Midwest Sportsman Kent Lake Tournament 6-16

[McCarter]

Jeff and I fished another MS tournament on Kent lake this past Saturday.  Since neither of us could pre fish, once again, we decided to stick to our game plan from last weekend and target shallow post spawn fish in the thicket.  So while we waited for the sun to get up high enough, we thought we might take advantage of an early morning topwater bite.

We started in the NW corner of the lake fishing shoreline structure with pop rs and buzzbaits.  It didnt take long to put our first keeper in the boat.  But there would be no more bites on this stretch.  We kept at it until we found ourselves in the back corner of a large bay.  There were a ton of floating weeds packed back here from the Weed O Matic machine that had been out a few days prior.  Since the weed sucking machine pretty much cleaned out the entire bay of vegetation, we thought it might have pushed the fish back into this corner where the only weeds remained.  We were right.  A couple casts with a pop r and a horny toad and we had a small limit before 8 am.  We also each missed a couple good fish.  We thought this would be an excellent back up area to our grassy flat.

Now that we have a limit, we were excited to hit our shallow pitching water to increase our sack.  One problem, we got there and there were literally no fish in any of the holes.  We toughed it out for about 40 minutes with neither of us getting any bites.  We quickly abandonded this area and went searching.  I wanted to check out a deep rock ledge so we headed that direction.  We got there and started dragging bottom with jigs, c rigs, and shakey heads but never got a bite.  So back to our starting spot to see if we can finally land a big fish.

Once we got near our starting spot, we tried the pitching game again.  this time we started getting fish.  Jeff was hitting them good on a jig and i was getting the occasional bite on a shakey head.  But there was no good size to them.  I think i culled up a few ounces with the shakey once or twice.  After that died down, we trolled back to our morning spot and got busy with the frogs and pop rs.  A couple small blow ups and a few small fish later and i was done.  We had about 2 hours left and i pretty much just quit.  My frustration for sucking gets the best of me a lot.  But there is an upside.  When i get like this, i remain a whining pansy for about 30 minutes, then i get focused.  I knew Jeff wanted to throw me out of the boat but if he could just hang on for a couple more minutes, i knew the determination would kick in and i would be back in the game.  Sure enough, just as Jeff was going to clock me upside the head with his 200 lb tackle bag, i got back into the game.  I spotted a school of gar pike and tossed my pop there way.  One spotted it and started for my lure and i worked it frantically across the surface.  He hit and missed, and came back at it, but again missed.  I slowed it up just for a tick and he nailed it.  Not the prettiest fish in the world but it put up a decent fight and that got me going. 

Now that I am interested in fishing again, i started whipping my pop r at every patch of floating weeds i could reach.  And i started catching fish like crazy.  Here it is almost 2 oclock, the sky is clear and the sun is high and bright, and the topwater bite is on fire.  Jeff quickly switch to a pop r as well and we were catching them faster than we could cull them.  I think we culled 8 - 10 times in the last hour and fifteen minutes.  But again, we both missed big fish.  Jeff broke one off on braid and i missed a giant largie that came almost all the way out of the water for my lure but seemed to miss it completly.  I did manage to catch our second biggest fish with about 5 minutes left.  It was only about 2.50 lbs but it culled us up again.

I knew we were in trouble and looking back we really should have stuck deep all day.  the fish should be in a full blown summer pattern right now.  When we seen they moved off the flat we hit them on last weekend, it should have told us to hit the drops.  But we stuck with what was working and had a blast crushing them on top all day long.

At weigh in, i was almost embarrased to bring our fish to the scales.  Everyone out there had a decent limit.  there were 2 5 lbers weighed in and a handful of near to over 4s.  Our biggest was 2lbs 13 oz.  First place was just under 18, second place was just under 17, and 3rd place was 16 and short change i think.  We weighed in a meezly 12.23 lbs.  It was crap.  But we had fun.  At least we didnt come in dead last.  I think we ended up 9th out of 11 boats. 

Good news is, the summer bite is on and the big fish are showing up.  I think 1st place weighed in all smallies, but the 2 big fish (5 lbs even, and 4.94) were both largemouth.  Hope we can catch a couple of those pigs in the next one.

Oh, i gave our team a new name after our pitiful finish.......we shall now be known as 'TEAM SUCKFEST 07'.  So when you see us, let us hear it.  Loud and Proud baby.  T shirts coming soon.....

McCarter himself

[Cheetam]

I was wondering if you were going to report on this one...and yes, I was going to throw you out of the boat...twice.

[fishon1219]

Keep your chins up boys it's not that bad. Maybe you guys should try and fish another lake besides kent once in a while.

By the way Thanks for jinxing my boat. I have never done so poorly on St.Clair as I did the next day after you to took all of the luck away from her.

I need revtro to bless her again to take away all of the evil spirts you guys brought to her.

Good luck next time, I feel a win on kent is in the cards for you guys real soon.

[dartag]

it was the slime washing off the boat that scared the fish away.  probably  a chunk broke loose and that was what you hit on sunday morning.

ss

[smbassman]

Your tournament sounds exactly like my St. Clair tournament this past weekend.  We caught loads of fish feeding on mayflies and expected to run into some big'uns at any time and with every move, but only ended up getting the little ones.  A lot of people found the bigger fish that I assumed "just weren't biting" and it was embarassing bringing in 12.5#'s on St. Clair.  But when I look back on it, we were catching probably 10-15 fish per hour where ever we went.  It was a fun day and St. Clair is going to be on fire for years to come with that kind of numbers of small fish.

[Cheetam]

I had a lot of fun out there.  We caught a bunch of fish.  We had a couple chances to hook into some bigger fish that either popped off or broke off, but it just wasn't meant to be.