First Tournament of the Year

[LGMOUTH]

 For anyone that has the itch to go fishing, now is the time to go to Wawasee. The fishing is the best I have ever seen it. You can catch them anywhere from BEDS, yes I said beds, to deep water.

I went down to prefish last Tuesday, we had a pretty good day with our five best going around the 14lb to 15lb range. The thing is we caught around 100 bass and maybe 50 keepers. Most on Jerkbaits and Darters in the 7 to 10ft range. Most were on the inside weed edge. We did catch a few on the outside weededge and a few up on the flats. The water temp was anywhere from 49 on the southeast end to 60 on the northwest end. Im sure the south wind had everything to do with that.

What we noticed was that we caught alot more fish on the south and east side than we did on the north and west side. Only thing we could come up with is that the fish in the warmer water may have moved up into the channels already and the ones in the cooler water hadnt. Yesterday this pattern held true.

We had four spots that we had bigger fish during practice so we were going to focus on those first. With three of them on the east side of the lake and one on the west. We decided to hit the most popular one first, alot of other guys fish it. Luckely we got there first because for the next two and a half hours it was unbelievable. We had our limit within 10 minutes. The fish were suspended either just on top of the flat to just on the break. This set them up perfect for the Jerkbait.

It was almost every cast. Alot of 10 to 13 inchers but every 5 or so would be a keeper. As the morning progressed it seemed like the fish were moving to the bottome. Before to long Greg started catching the bigger ones off of the bottom with a darter. Before we left that spot Greg had put a 5.52lb and a 4.32lb in the boat and I had numerous 2.5lber to 3lbers in the boat.

We decided to move to the spot on the west side. We spent the next few hours fishing on the west side with out any success. So we decided to head back to the east side.

The next spot we stopped at was the spot I caught one over 4lbs on Tuesday. Nothing there to upgrade us so we moved to the next spot. On my very first cast on the next spot I got one over 3lbs. That was a nice upgrade. We fished there for an hour or so without anymore upgrades but alot of fish. So we decided to go back to our start spot.

When we got there we started farther down than we had fished it earlier. We fished all the way down to where we stopped in the morning and didnt catch very many. I mentioned to Greg that I used to catch them pretty good on the other side of this point. So we kept fishing over to it. I think all the fish from that morning had moved over about 100 yards because once we found them it was every cast again. This time it took about 15 minutes of catching smaller ones when I hooked into a 3 3/4lber. This was our last upgrade but it was a big one. Our small fish at the time was about 2.5+lbs.

When it was all done we had 19.93lbs with a big bass of 5.52lb. This was good enough for first but not for big bass. The big bass of the tournament went 5.69lb. It was a good day of fishing for alot of guys, second place had 17.83lbs and third was 17.55lbs. And yes some guys caught them off beds.

All of our fish were caught on either a Jerkbait or a Darter. The exact same ones I do my seminars on. Also all of our fish came from either just on top of the flat and the break. All prespawn fish getting ready to move up to spawn. At the end of the day we had around 100 keepers and I couldnt tell you how many total fish. This was defiantly the best day of fishing I had ever had on Wawasee. If you have the itch to fish for bass now is the time to head down there and give it a try. You can catch them everywhere right now.

[djkimmel]

From a our next door neighbor state that allows catch and keep bass fishing 365 days a year even though they have 1/20th the amount of lakes we do. Pretty darn good report!

[Firefighter Jeff]

  Don, as usual, great report !!!  I had no idea you were on Wawasee.  I fished Syracuse from 8:30 to 4:00.  I heard the boats over on Wawasee but figured they were just weekend fishermen.  I don't usually fish weekends.  Too many guys out.  lololol  Thank goodness for the job I have.   
   If I had known you were over there I would have looked you up and followed you around like KVD.  lololol  Nawww just kidding.  Might have come over for the weigh-in.  I didn't catch near the fish you did, but who does?  lol  I only had 3 keepers and about 10 to 12 total fish.  The three keepers I got went 9.5.  Nearly all the fish came on rattlebaits in 7 to 10 feet of water.

[wawaseebass]

Good job again, Don. I was also at Wawasee and fished the same tournament. My partner and I thought we had a pretty good bag and also maybe big bass. We got 4th with 15.94 and our biggest was 5.26. My partner caught the 5.26 on his 3rd cast on a jig. We were fishing right across the bay from Don and Greg but we didnt know that until the fog lifted. They had an awesome bag.

[bassbmx]

I also fished Wawasee the same day but arrived too late to enter the tournament.  Just my luck because I ended up with a bag weighing over 20 lbs and a big bass close to 6 lbs.