wasilvers
Well-known member
Fished a tourney in NW Wisconsin this weekend with a kid I take fishing once in a while. He doesn’t get out much, but really likes catching fish. Well we traveled 240 miles one way for a fundraiser tournament for a Christian Camp. They provided great food, shelter, and boat ramp use for 2.5 days while we got to do fishing on 5 connected lakes, each with varying structure types. The first day was the bass tourney, it started at 6:30 am and it took us till nearly 11 to boat the first keeper. The fish were in prespawn mode and with a high pressure, we ended up finding bass really shallow (basically had to cast on shore), by gravel, on wood in the water. With those three things, we at least had bites. We caught lots of shorts and had 3 bass of a 5 bass limit before time was up and weighed in. To our surprise, we finished THIRD with 3 bass!
Next day was panfish. We had spotted a few areas that looked good and knew they held crappie (we hooked one on a 5” senko during the bass tourney – don’t know what he was thinking) and found one area that had an 11-12 inch dead crappie floating, but looked REALLY fishy. It had no weeds, the only cover in the bay were 4 trees down by one house. We decided to go big or go home, so we fished the empty bay with downed trees and one dead crappie. Turns out we made a great decision and quickly caught a limit. If I had had better boat control, we would have had more fish of size, but I ran the boat right over a pod of big, hungry crappie in about 1ft of water - twice. When ended up SECOND in the panfish stage. The only team we lost to was the guys who live on the lake year round. Overall it was a great fishing trip!
(Then I drove 240 miles back while the kid slept – then unpacked and cleaned fish – still worth it though!)
My fish cleaning station - before I started.
Next day was panfish. We had spotted a few areas that looked good and knew they held crappie (we hooked one on a 5” senko during the bass tourney – don’t know what he was thinking) and found one area that had an 11-12 inch dead crappie floating, but looked REALLY fishy. It had no weeds, the only cover in the bay were 4 trees down by one house. We decided to go big or go home, so we fished the empty bay with downed trees and one dead crappie. Turns out we made a great decision and quickly caught a limit. If I had had better boat control, we would have had more fish of size, but I ran the boat right over a pod of big, hungry crappie in about 1ft of water - twice. When ended up SECOND in the panfish stage. The only team we lost to was the guys who live on the lake year round. Overall it was a great fishing trip!
(Then I drove 240 miles back while the kid slept – then unpacked and cleaned fish – still worth it though!)
My fish cleaning station - before I started.
