Your one stop source for Bass Tournament information!
   

Navigation

 Home         Tournaments         Iowa Lakes          Minnesota Lakes         Mississippi Pools

Wisconsin Lakes         Message Board         Circuit Info         Articles          SUBMIT

Darin Roddick-Small's Tournament Journal

 

Darin Roddick-Small, Futurebass Pro Staff
 Tri City BASS Open on Lake Wisconsin
May 20th, 2007

Prefishing
I went to prefish on Saturday, the 19th, with my cousin, on the lake to try to put together a pattern for the following day for the tournament. We spent all of our day fishing a variety of different things because I knew the weather was going to change drastically. On Saturday, we had temps that were over 80 degrees and on Sunday, they did not break the 60 degree mark. We worked areas that had deep water, shallow water, rock, wood, sand, and weeds and even worked some main lake points and drops. We also worked these areas with a variety of different lures; from Brovarney swim jigs, to shaky head jigs. We ended up getting bit with most of these presentations, even shaking off a few really nice fish.

With that being said, I was guardedly optimistic about the tournament on the upcoming day. I knew that everything I had found may be gone on Sunday, but I felt I had enough different things to at least develop a new pattern for the day. That evening I set about rerigging all of my rods. I tied on the following lures based on my prefising day.

 

            Two Brovarney Baits swim jigs of different colors

            Two Venom Lures Dream Craws

            Two Venom Lures Tube in different colors

            A Brovarney Baits Thumper Jig with a rattle

            A crank bait for deep water

The Tournament
In the morning I awoke to strong Easterly winds and temps that were around 60. The skies were also overcast with a light fog building. As we sat at the docks waiting for the meeting to star the fog rolled in and a drizzle started to fall. To go along with this there was a forecast for strong storms during the day and we were advised to take shelter if we felt like were in danger.

We took off at 6:30 and we were to check in at 3:00 PM. We started by running down the lake and fishing some of the docks that I had located the day before. After working the docks, we could not get bit, so we adjusted our presentation. We considered the amount of chunk rock that lined the shore and pitched our plastics to that. Within minutes, we had two legals in the boat. We were catching our fish to start off with on Venom Tubes and Dream Craws. These were not the biggest fish in the world, but it was nice to have two fish to work with right away.

We then went to work a small rock point with cranks, tubes and football head jigs. We fished this for about 20 minutes to no avail. I knew that we would come back later in the day as the fish move in and out of this spot.

From there we headed to a small sand flat that has scattered eelgrass and chunk rock. I worked this area with a crank bait and my partner with a tube. Within minutes, I again hooked up on a solid tournament fish for this time of the year. It was about 15 ½ inches and it went into the well. A few minutes later I hooked into another about the same size. At this time we had 4 legal bass and we had only fished for about 1-½ hours. We felt good knowing we had over six hours to sort through and get 6 better fish than we had. We then headed down lack to a deep-water spot that I felt we could get a couple of good fish from. I tossed into a tree and one of best fish we weighed hit. It weighed in at around 2 ½ pounds. I picked up a legal small mouth a few minutes later.

This is when the bottom fell out. It was like someone flipped a switch. We ended up going the next 2 hours with out catching a legal fish. We tried everything, deep shallow, weeds, wood, rock, you name it, we tried it. That included bait combinations as well.

With two hours to go, we finally found an area the wind was not able to hit, as bad. We finally got a pattern going using senkos and I was throwing Venom Salty Slings. We dipped the end in a color die to add a little flare. We worked this for the rest of the day. We boated the remainder of the fish we were able to legally catch and picked our best seven from that. We ended up with 13.32 pounds, which was good enough for 16th place. Overall, I was happy with the day, but we lost two good fish that would have pushed our total weight around 16 pounds, which would have cashed a check. That is what happens when you loose fish though.

At this time I would like to thank my sponsors and encourage you to stop by their sites to check out the products I was using during this tournament. Here are their sites for your convenience: www.venomlures.com www.brovarneybaits.com

Thanks again and God Bless
Darin Roddick-Small