Sept. 23^rd 2007                                      Mystery Tournament (Golden Hook Bassers)

                                                      COON   LAKE                

 All the guy’s met in the parking lot of the Forest Lake Wal-Mart at 5:00 am for the draw to see which lake we were going to fish. The choices were Forest Lake, Big Marine Lake, Rush Lake, North/South Center or Coon Lake, it turned out to be Coon Lake and everybody started grumbling that Chris Asbeck and myself were going to smoke um because Coon is our home lake of sorts. Everybody tore out of the parking lot and made way to the landing for our 6:00 am take-off, I was again fishing alone and also the last boat out while A.J. my son was fishing with Dave McCrone. 

  Chris and I determined where we each were starting and either one could fish the same area’s at any time, I got to the spot that I wanted to start on and started throwing a deep diving crankbait around knowing that this area held good numbers of nice fish and about a month ago I took 2^nd place in a Tuesday night tournament with 15 lb’s and only 4 fish so that tells you the quality here, about a half hour into the day I caught a nice 3 lb bass and that was it for a reaction bite, I noticed a bunch of bass boats putting in at the beach landing and figured there was another tourney and I later found out there was another club (Gopher Bassmasters) mystery tournament that ended up on Coon also, not good seeing that the lake is only 1,200 acres so I was ready for some tough fishing later in the day due to all the pressure that was going to be put on the fish. Back to my fishing I decided to work the area with a slower presentation and that was going to be my trusty ½ oz. All-Terrain grassmaster jig I was working the area hard and covering different depth’s trying to locate the fish when I finally got an aggressive thump at the end of my line and I reefed back and hooked into a nice fish that jumped once and then I swung it aboard for fish number two about 4lbs, I quickly threw my jig back out there hoping for a flurry as my jig settled another boat slid in pretty close to me and started fishing not real happy about this but must deal with it, turns out the guy was pretty cool and backed off a bit when he asked if I was fishing a tournament he was fun fishing with his son. While I’m talking with this guy and his kid I get thumped and hammer a fish and swing it in, a good 3-1/2 lb fish and as I make another cast out I notice another boat moving in on me from the other side so now I start moving at this boat to try and ward him off and then slip back to my main area, well I ended up turning this guy around and he went the other way so I slid back and worked the area so more and eventually caught another fish this one about 2 lbs. Chris idled by and asked how I was doing and I said not bad for 4 fish but struggling to get my fifth fish, he is having a slow start it’s about 5 hours in and he only has two fish but they are nice ones he said. I decided to finally make a move and try to fill my limit, I ran into my buddy Guy Knudson and asked how he was doing and he said he had 4 fish and gave me the I’m doing really good for 4 fish smirk so I proceeded on to my next spot which is a large grass flat which holds fish scattered through out and I caught a 1-1/4 lb’er. With my limit I moved to my next big fish spot  which is where Chris started so I wasn’t sure what to expect, I started here with a deep diving (bluegill) crankbait dredging it along the bottom with intermittent pauses and violent jerks of the St.Croix legend big cranker rod when on the second cast after ripping the lure off the bottom my rod loads up with a huge fish and starts for the surface so I jam my rod far into the water to try and keep her from jumping but she’s to strong and try’s to leap but can’t because she is to big she ended up wallowing three times before I got her into the net, she has to go close to 6 lbs, now that is quite an upgrade almost 5 pounds now I make another cast or two and as I’m ripping the lure it stops and my rod loads again with a fish just as big as last one and then just comes unbuttoned half way to the boat, I reeled in and launched another cast and in all the excitement I must have put too much umph into it and got a huge backlash I mean professional overrun and I quickly grabbed another rod and put the same bait on made a good cast this time and sure enough another fish hits and I land it, this one goes 3 – 3-1/2 lbs and after 45 minute of nothing else and about a half hour to go I decided to go close to the public landing and fish there to avoid any problems. I got to the other side and was to jacked up to even fish I ran into Guy again and told him I have about 20 pounds and to keep it quiet.

  Back at the landing the guy’s are weighing their fish in and there are some respectful bags and some big 4 – 5 pounders weighed in and then Chris weighs his fish in and hits 19.00 lbs even, “wow” now I am hoping I have more than that which is tough to do but here we go my fish on the scale and it reads 18.79 lbs unbelievable I lost by less then 2 oz’s and now I weigh my big bass and she weighs 6.07 lbs and I win the big bass pot and big fish of the year so that is pretty cool, congrats to my buddy Chris on his win.

  1^st place      Chris Asbeck       5 fish          19.00 lbs

  2^nd place     Nick Madison      5 fish          18.79 lbs

  3^rd place     Dave McCrone     5 fish          15.28 lbs                              

   4^th place     Pat Corrigan        5 fish           14.13 lbs

   5^th place    Wayne Pacyga     5 fish           13.50 lbs

         Nick Madison         Big Bass       6.07 lbs