Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

Fishers of Men just held there 2nd tournament of the season on Wixom Lake. My partner and I headed up very early friday morning for some pre-fishing as we hadn't been on the lake in 4 years. While we were at the ramp getting ready we ran into RevTro. and his partner and enjoyed some great conversation. Well we headed out to our first starting point were we have caught fish before and on my partners first cast with a baby one minus my partner rares back and connects with something big. It takes awhile to get it up so we can see what he has and we were both real surprised at the 3lb largemouth on one set of hooks and the huge smallie on the other set. The smallie got off at the boat so we dont know how big it really was, but it seemed to have dwarfed the largmouth. We moved around the area rather quickly as we didnt want to give them all sore mouths and managed to shake a couple more off of a case magic stick. After that first spot we hit several other places that had the same type of structure with not alot of success, but we still felt good about our chances for the tournament the next day. During the practise day the wind was blowing pretty hard out of the south so it made my finesse presentation pretty difficult so we were just fishing real fast looking at alot of water, but already had our minds made up were we were going to start in the morning.
On the morning of the tournament we drew blast off number 6 and watched Paul Cowen and his Skeeter 300zx take off number 5 and guess were he headed. Yep, right to were we were going to start. I knew I wasn't going to catch him with my 150 so we tried a back up spot were we caught some in the afternoon on the day before. We new we could scratch out a limit in this area, but we didnt know how long it was going to take us. We hit our first spot, a weed point that drops into about 30 ft with another weed point on the opposite side forming a "V" were the fish should have been stacked up inside of it as the wind was blowing into it for 2 days, but we caught nothing. My partner had several blowups on a case horny toad replica, but could not get a hook in them and now it was about 10:00 am with nothing in the live well but water. He gets a big blow up he misses and I throw a magic stick in the spot and nail a good 2 lber. That's number 1. I tried to use him as my bird dog the rest of the day, but as windy as it was it was hard to fish the weightless magic stick and the weeds were right on top so it was just difficult to get a bait to the same spot and keep it there with out it getting full of the nasty slime covering everything before the bass could get it. About 1:00 I switched to a power worm in camo color and while he was horny toad fishing on top of the mat I was pitching in front of the boat and working the worm back in a swimming fashion and we had our limit at 1:30. My partner was frustrated, as he had about 30 blowups on the toad and missed every one of them throughout the day and I finally got tired of his whining and grabbed his rod from him,Cut the frog off of his 40lb power braid and put it on Mono and amazingly he caught 2 keepers right away. I think with the zero stretch of the braid he was jerking the toad right out of there mouth before they could get it. Check in was at 3:00 and it was now 2:50 and we had a good 10lb limit and last cast my partner hooks up with a good 3lber. We get it in and as I am motoring us to check in he culls out our smallest fish and we make it back in time. We weighed in before most of the Field and were sitting in 1st place with 12lbs and big fish with the 3lber and the 2nd to last boat to weigh in comes up with a beautiful mixed bag of fish weighing in at 14 and change with a 4 1/2 largmouth to take 1st place and big fish. Guess who it was? Yep, Paul cowen and his son. I talked briefly with him after the weigh in and he caught them right were we were going to start. I guess I need a bigger boat.

2nd is pretty good too! Counting on only one spot is risky anyway. You did good and knew a better spot where things just didn't go perfectly, but still pretty well.

I think your boat (and tow vehicle) looks fine - thanks so much for representin'....

(http://www.greatlakesbass.com/images/wglbfishonrig.jpg)

tell carter justin still wants his molds :)