Sunday July 29^th,

I was suppose to fish this club tourney alone but Jason Titus’s boat was acting up so he fished with me, we took off as boat 3 and I hammered it to get to the spot I wanted to fish and figured others knew about this spot since it was a large underwater point just to the north of the landing we’ll I had two of my good buddies racing to the same area Guy was going to fish it and John was just passing threw apparently, Guy being the gentleman he his moved onto plan b since we got there first.

 We started up shallow in the reeds since it was actually were Guy was going and we I was going to start out deep anyway Jason caught a two pounder and then I caught a similar sized fish and that was it in the reeds so we moved out towards the deeper break and I started throwing a 10ft crankbait in bluegill color and caught another 2lb fish and then that started a flurry  and I caught my limit quickly and Jason had three, I worked all the way around the point and Jason picked up one more, he had about 8 lb’s with 4 and I had about 9 lb’s with 5 I decided to slide up on top of said point to crossover and make the same pass so Jason could get his limit as I started to come off the top I threw to the point of reeds that lead to deeper water with a wacky rigged Voodoo Stick a giant smallmouth raced up on top from deeper water and inhaled it I slammed it home and freaked out it made three hard runs at the boat and came up to jump but just wallowed then Jason finally got her into the net after she went underneath, and then in and jumped out then back in she was a beautiful smallie thought she was easily 5+ lb’s, with that we fished the break there hard for a long time trying to catch more to know avail.

 We then made a run to the south end of the lake which I didn’t even check out prefishing, Jason hooked up with another 2lb’er and finished his limit I then moved to another long point and started throwing my All-Terrain jig ½ oz. green pumpkin with a black Voodoo chunk and Jason was throwing a jig also and we went to town all along this point and maybe upgraded a little bit, the bite was weird we would get one here then there then here then there shallow, deep and in between no rhyme or reason well our time is up and we head back to put the boat on the trailer and try to get feel for how everybody did, by the way it feels like 100 degrees out here. Anyway asked A.J. how he did and he told me he caught 5 little dinks and he didn’t look all that happy well the weigh in is over and Dave McCrone won with 12.72 lbs awesome job, By the way Dave fishes a lot of national tournaments and has done pretty well. A.J. was pulling my chain about not doing well he had 11.13 lbs for 3^rd place and big bass with a 4.87 lb largemouth nice job fishing and fooling me, I came in 5^th place with 11.01 lbs and my smallie weighed 4.70 lbs Jason weighed 9.57 lbs for 8^th there were 5 of us real tight with low 11 lbs.

July 22^nd, Whitefish Chain

I drew Wayne Lindgren as a non-boater and we were to take off in the 3^rd flight out of 4, it was suppose to storm heavily today so I decided to start shallow and hope to heck I could pick up a real fast limit in case the weather really got bad we went in to Big Trout Lake and I started with a buzzbait and caught a keeper fairly quick and then another but no real size at all but they were biting I switched to a rattle trap so I could cover more water to fill out my limit and I did with about 7 lbs in the well and the rain started, I changed to a swim jig that I built from scratch something I do in the winter to stay busy, anyway it was in a bluegill pattern and I may have upgraded a bit but all million of the fish were pretty much identical, Wayne has his limit, non-boater limit is 3 fish and he is sitting pretty good with about 7-1/2 lbs caught on a parrot colored Rapala DT 6.

   We decided to move to a spot that Wayne has fished before on Whitefish it fit perfectly into my comfort zone it was a big deep main lake hump with some deep grass on top it had a very irregular weed line, I started throwing a deep diving crankbait and hooked up with a nice 2-1/2 lb largie, that let me upgrade about a pound and a half but that was it on the crankbait, by the way it is still raining pretty hard I really liked the look of this spot so I started to throw a I/2 oz. green pumpkin All Terrain grassmaster jig and I slam the jig into a fish thinking it is a really nice one but this bass just thought he was bigger than the 2 lb’s that he was I think he helped me upgrade about another pound so now I’m sitting around 9-1/2 lbs with half the day to upgrade feeling pretty good we then went and fished a windblown mainlake island and boy was the wind blowing now and still raining, I was throwing traps and lipped cranks around while Wayne threw a jig, he picked up a nice fish after awhile which bumped him up to about 8 lbs so he is doing great for 3 fish I caught a number of fish along the weedline edge but nothing helped me.      

 Off to the next spot which was another windblown mainlake weedline that Wayne had found earlier in the week that had some decent fish on it but he said the conditions were totally different than today I decided to throw my ALL TERRAIN jig hoping to catch some nicer fish with only a couple of hours left, Wayne and I are having a good time talking and joking around in the crappy weather, he say’s the reason he fishes the series is so his son Rich has a link to every tournament which is nice, by the way Rich is fairly young, mid-twenties or so and has been kicking ass in the weekend series and the federation  he has a bright long future in bass fishing.  wish I could have started earlier in my life but the opportunity wasn’t there hope my 16yr old cherishes his opportunity to start early, any way Wayne could easily fish as a boater and do well himself if he wanted. Wayne now is fishing this little fu fu rig it is a little tiny mojo weight about 18” above a small hook with a little senko type worm rigged wacky style(senko hooked thru the middle) and he starts hammering the fish but none help him yet, I hate fishing small finesse type lures but I switched to a bigger 5” Voodoo stick(senko) and rig that wacky and catch a fish that is no help, while I am releasing my fish Wayne set the hook on a big fish that took his gay little rig and put up a nice long fight and I scooped it into the net about a 4 lb’er and now he is really in good position to get a nice check, we have about ¾ of an hour left to fish so we moved to a spot close to the weigh in site and just got on a weedline and I was not going to do anything but throw my jig looking for a big fish well with about 10 min’s left I got a nice bite and swung hard and hooked up to a pig, while fighting it she just comes unbuttoned from the hook and she is gone, so I let out a nice loud F inhiemer and call it quits and go in to weigh our fish.

 The rain has finally quit and the sun has come out so it was nice for standing in line at the bump tanks waiting to weigh in, well it is are turn and I weigh in with 9.26 lb’s  and ended up in 35^th again two 35’s in a row, Wayne Lindgren weighed in with 9.29 lb’s with a 3 fish limit and wins the non-boater side and gets a check for $1,302.00.  Non-boaters are suppose to give some money ($20.00) for gas, well Wayne gave me $50.00 for guiding him to the win and I was very thankful.  A.J. caught his limit of three fish and weighed in with 3.31 lb’s for 55^th place his pro Bob Pauer weighed in 5 fish for 7.65 lb’s for 52^nd place and my buddy Brian Tonn came in with 10.69 lb’s  for 17^th place (way to go Brian) I owe you a buck and Wayne’s son Rich had 10.79 for 15^th, congrat’s to the winner Dean Capra who weighed in a nice limit of 17.86 lbs to beat out 2^nd place by more than 3 pounds.

Pre fish report

 Out of town club tournaments (July 27, 28, 29)

Our tourney’s this weekend are on Big Thunder Lake by Remer, MN and on Sun. Lake Roosevelt near Outing, MN I have never been to either one of these lakes or even heard of them until this year so this could be interesting. My son A.J.(Anthony James) left very early on Fri. morning so we could get up to the lakes by sunrise and scout them out, we got to Lake Roosevelt in Outing, MN and prepared to launch the boat seeing as we were the only ones there I decided to let A.J. back me and the boat into the lake, he did fine until he pulled the truck out and almost jumped the dock with the trailer then he went on to park the truck just fine and that is when we noticed a naked female manikin thrown up into a tree we laughed are asses off and took pictures with are phones. We set out to fish the north end of the lake because it had a little more structure then the southern end we stopped at our first spot which was a long submerged point with good depth around it and A.J. hooks up with a beautiful 3 ½ lb smallmouth bass so we fish the whole structure to learn it better and I must have had the right lure and color on because I smoked two largemouth on back to back cast’s both about 1-11/4 lbs nothing special but I knew there were plenty of fish there so we left and ran down to the far north end and everything looked the same, fast breaking shoreline to about 20 ft and caught plenty of fish up to 1-3/4 lbs but it was one here and one there caught a couple on crank baits but most on a 3/8 oz. All-Terrain finesse jig (brown/black/orange) with a Voodoo chunk(brown) as a trailer, A.J. was catching fish on a wacky rigged Voodoo stick, while working around the north end we came to a shallow creek and I trimmed the Mercury up and proceeded thru the narrow channel and into an attached lake I was instructing my son he had to promise to not tell anyone about this spot if we caught fish and as we came into the lake three other guys from the club were already in there so my secret was not so secret and the fishing was not that good either caught some on Voodoo Zombie toads one pretty good one 3 lbs or so and another good blow up but we spent a lot of time in there and not that many fish so we decide to leave and go to Big Thunder and check that lake out.

 On the way to the next lake we had a big Timber wolf cross the road right in front of us, never seen one in the wild, way cool.  A.J. and I arrive at the landing to Big Thunder lake about 1:00 pm and star on a mid lake rock hump with a point on it and A.J. catches a small bass on his first cast with a rattle trap and proceeds to catch just about every specie’s in the lake on successive casts (crappie, sunfish, perch, walleye ,and northern) during all that I caught a couple of 1-1/2 lb bass running a crank bait out deep, man that was so cool watching my son(16yr old) get into a frenzy like that, you could tell he was having a blast. We hit a few other spots and caught a few fish the weather was brutally hot and no wind and not a cloud in the sky so fishing was slow as expected before we left to go check into the motel and get everything ready I found a deep mid-lake hump with some grass on top so I wanted to try fishing a drop-shot and see if I could pick up some fish this way if tomorrows conditions were going to be the same I worked that hump for about an hour with one bite and missed it so I was pretty disappointed, with that we left for the motel.

 Sat. July 28^th Big Thunder Lake                                                                       I am 3^rd boat out this morning and I am fishing with Ron Oswald and we are pulling away from the dock and as he is putting on his inflatable life jacket it decides to go off, I could not stop laughing at/with him so luckily his son Steve had a spare with for him. We take off and head right for the under water hump with the point on it and I start throwing a Heddon zara spook jr. and walk the dog with it  looks so yummy coming a cross this hump and Ron is throwing a buzzbait all this to know avail so I switch to a rattle trap and catch a small keeper and then another small keeper we worked out to the tip of the point and I caught a 2lb bass we worked the tip pretty hard and did not catch any more so while working the other side Ron hooks into a decent smallmouth bass about 2-1/4lb’s and we can not pick up any more, Ron used to fish this lake along time ago and had some areas we could try so off we went to fish a weedline and after a short while I catch a largemouth another small 1lber than I saw a big smallmouth follow my Texas rigged tube

Back to the boat so I worked the area hard. It’s hot and no breeze and sunny I look up into the shallows and see a nice smallmouth just cruising the bank so for shits and giggles I throw my tube up there and the fish charges my lure and sucks it in I am amazed and almost forgot to set the hook about a 3lber and I continue to randomly pick up some smaller smallmouth’s, by know the bite has pretty much went away for us so we went to this reed point at the other end of the lake, I figured I could catch a fish or two on a deep diving crankbait and when we get there two of my buddies are sitting in there boats talking and having lunch so we say hi and go out to the deepest part of the point and I start cranking (man is it hot) I figured the other two were having a tough day and maybe my day was not so bad. The fish are not biting for us and it is time to start back to the ramp and fish there for a little bit hoping for some last minute help and of course that doe not work so we go in and load the boat I figured I had about 9 – 9-1/2lbs nothing too impressive but we’ll see. Well most of the people have weighed in and there are a couple of nice bags in the 12 pound range and a lot in the 9 – 11 lb range, I ended up with about 9lbs but my two biggest were both smallmouth and they both died so I got penalized for them and dropped to 12^th place out of 17 and A.J. had a small limit of largemouth and took 13^th, now my buddy that was having lunch and not fishing I found out he came in about an hour early and hid under some over hanging tree’s to get out of the beating sun well he just weighed in a 19.10 sack of largemouth’s he caught right away in the morning and crushed us all what a great win for him congrats’s to Guy Knudson.