth during practice that showed the bass were in the GRASS!

Sunday rolls around and as forecasted the wind came up and was pushing from the south and east.  This made several areas that we counted on very muddy, and in turn the bass were not in the feeding mode as well as the previous day.  We adjusted well, and headed towards our areas that were more protected with two solid keepers in the boat.
Our more protected areas were as good as the day before, even though it rained most of the day.  Saturday was gorgeous, sunny, light wind, what is the saying....if you don't like the weather in Iowa, just wait a minute!  We caught several other keepers that day fishing in and around the grass.  We had probably 10-12 keepers on the day and ended up weighing just under 11 pounds.  This was good enough for a 4th place finish.  Anytime you can fish against the Cedar Valley Bassmaster Club and notch a top 5, you know you are doing something right.  We won the first event of the year, and now we have another top 5.  We were pleased, considering the wind knocked out a few of our key areas.  Key baits for the weekend were swim jigs, chatterbaits,  spinnerbaits, and  Hot Rod Baits tubes.