2009 State Tournament
Well this is the big week of the Minnesota Bass Federation Nation state tournament, this year it is being held at beautiful Lake Pokegama in Grand Rapids,MN. Pokegama has got to be one of my personal favorites because this lake offers everything an angler could want in deep clear water,shallow stained water main lake or river fishing,weeds,rocks I think you get the point and with all this diverse structure the fish grow big and not only the largemouth but big smallmouth to.
I got to the lake really early on Sat. morning and set out to catch fish today and shake off fish on the other practice days while dialing in a game plan. I proceeded to my first spot which was an underwater point with weeds up on top, I pulled out a Zara Spook jr. and made a cast up on top of the bar and while working the spook back a fish blasts it right at the side of the boat in 19ft of water, it's a decent two pounder on the first cast. I proceeded to work the area concintrating on 15 to 20ft of water, I caught fish after fish I was trying to pull the spook away from the blow-ups but couldn't I think I hooked everyone and released about 13 lbs for my 5 best. I made a move and caught fish at every spot and on every lure, it seemed like I could do know wrong and at the end of a very good day I had approximently 16-17lb's. Sunday I took or alternate to the lake he was going to fish for the Alternates tournament to try and make the State tourny. We fished or butts off and only had one good fish to show for our hard work. the rest of my week was spent primarlily checking promising looking spots with my underwater camera. It is now Wed. evening and time for the pairings meeting and raffle. I bought ten raffle tickets in hopes of winning something nice and I did they called one of my tickets and "WOW" I won a falcon tackle box loaded with 16 Rapala crankbaits so that add's up to approximently $180.00. as they rattled of prize after prize they announced the next one was a 7' heavy action G-Loomis IMX rod and everybody there was mumbeling in excitement. I think I pissed a lot of people off because they called another ticket of mine, I made out like a bandit the rod retails for $285.00. Now that the raffle is over it is time for the pairings, I got paired with Rich Lindgren for day 1 and since my boat was running like crap we decided to use Rich's boat. Rich picked me up from my motel and then headed to the boat landing, man was it foggy out, mornings like this sure make you appreciate gps mapping, this allowed us to actually find the take off head quarters. Well it took over a three hour fog delay which left us a very short day to fish. I have known Rich for a couple of years now and was looking forward to actually fishing with him, he has done very well in past State Championships and also other local trails. Man he is a freak, he had a game plan in is head and pretty much stuck to it we ran to certain stretchs and fished fast, we were headed to the river to fish an area of his then he realized we didn't have time because of the fog delay so we hit a mainlake break nearby where we were and ended up on some really nice smallmouth bass. Rich caught three big ones and I caught a donkey of a smallie it made my largemouth look tiny in the livewell,we decided to let this spot rest and ran to a spot I had some decent largemouth going in practice, we fished the weedline around but I could not dial the exact spot in without my waypoints and could not find it we caught a couple of small fish but left and ran back to the ledge and rich caught another fish but it did not help his bag. It was time to go weigh in and I was bummed out that I only had two fish after the practice I had, I weighed in 6.06 and they swept my big smallie away before I had a chance to weigh it so that pissed me off too. Rich had a great bag of fish his five best went over 15 lb's and he was sitting in 3rd place after day one. Day two I was paired with Rick Hemeseth from upper Iowa Bassmasters and we took his boat, first time I was in a Charger bassboat and I liked the look and it rode pretty nice also the only thing I didn't like was the compartment layout but that could be just me being comfortable with my Ranger layout. Rick and I fished my Spook spot to start and I caught a largemouth right away, it took the whole spook down it's throat and it was bleeding bad so I was pretty sure it would die and I would be stuck with it. Well a short time later Rick hooked a fish on a soft jerkbait and I netted a big smallmouth for him and he sporadically picked up three more off of this spot as we bounced back and forth from spots he weighed in 4 fish for over 11 pounds (nice job) and weighed 3 fish one dead for alittle under 5 pounds. I am glad Rick caught the fish off my spot but he could have let me have some Ha,ha just kidding. Both guys I fished with were great, I had a very disappointing tournament.
I am sure you meant Freak in the best possible way.... LOL!
I was a different kind of freak the way I fish on the 2nd day.
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