Lagrange County Bassmasters Open-Wawasee 4/20

[rufus]

My fishing buddy and sponsor teammate from Saline, MI (Ann Arbor area), Jeff (jcox7), called me about coming down on Satruday morning to visit our sponsor, Lurecraft, along with our other teammates Ryan and Nick. He also said there was an open on Wawasee on Sunday and if I wasn't doing anything we should fish it and he could stay at my place Saturday night. I don't usually fish T's on Sunday and prefer to go to church on Sunday morning, but my wife said to go and have fun. We decided to prefish after going to Lurecraft. Jeff had never seen the lake and is used to fishing lakes like St Clair. He was impressed with the clear water, but was amazed at how tough the fish were to catch out of how many we saw. We did find a couple areas that were holding fish, but only had two keepers and a ton of shorts. We did not put any pressure on the bigger fish we had found and were hopeful we could catch them in the morning.We were late getting home and got in bed around 11pm and were back up at 4am for the 50 minute drive back to the 'see. We registered in at boat 42 and they ended up with I believe 58 boats, so a pretty good turnout. It was a pretty nice morning with a light SW breeze and a little drizzle, but just right for catching fish. We started on a main lake area and within the first 45 minutes we were catching 13 1/2 after 13 1/2. We had seen the fish the day before and both of us knew that there were as many keepers as there were shorts in this area, but for some reason I could not put one in the boat. A boat about 100 yards away was watching us catch fish and could stand it no longer and pulled in right along side us a long cast away. They instantly caught a fish close to 3 pounds. A few minutes later they caught a 15 incher. Jeff couldn't believe it and I told him to be patient the right bites would come. I had stayed off these fish all morning and never went to look and see what was going on. I pulled in closer to the hole and saw that the area that had all the big fish the day before was loaded with mostly smaller fish and just a few keepers. I told Jeff that those bigger fish had to be close by somewhere and trolled the edge slowly looking for them. The other boat must have felt guilty or something because they continued down the flat. We had maybe moved a cast down the edge when I spotted the school of bigger fish. I slowly backed off and circled around behind them so they could not see us. We then made a few casts to them and hooked up on our first keeper a little chunky 14 1/2. A few casts later I watch a fish close to 4 eat my crawdaddy and I snapped him off on the hookset. We were using 6 pound flourocarbon and Jonesy can tell you I set the hook way too hard sometimes . I retied and regrouped. We found that after catching a fish or two out of the school they would move. We found the best way to fish was to slowly move about the area and make long casts to where we knew there were weed stalks. The fish were all positioning on the edge of a hole where last years cabbage stalks were still sticking up off the bottom about three feet. We caught our next fish that went 3.78 in the next pod we found. We put two more 15 inchers in the well before 10am. The clouds lifted and the sun popped out at 10 and the wind completely died. I told Jeff this is not good and it wasn't. The sun coming out pulled the fish up on the flat and revealed how many fish were in that hole. It was almost unbelievable. There were schools of keepers and shorts and 3-4 pounders everywhere. We were still able to catch a bunch of the 13 inchers, but the big ones became very lethargic and were only enjoying the sun. We spent almost 5 hours in this area when we decided to hit a few channels. The big fish were still in the channels that we found, but had moved a little. The little ones were very eager to bite, but the big fish were in a mood. I told Jeff I had a feeling that a few smallies would be moving up and in the last 30 minutes I ran to where I have caught them early before. The water temp was 55-56. Still a little chilly for the spawn to be going, but I instantly found a fresh smallie bed. The fish was nowhere to be seen on the first pass, but I turned around and we saw him race off the bed. He appeared to have just moved up and a trick I learned on how to catch them like that failed to produce him in 5 minutes. I told Jeff that if we had more time I think we could have caught him, but we should move on. He was probably a 2 1/2+. I trolled slowly along when I spotted another dark spot at a distance. The first cast put a 14 1/2 inch smallie in the boat and finally finished our limit. In the next few casts I missed a hard charging 15 inch smallie that was determined to get my bait. After three attempts he went racing off and basically told me that "You stink  yeesh, I gave you three tries". With about 25 minutes to get back to the Syaracuse ramp we decided to not push our luck. We made it back to the ramp with 5 minutes to spare. Very few teams were left and hardly anyone was weighing in. We thought we may have a shot at a check. Our five weighed 9.59, a little less than I guessed, but in the area. Only 15 teams weighed fish and I believe there were 7 limits. We found out they were only paying 5 places and would you know it 5th place was 9.63. 1st place was a little over 14 pounds, 2nd and 3rd had a little over 12 pounds, and 4th had 11.11 pounds. My excited hard hookset had cost us some money, oh well that is fishing. Upon going back to the boat we found that Jeff was now missing his two rods that were on my front deck. That's right all those fisherman around and someone stole his two rods off the front of my boat. Luckily he did have his stuff insured, but I still can't believe that it happened. It was very disapointing to have worked so hard to get those five and not cash a check, but I don't think I will take up golf yet! God Bless everyone !

[SethV]

Nice job Rufus!  Too bad about that 4 lb fish.  I used to have that problem when jig fishing.  I went to a shorter, softer rod and it solved the problem.  I think we often loose fish because we pull too hard on them.

Seth

[canvsbk]

Thanks for the story. We couldn't find 'em so decided not to fish it.
Congrats to our buddy Steve...he finally beat that neighbor of yours!
And those Nelson guys...always right there.
Hope to see you at MBT there next weekend.

[LGMOUTH]

Great story rufus, Its good to know that we werent the only ones struggling after 10 when the sun came out and the wind died. Luckily we had a good morning. We started in Wawasee on a flat, We saw the winners catch their 4.77 and another good fish, unfortunatly we started about 75 yards to far down the flat. After catching two 16 inchers and a 50 short fish and watching the winners put a couple more good fish in the boat we decided to move about 100 yards to another spot that we new the fish were on. Luckily as it turned out there was another boat on that spot so we went another 50 yards to the next spot. This spot was just loaded with fish. This was just a staging point going into a spawning flat and the fish were moving up fast. My partner Greg and I were catching keepers on every cast. After the fifth keeper I didnt get to fish for the next ten minutes due to Greg catching one on every cast and me on the bottom of the boat with the scale and balance beam and tossing the small ones. Then the best part of the day. Greg sets the hook and instantly sad this is a good one. After a couple of minutes fighting the fish we got it in the net. It wound up being 4.8lbs and big bass of the tournament. I finally got back to fishing and caught a couple more fish before they stopped biting. After all was said and done we had over 12lbs and wound up in 2nd place. After 10 oclock it got real tough as rufus said, you sure could see alot of big fish swimming around on the flats to bad I dont know how to catch those fish. All in all it was a pretty good day.