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.

My biggest fish EVER

This past Saturday I was fishing at Brushy Creek Lake during a bass tournament.  The morning started very slow, until I got a small tap on my bass jig and trailer.  I set the hook and immediately tell my partner "this is a big fish!".  I gave my reel a couple turns to bring the fish away from the trees and it took off towards deeper water.  At that point I said, "this is no bass".  I was disappointed, but now my curiosity took over, was it a big walleye?  A big muskie?

It took me several tries to gill-grab him,
but mission accomplished!

I kept fighting the fish, and soon it showed itself, a BIG MUSKIE!  I quickly said, "get a camera" to my partner Doug.  I didn't know if we would see it again or not, so wanted a picture just in case.  I loosened the drag a bit on my QuantumPT Accurist reel and fought the fish for approximately 5 minutes.  Up and down, up and down it came.  It took about 4 or 5 tries, but finally I was able to get a hold of the giant fish and bring it on board. 

We clicked a few pictures for the memory, and to make some guesses as to how long it was.  It would have measured about 40-45 inches.  I soon got ahold of my friend Thomas Allen, who is a muskie fanatic, and asked how much a fish like that would weigh, he said anywhere in the range for 20-24 pounds.
A fish I will never forget.

Equipment used:

Rod- Quantum "Biffle Stick" 7-foot, 6-inches in length

Reel- Quantum Accurist PT

Line- 15 pound test Berkely Big Game

First tournament of 2012

I teamed up with fellow angler Doug Chaloupek yesterday to take on the bass at Brushy Creek.  I had a game plan form the weekend before, but you never know how that is going to play out a week later. 
We followed the game plan and had two nice keepers.  In the particular tournament we were fishing a team can weigh in three keepers, so we had to find one more to give ourselves a chance.  We made one last move in the final hour and it paid off for us.  We caught our last keeper on a shallow hump that completed our limit. 
To say the least, fishing was very hard today, probably the toughest day on this lake ever for me.  We ended up tied for 5th place out of 15 teams.  A good start towards our goal of being towards the top of the leader board at the end of the year.  There are 4 more tournaments left on this schedule, and if we can stay in the top five, we will be right in the mix of things at the end of the year.  I also want to thank Doug for catching a nice walleye...which will be my dinner tonight!

Anticipation

This Saturday marks my first bass tournament of the year, and to say I am ready is an understatement.  I "practiced" at Brushy Creek last weekend with friend, Ken Lunsford.  I have know Ken for years, and knew he was a good angler, but we have never went fishing together.  We have swapped dozens of stories over email and in conversations, and it felt like I knew exactly what kind of angler he was. 

Last weekend proved that to be just right about Ken, he is a good angler and a fun person to fish with.  He accompanied me to Brushy Creek in search of some clues as to where the bass were in the lake and just how far along they were on the spring bass schedule.  Well, it didn't take us both very long to figure out that Brushy Creek had a curve ball planned for us.  CLEAR, and that is an understatement.  We could the floor of the lake in 12 feet of water at times.  Neither of us planned on that or event figured it would be that clear.  We were also surprised at the few number of bass we caught.  I think the final number was around 7 or 8 bass.  Four of them being chunky keepers and topping out at 3.5 pounds.  The quality of fish were very nice to see, however the numbers shocked us. 

Ken helped me develop a plan for this weekend's tournament, will that plan work out?  There is only one way to find out...GO FISHING!


Somewhere on this map lives the winning bass for Saturday's tournament. 
I hope to find those fish and bring them to the weigh-in.