Where are all the Super BFL Stories?

[Dan]

I'm in withdrawls. Couldn't fish the Super and would like the particulars. Can't wait.

[River Rat]

I just missed the cut........ by 12lbs!

[rufus]

Dan, go to http://fishtalkfishingreports.yuku.com/topic/6066 .
I posted my practice report here and will post my tourney report soon. I may cut and paste it to this GLB as well.

[TCook]

   Great report Heath, sounds like all that hard work is paying off for you. After what I went through this year with 5 tough draws I hope to get paired with you next year in one of the BFLs, sounds like a good chance to catch a nice sack. After this last event on the Detroit River I started questioning myself if I still knew how to catch bass when it counts or if luck can really run that bad for the entire BFL season. I feel that I never had many opportunaties this year in any of the 5 events. I had a total of 8 keepers on all season and landed 7, Burt and Mullett my boater went to crooked lake and cranked since he never seen a bed all week, Sandusky I never had a bite and Todd Schmit had his worst day ever on Erie by far he said, St clair my boaters electronics malfunctioned and we drifted blind in the middle of the lake, first Det river my boater did not practice and blanked for the first time ever on lake erie and I weighed in one 14 incher.
  In the Super tournament on the Det River I was paired with Joe Balog, a real cool guy and very accommodating. I thought it was a good draw but might be tough and might have some opportunities. At the very least I knew I was going to learn how to navagate and fish erie correctly. Joe was very informative, I asked alot of questions and most importantly he explained the seasonal fish movements on Erie which I stored in my memory banks.
   Unfortunatly he was fishing BASS the following week and was more concerned about who would see him on his best areas so he stayed off the water since Tues. So he ran 35 miles to some secondary spots and the fishing was off to say the least. Once we passed kingsville we never seen another bassboat all day. Not even when we ran back because he cut it way to close and we were the last boat in, we made it back with 30 seconds to spare. I knew it was going to be tough within the first hour because the area we were fishing had consistant 5 footers blowing in from the east and a strong current flowing from the west. This made his boat control difficult and as a result very hard for me to keep my bait on the bottom without dragging for any amount of time since we were in 30+ feet most of the day. He would keep the nose of the boat on his waypoints for awhile then drift or troll to the next then hold so I did not really get to throw in the high percentage spots. Joe had 4 smallies on all day and landed 3 and I never had a bite all day. He let me watch his hummingbird (he had it set on the regular sonar not the SI) and from what I seen baitfish or fish arches were scarce, There was some but few and far between.
  The highlite of the day was when Joe hooked into the big bass of the tournament. He fought it up to the boat when the bass ran under the boat to the other side and decided to jump while we were drifting back. With the long TM shaft it was imposible to keep the 6lb line from wrapping around the trolling motor. I was holding the net in the water when he grabbed it from me. Another 20 seconds or so went by while the big smallmouth pulled hard and still wrapped around the TM. Joe was shocked his line didnt break yet when she decided to make another jump and he reached out as far as he could with the net and cought her in mid air as his line snapped. He was pumped up after that and said it was the biggest fish he weighed in this year, they never come in easy. She weighed 5-13

I want to congratulate all the members here who had a successful season. Heath and Seth kicked some arse on what seemed to be a season full of changes due to the cooler temps. Phil AKA smokey the bandit got the points needed to get to the regionals with a mess of boat problems and being out of his element on the big water. My buddy jason Fowler who should of been in the hunt for the co-angler championship if it wasnt for a boater who quit because of some rain and another who broke down. He finished 6th in this last event showing that he knows how to catch them when it counts.

Make Michigan proud at the regionals boys, wish I could be there too.

T
 

[Firefighter Jeff]

Good report Tim.  Sorry you had such a rotten year.  I think it's possible for the"Fishing Mojo" to be off for an entire season.  It seems to happen to baseball players all the time.

I'm not sure exactly what place my brother finished, but he's going to Iowa as a boater.   

[SethV]

My pattern of lost fish continued during the last event.  I made several bad decisions, the worst being to fish some stuff close to the river mouth.  I had found a few big fish, thought there might be enough of them to avoid a long run.

Tx day, between my co and Myself, we hooked 9 of those great big ones.  He hooked 5, landed 3.  I hooked 4, landed 2.  Ouch.  We scrambled a bit and he ended up with a nice limit and fished the 2nd day.  I just picked up a 14 1/16" dink to go with 2 nice ones.

I can clearly trace my poor showing this year to lost fish.  In each of the last 4 events, I have lost at least 1 fish that would have made a big difference.  The details hurt - in most cases, looking back, I can understand what went wrong.  In some cases, fish just come off, but flawless execution is so critical for me.  I am not good enough to get 30 bites a day like Heath, so i have to make the few bites I get count!!   

Seth

[Dan]

Thanks for the reports guys. I am living this tournament year vicariously so reading the reports, both good and bad, provide a good fix.

[rufus]

I woke up at 3 am as usual, my alarm was set for 5:15 and I was supposed to be at Elizabeth Park at 6:15. Boat check started at 6 am and the tourney started at 7 am. I just hate lying there in bed for 2+ hours going through the different scenarios in my head of what the day may bring. I kept trying to get it out of my head and get back to sleep, but I just couldn't. I tried to listen to see if the wind was still howling, but I didn't want to get up to check. I guess I did not want to know at that point.

It seemed like an eternity, but finally I hopped out of bed at 5 am and woke the Coach up. We headed off to Elizabeth Park, but I had to stop at Mcdonald's for a quick breakfast. Even though I bring a sandwich and some fruit on the boat I rarely eat, but I always drink 3-4 bottles of water throughout the day so I always try to get something in me. I am never hungry either the butterflies settle in and I have to literally choke down every bite.

We arrived early to Elizabeth around 5:55 and I called my co. I pulled up to my teammate who would be fishing the same area as me and we talked about the day. I noticed the flags at Elizabeth were showing a light to moderate North wind. PERFECT!!!!! This put me a little more at ease as I knew I would make it to my primary area.

Boat check, the prayer, the national anthem, everything went on schedule this morning and boat 49 was called at 7:08 am. We raced off down the Trenton Channel in some MAJOR bass boat chop. I took the cut between Celeron and Grosse Isle which are the last two islands before you get to the big water. I was gaining slowly on a Ranger and was about 3 boat lengths behind him when all of a sudden a silver Z21 cut right in front of me from nowwhere. He literally soaked my coangler with his rooster tail and launched into the air twice with his entire prop out of the water. I swung left and backed way off checking to make sure no one was behind me.

Fortunately, my coangler had his rainsuit on and was no worse for the wear. I had a half a mind to explain to this guy that he had to have been dropped on his head as a child, but I had more important things to worry about. We zipped down the North Shore at an average speed of 62. I keep the trim tight on Erie at all times. It does not matter how calm it is out there you always have a few suprise waves no matter how many boats are around.

We were the first boat to Colchester followed closely by a friend of mine who runs a Ranger 521. The waves got a little bigger at Colchester and I had to bring my speed down to 35 mph. I was going head on into 2 footers and if you fish Erie you know they are not all 2 footers. My Triton has a tendency to spear waves as the nose drops very quickly after coming over waves so I have to be careful.

We finally arrive at my starting spot at 7:45. I scrambled around getting the trolling motor in and getting my front graph put on (I never run Erie with it on the front). I rigged up my drop shot 3" Gulp minnow in black shad with a 3/4 oz weight and a 12 inch leader. My front GPS finally kicked in and I noticed I was about 50 yards off the spot by now. I held my line ready to drop as soon as I pulled up on the sweet spot.

My co began casting and had probably made 7 casts by the time I got to my coordinate. I dropped my line straight down and instantly my rod buckled under the pressure of a good fish. I got him halfway up and he came off. Four more drops and the same exact thing happened. I actually told my co that I needed to settle down there were a million fish down there and eventually some of them would get to the boat.

I was shaking so bad I had to hold off dropping for a second and regroup. My next 5 drops literally produced 4 fish over 4 pounds and a 3 1/2. I checked my clock and in under 20 minutes I had 20 pounds. My co had not been bit yet, but he had to be the calmest guy I have ever drawn. He kept congratulating me for each fish and I kept telling him don't worry you will get your biggest sack ever today.

In the next 20 minutes I literally lost track of how many I caught and sorted, but I had cull tags, Jonesy's balance beam, my scales, and everything else laying all over the floor of the boat. I told my co that I had over 22 pounds and that would definitely keep me in the hunt for the second day. He now had 1 fish and I told him that the next few times I pulled up on the sweet spot I would pull him forward enough that he could get his 5.

Less than 20 minutes later my co had the biggest sack of his life in the 'well. We then began doubling and the bite got even stronger. It was nearly unbelievable. It was like dropping your bait into a school of vicious pirahnnas. If you lost one and still had a bait on the hook you would instantly get pounded by another. I had one that I hooked 5 times and eventually landed him. I did not even need to beat up on the other 4 spots that I had decided to hit for the day.

From where I was sitting Ryan (my teammate) was a little over 1/2 mile away. Another friend of mine was inside me towards shore a good 1/2 mile. These were the only two boats in the area period. At 9 am I told my co that I needed to lay off these fish. I had put at least 15 on the balance beam that were less than an ounce away from my smallest fish and would not cull. I did have a 5-6 pounder about 10 feet from the net that came off, but the rest were all cookie cutter 4-3 to 4-6 fish.

I knew my co had all solid 4 1/4 pound fish as well. About this time my buddy who was inside came flying out to us and said I can't take it anymore you guys are killing them and I have not had a bite yet. I asked him if he had any waypoints out this far and he said no. I told him what to use and to simply drift till he caught one and when he did to mark it and he would be in a school. Well, he decided to start fishing behind me at which point I backed up to the farthest point I caught any fish and began to push him off. I was not trying to be a jerk, but I wanted these fish left alone for tomorrow.

We literally caught at least 10 more fish beside him and he did not have a bite. Around 10 am I decided I could try to protect this spot or accept the fact that he was going to beat them up a bit. He finally said just to let him get his 5 and he would leave. I told my coangler that I wanted to see if any of the other spot I had were on so we left and ran about a 1/4 mile to my next area. I pulled up and within 15 minutes catch 2-3 1/2's and a 4 3/4 which I culled with.

I asked my co if he had enough and off we ran towards the Detroit River mouth at 10:30am. I made 4 stops on the way in to let the livewells refill and to make a few casts. On our first stop I catch 2-3 pounders. Three more stops and a couple shorts later we were back at the river mouth by noon. I told him there were only two spots I knew that we may be able to upgrade. One was the Skeeter spot and the other a spot I call the Community hole.

Neither spot produced a cull fish. At the community hole I ran into a guy who was in the BFL. I fished beside him last year at this spot when my motor blew up and I scrounged out a 20 pound sack and finished 12th somehow. He told me the same thing happened to him and he was stranded only thing was he only had 2 small keepers. He wasn't fishing for points only money so he needed a tow in. It was now 1:45 and I asked my co if he wanted to weigh in early.

He was fine with it and off we went telling the guy I would return to tow him in after we weighed if the tourney director said it was okay. We were actually the 2nd to weigh in as a friend of mine who is a coangler and was leading the points said they blew the motor up in the first 3 minutes and had to fish beside Elizabeth all day. He managed one fish and his boater had two.

Anyway, My bag weighed in at 23-5 and my biggest fish was only 4-14. My co weighed in 21-5 and was ecstatic. I ran back out to to the mouth to tow the guy in at the community hole and by the time we got back the weigh-in was almost over with only a few guys left. I found out I was leading by a slim margin over my teammate Ryan Said who had 23-2 and the ever dangerous Mike Trombly who weighed in 21-15. I had only used 4 rods all day so retying was a cinch and I was ready for tomorrow.

Saturday night would prove to be another sleepless one. I fell asleep around 9pm only to wake back up at 1am this time. I never went back to sleep that night and lay awake wondering about the next day. I arrived back at Elizabeth Park the next morning at 6am and was on the water by 6:30. My partner for the day was Ken Ramsey who was leading with 22-0 and was also now leading the points on the co side. My co from the previous day was in 4th so he fished with the 4th place boater who was Dave Reault.

Ken was an even keeled guy and very friendly. He had fished with Ryan the previous day so he already knew where we were going considering we were less than 1/2 mile from each other all day fishing the same type of stuff. The forecast called for E-SE winds from 5-15 for today so it may be a little rougher where we were going, but we would make it.

Once again the ride to Colchester was a quick one and after ounding the corner we had to slow up this time to around 25 mph. The waves were around 3 foot, but still manageable. We arrived to find that the algae bloom had pushed right on top of my No.1 spot. I noticed right away on the graph that it was all the way to the bottom. I told Ken that it did not look good, but the fish had to be around somewhere. 15 minutes of fishing this spot produced a catfish and several other bites that we did not hook.

I told Ken we need to go out further and see if it got clearer. We ran 1/4 mile out deeper to my second spot and found out quickly the water was much better. I pulled on top of my coordinates and noticed there did not seem to be any fish showing up. I decided that maybe the slight change in wind had repositioned them on the structure. I slowly made my way around my coordinates which I had 13 on this spot that circled and finally saw them show up on the graph.

I caught a 4 pounder right away and Ken lost one. 15 minutes later I finally hit another fish around 2 1/2 pounds. I noticed the fish were up off the bottom about 2-3 feet. I told Ken that sometimes when this happens they react well to cracking a tube. I tied on a 3/4 oz big dude head with a Smokin' Purple Flash Poor Boy's tube on my 7' Heavy Action G Loomis rod and within 15 minutes was culling fish. They were definitely running smaller than the day before, but I did catch one over 5 in between them.

Ken figured it out quickly and within an hour we both were sorting fish. Many of the fish we were catching were from 3-3 1/2. I can't tell you, though how many 4-5 pound fish were jumping off in between flurries. When you are cracking a tube it is really tough to land those fish. You just never know how they are hooked. Some are skinned hooked and some are bleeding, but that is the nature of that technique.

I had to alternate thorughout the day between the tube and dropshot byt what I was seeing on the graph. Literally, I would catch 4-5 fish in a row on the tube and then I would see them leave. I would change to the dropshot and catch 4 in a row. This seemed to fire them up and then I had to go back to the tube.

By 1:30 we both had respectable limits and I knew that the other guys would have to catch them to catch me. I watched Ryan move several times so I had no idea how his day was going. I still had 2 fish that were just under 4 pounds in the box and just could not land those bigger ones to cull them. We decided to play it safe and head in a little early so we could take care of the fish. It took us 45 minutes to get to Elizabeth and we spent the remaining 30 minutes or so fishing for retreads which did not pan out. I weighed in 20-12 and Ken weighed in 17-15 (which was the largest conangler sack of the day). Ken won the co side and I finished in 3rd after Mike Trombly weighed in a monster 26-15 sack and my teammate went around me with a 22-4 sack.

He told me he had 18 pounds and just before he left popped 3 big cull fish and screamed to weigh-in. It was an awesome tourney and I really wanted the W, but the Lord blessed us with awesome weather and we all made it in safe. I stayed in 3rd for the season and Ryan finished second.

I am heading to Fort Madison, Iowa for Regionals on Friday so I will try to give that report in a couple weeks. God Bless everyone Hope you enjoyed my "book".

[LAPORTE]

Awesome report !!! I love the reading and looking forward to the next report.


Don L

[MadWags]

Sweet! Nice job.

[djkimmel]

rufus, what do you mean by 'cracking' a tube?

[Team houston]

Fantastic read as always Heath.

[rufus]

Cracking a tube, stroking a tube, snapping a tube, etc. I guess are all the same or similar things. I like to call it cracking a tube because of how I like to employ the technique. In deep water I prefer to be nearly 100% vertical. I use a heavy action 7' Loomis with a 6.2:1 Curado and a 1/2 or 3/4 oz big dude head. I get right over the top of the fish and jerk upwards as hard as I can. Most of the time I like to move the tube 7-10 feet off the bottom. It is a dynamite way to activate a school, but I warn it is also a dynamite way to activate the Sheepshead  . It is very similar to jigging a spoon. I always put the rod in my right hand and reel backwards so I can get the maximum rip and feel on the rod. (I know I should get a left handed reel ) It will flat out whip you in a short time, but when they are on it it will put them in the boat quick.

[djkimmel]

I thought you meant something like snapping... just wanted to avoid guessing. And as usual, you provided a more thorough, indepth and specific explanation of how you do it. Very interested... much more aggressive than I do it.

And glad you mention the sheephead because every time I do something aggressive with a tube, or worse, the jigging spoon, those darn sheepies just wear me out... usually within about half an hour!!

I watch some of you crack experts fish and hardly catch a sheephead while I'm usually somewhere around a metric ton of them by 10 AM on Lake Erie!!

Thanks so much for the very detailed and informative posts!!! I really do appreciate it (and hope you don't mind I just added some spacing in your report for those with small screens).

[gr@ssmonkey]

 :owow great report rufus love the read i,m a west sider and a tournament junky but don't get to get to erie or st.clair but 0-3 times a year so i really apreciate the sweet details....congrats on what sounded like a well executed game plan!!!!!!