Kenny Thompson Memorial Tournament

This past Saturday I participated in the Cedar Valley Bassmaster Ken Thompson Memorial Tournament.  I joined this club as soon as I turned 18...which was a few years ago.  At that time many Independence bass anglers were in the club, including Kevin Christensen who I fish many tournaments with throughout the year.  Kenny was the president of the club when I joined and was the glue that kept everything together and events going all year long.  Ken actually founded the club in 1983 and has been a huge reason why this club is still going strong today.  The current members of the club did a fantastic job of creating a memorial tournament in Ken's honor.  Anyone that had fished in the Cedar Valley club had an invitation to this event, not only to chase down bass on the Mississippi River, but to see the guys in the club and remember all the good times that Kenny brought to those people around him.  He was just one of those guys that always had something funny, yet true to say.  A great man that brought bass fishing to full scale here in the Cedar Valley, he will never be forgotten by those he spoke and fished with.

Kevin Christensen and I joined up for this event in preparation for our bigger event next weekend on the Mississippi River, the more time on the big river the better.  We fished Friday in Pool 9 to look around and see what the water levels looked like.  We instantly liked what we saw, plenty of current and plenty of green weeds in the bottom half of the pool.  The fish seemed cooperative on this day, eating the IMA Skimmer, swim jigs, Hot Rod Baits tubes and Wig's Jigs.  We put together a plan throughout the day and felt pretty good about the work we did on this day.

My how a day can make a difference...especially on the Mississippi River!  Tournament day came and we found ourselves following our plan, but things were definitely very different on this day.  The first thing we noticed was the bass did not want anything to do with topwater and I had several short strikes on the swimjig...it was a totally different day!  It was time to slow down and put the QuantumPT Flipping rods and reels to work.  Wig's Jigs and Hot Rod Baits Tubes were the baits we stuck with the majority of the day.  We were in and around current all day, wood, weeds and rock all played into the limit of 5 bass that we weighed in.  It was one of those days that we knew we had to work hard all day long right up to the last few minutes to get every ounce of weight we could.  They totaled 14.20# which gave us a 2nd place finish out of 27 teams, we were happy to see our weight go above 13 pounds, which is a target weight for July and August events on the Big River.  We were beat this day by 0.03 pounds, but the winners of the event made that much easier to accept.  Randy Toale and Trent Beier, both Independence guys took the win this day.  I have known these guys since grade school and Trent and I teamed up to win the Anglers of the Year in the Cedar Valley Bass Club back in 2013.  Fishing against friends can cause some anxiety at times, but on this weekend it was great to see the top two places go to the "Indee Boys" as Kenny Thompson called us so many times.

Great job CEDAR VALLEY BASSMASTER club leaders, I hope this event continues for a long time!

Kevin and I with our limit of fish; the biggest being
3.17# and the rest all over 2.5#