A new lake for me

My bass club here in Marshalltown had an event this past weekend at Belva Deer Lake near Sigourney, Iowa.  I planned on fishing this event since the start of the year, for one reason, to check out a new lake.  I had never seen the lake before, only read comments and posts on the Internet about it.  It appeared to be a good bass lake, and I couldn't help myself, I "had" to enter.
I decided to practice for the event on Friday, the day before competition, which can be tricky, because you don't want to catch too many bass the day before the tournament.

A foggy tournament morning on Belva Deer Lake

I hit the lake with partner for the weekend, Eric.  We haven't fished together for 3 or 4 years, so it was nice to share my boat with him again.  We were on the lake about 5am Friday and I immediately went into my game plan for the day.  At the end of the day, some of my assumptions were correct, while others were simply all wrong.  I guess that is what practice is for!  We were off the lake about 1:30pm and headed back to the motel for a break and to get our rod and reels ready for the tournament.

Practice day on Friday turned out to be the
key to a top three finish.

Tournament day, up and on the lake at 5am once again.  My plan for the day was to use topwater baits early in the morning in some shallow areas that we found holding fish on Friday.  This worked out very well.  We caught about 25 bass using Pop-r baits.  I had a limit of 3 bass in less than an hour and my partner had a nice keeper too.  We then moved to some timber, which this lake is full of!  We had certain sections picked out to fish, but nothing came in the boat long enough to help us.  Onto the the next step, Carolina-rigging sunken islands.  This is a technique that can be deadly in the summer time.  Bass move up and down the water column looking for food, and this rig can cover a lot of water and offer a bait very slowly to a bass.  I was able to add some heavier fish to the my livewell with this technique, and my partner caught two keepers too.  He informed me that this was his first ever limit in a tournament, so hats off to him for that!  We spent the majority of the day Carolina-Rigging, however at the end of the day I made a move, which turned out to move me right to the top of the standings.  I was sitting with a little over 7 pounds with my three keepers.  My last move was to flip Hot Rod Baits tubes into trees standing in 6-11 feet of water.  This was by far our best depth of water on Friday.  It paid off, I caught my second biggest bass of the day with only 20 minutes remaining in the tournament.  I was able to upgrade to 7.70#, good enough for a 2nd place finish. 
Working hard on practice day led us to a great game plan on Saturday.  My plan worked out, and most importantly I learned a new lake to fish...like I needed any more lakes to occupy my time.

Hot June day on Pine Lakes

This past weekend I spent about 4 hours on the Pine Lakes with good friend Zach Maxfield.  I've known Zach since he was 9 years old.  I taught him 4th grade, and we have kept in touch ever since.  He is now in his twenties and has become a force to recon with on the local bass tournament trails.  I would like to say that I have been a mentor to him, teaching him as much as I can on the water and we have had some great times fishing and just talking about fishing.

It is always fun to fish with Zach, as he tends to fish much like me, and his equipment mirrors mine too!  Quantum rods and reels all the way!  We headed north to Pine Lakes near Eldora around 2:30pm.  We started on Upper Pine Lake and had some success, mostly on crankbaits.  We caught about 20 bass, but all of them were around the 12-inch mark.  We decided after about 2.5 hours to head down to Lower Pine Lake.  We packed up quick, loaded the boat on the trailer and had it floating on Lower Pine in about 10 minutes.
Back to work, trying to figure out what the bass wanted.  Right away Zach had his shallow crankbait working, hooking up on several small fish.  We caught about 15 total bass on this lake in about 2 hours.  We did switch things up a bit, and caught 2 nice solid keepers.  A 16 and 17-inch bass feel to a jig presentation around rock and wood.  I was using a Green/Pumpkin Jig with a Melon/Red Hot Rod Baits Jig Chunk attached.  This combo looks great in the water, you just have to see it!

A great quick day on the water with a good friend catching bass...sometimes things just work out!

Double up weekend

This past weekend was a greatly anticipated one, but a busy one for sure.  Two things were on the agenda, Saturday fish an "I-BASS" tournament with partner Doug Chaloupek, second, direct a Hot Rod Baits tournament at Brushy Creek on Sunday. 
Saturday morning started early...2:30AM as I made my way to Doug's house so we could get to West Lake for the 5AM blast-off of our tournament.  Doug and I did not do well in our last I-Bass event, so we needed a good one.  I practiced on the lake last weekend, which is my last BLOG entry.  It went well and thus the anticipation of the tournament was immense!  We finished the day in 2nd place and got 2nd big bass.  A cool $500 came our way for those accomplishments, thanks most in part to the 4.85# bass that Doug caught that day!  More importantly we made up some ground in the "Team of the Year" race, which is our overall goal.  Our plan was a good one, and we made some key on-lake decisions that led to our limit of 3 bass that weighed 11.50 pounds.

Myself and I-Bass partner Doug Chaloupek with our
limit of three bass that weighed 11.50#.

After collecting our money we were off on the road for another 90minute trip straight north to Brushy Creek.  I was not fishing this event, just directing the event.  I had 17 teams signed up for the 5:30am blast-off on Sunday.  Things went without a hitch, and the tournament was a big success.  My good friend Dave Jordan and his partner Don Peart won the Hot Rod Baits tournament with over 15 pounds and my good buddies Zach and Kelly Maxfield came in 2nd with over 15 pounds too.  It was great to see these guys have a great day and collect some money of their own.  After a quick cleanup of tournament materials, it was one more 90 minute trip home.  A busy weekend, but looking back...WELL worth it!

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.