2007 Tournament Results / Highs and Lows

May 26th Junior Club tourney- 1st place

I was on a great stack of post spawn fish going into this tournament. For the

most part, my fish were running in the 16-18" range and 2-3.5 lbs. I had one

smallie in practice that tipped over 19-1/2" long. I came up with a solid milk

run of spots that I knew would produce. The first spot I planned to hit would

be good for the first keeper I figured, and I would go to the second spot, a

postspawn staging point and finish my limit and catch an 18" kicker hopefully.

The first spot ended up being better than I had predicted, and the first fish

was a solid largemouth in the 16-17" range. I soon after caught a 2.63

smallmouth which was my big fish and these two fish held down my weight

of 8.86  for 4 fish and sealed the win in this four hour event. The next closest weight

was over 2 lbs less than my first place weight. The spot I thought would

produce one or two turned out to be the only place to produce anything over

15". The point I planned to fish was just loaded with fish but they

were cookie cutter 13-1/2" fish. The spot produced only 2 keepers; one for me and

one for my fishing partner. Overall this tournament was a blast, and I would like

to thank Laudy Allen for being my boater, running me into the heart of goose island

where I needed to catch these fish, and just being a very fun, nice person to

be with. Thanks Laudy!

May 5th Bob's bait and Tackle spring open

My partner Ryan Johnson and I were on big spawning fish in shallow water near

goose island going into this event. We were confident that we could get a near

3 lb average and have a good chance at cashing a check or big bass in this

tournament. We had fish cruising that were way over 4 lbs and caught fish in

the 3-1/2 lb range on swim  jigs and flukes. Unfortunately, the date of the

tournament, the females seemed to have spawned out and left. The result was a

2.03 lb average of male largemouth that only gave us 12.18 lbs for 6 fish and

landed us in the lower end of the pack (not last). it was overall a fun

tournament and I learned alot about the overall tournament fishing experience.

April 21st Junior club tourney- pool 8- 3rd place finish

Prior to the tourney, I was on a good stack of fish. I was extremely

excited as well as prepared going into the event. My boater, Brian Christianson took my fishing partner Ryan and I down to an area on the south end of pool 8 that was full of prespawn largemouth. we caught a lot of fish, and some nice ones worth 1st and 3rd places. Unfortunately, Ryan caught a nearly 4-1/2 lb largemouth out of the back of the boat which was good enough to surpass my 3.10 and 2 others which weighed 7.18 lbs for 3 fish. Ryan had 3 fish but his kicker propelled him to a little over 8 lbs to win the tournament. I was overall content with the 3rd place finish, and happy to know that I was on the fish it took to win the tournament.

June 30th River Road Double header- 1st place

  Saturday, June 30th, marked the date of my 4th and 5th tournaments of the

year. The first tournament of the day was from 7-11:00 AM. With the falling

water, I knew that the grass points I had planned to fish would be washed up

and wouldn't be holding the caliber of fish I was looking for. Instead, I

headed another direction and focused on lily pads along main sloughs.

There was a heavy fog early on and it kept the fish on the outside edges in the

beginning. Using a spro frog, I had 4 keepers in the boat by 7:30 AM and had my limit around 8:15. My big fish of this tournament was a 3-07 largemouth and

held down my limit of 10-3/4 lbs which was good enough for the win, and the only limit of the tournament. This tournament truly shows that you must go with your gut feeling, because I fished the moment, and ended up catching my best fish out of places where I haven't even fished since this time last year.

I would like to thank Jim Johnson for being my boater in this tournament, taking

me where I needed to go and being such an awesome mentor to both myself and fishing partner Andrew.

The second tournament proved to be tougher for most anglers in the club, as

the sun got high and cloud cover was minimal. Since my fish in the

morning were exploding on frogs on the outside edges of heavy pad fields, I knew

that I would have to get in closer and disect the heaviest pads for the second tournament,

and I was right. The sun pushed those fish deeper into the slop and pads and I

again used a spro Bronzeye frog to catch all of my fish, including a 3.82

largemouth which was good enough for big bass and secured my limit of

12.44 lbs to win the 4 hour tournament which ran from 12:30 to 4:30 PM.

I would like to thank my boater Ben Potaracke for making a long run to some

amazing slop on the south end of pool 8. My partner Jared and I both won our

age groups out of his boat.

July 15th Junior Bass Tournament With a very solid pattern of largemouth bass going on the lower sections of pool8 of the Mississippi River, I felt that I had a good chance to duplicate thepattern up on pool 7 and Lake Onalaska for this tournament. The location of the tournament was actually supposed to be secret, but word got out and a friend and I were going to head up to the lake to do a little scouting. The day that we planned to fish, the entire pool was marked as off limits, making pre-fishing for this tournament impossible. This was very frustrating to me, and through conversation with the other anglers, it sounded like everyone else felt the same. When we hit the lake, immidiately we searched for green pads with cleanwater on them. Clean water on the main lake was isolated due to the wind, but one area had lots of fish going, chasing some pretty unseasonably large shad. I had a good feeling about the area, but it was mostly kicking out 12-13 inchfish. This is not something you like to find in mid July, when the fish areoften schooled by size, but with the shad the way they were, I thought therewould be some bigger ones nearby. We worked the pads heavily and the adjacent grass flat and caught lots of fish. The end result was 2 keepers for myself and1 keeper for the other person I was fishing with. My fish weighed 3 lbs and somechange and gave me a 3rd place finish, as most of the anglers also struggled to find keeper fish. This finish sealed my place as Angler of the Year for our club, and gave me the top spot on the State Team destined for Lake Nagawickalater in the month. I was disappointed with the day's fishing, but overall thefeeling of winning AOY and going to state was extremely exciting. At the beginning of the year, I knew all I needed was a solid 3rd place average, and I well exceeded that mark, with 3 wins and two 3rd place finishes. I ended up with 286 points, the next closest competitor with 275. I had 39.05 lbs on theseason, and the 2nd place weight was 25 lbs. Overall I was very pleased with the junior club tournament season.

July 28th WBFN Junior State Tournament Coming off a great tournament season in La Crosse, Wisconsin, I was just happy to have the opportunity to fish in the state competition, where I had the chance to qualify for the Junior World Championship in North Carolina. To me going to the JWC would be a huge accomplishment, but what I would most be looking forward to was meeting the pros and actually getting the chance to fish with some of them. Lake Nagawicka was the location picked for the 2007 Wisconsin State tournament,and from the research I did online, it seemed like a pretty interesting lake. I was up for the challenge of fishing clear water and lake fishing in general, asit is relatively new to me. The first day of prefishing for me was a Saturday,one week from the tournament. This was the day where my friend and I found outthat this lake was a very very tough body of water at this particular time ofyear. He boated one 15 inch fish and I boated a number of small fish. Ipracticed two more days before the tournament, and had similar results. Hundreds of docks along the shoreline of this small deep lake brought a halfwaydecent dock bite, but no matter where you fished it was destined to be tough fishing. I found a couple patterns that were producing 12-13" fish, and a few keepers, and I felt that this was about the only option I had, was to stick to this stuff and fish it hard come tournament day. My younger partner won controlof the boat first thing Saturday morning, and opted to fish boat docks early inthe morning instead of heading for the smallie bite that was on a sand flat adjacent to where we were fishing. The sand flat was known for holding a few nice smallmouth early in the morning for a very short window on topwaters. Bythe time we left the docks, the sun was high in the sky, and although we each had one keeper, his coming on a senko and mine coming on a weightless fat ika,it was far too late to have a shot at some smallmouth action. By this time it was my turn to control the boat, and with the sun up, I thought there may be some smallmouth cruising the shallow grass clumps I found on the upper end of the lake. I was ripping a baby 1- over the weeds when the ticket to the JWC hit...and it was a seriously nice smallmouth. Around 3-1/2 lbs, I watched my dream flash in front of my face, as I ripped the bait from the grass it was stuck on, and just like that, it was gone. This fish would have likely won big fish for me, as well as sealed my place in the world championship. The tournament was won with a 3.13 lb largemouth bass, and I came in 4th place withmy 1.52 lb bass in my age group. Overall it was a learning experience, and I am hoping that I will have advanced to a higher level next year, so I won't make the same mistakes. The 2008 state tournament is supposed to be held on Pool 8 of the Mississippi River.

Ace Hardware Tournaments The months of June and July brought some free time for me in between juniortournaments, and I was able to participate in 4 of these Ace Hardware Mondaynight tournaments with my good friend Zac Cassil. He is a heck of a fisherman,and I owe a lot of thanks to him for my success this season. He has been mynumber one mentor and is a great person to learn from as a fisherman, and as ahuman being. We fished 3 of these events together, and against a pretty tough,though relatively small group of river rats, we came out victorious once, had2nd place another time, and were just out of the money with a 4th place finishon another outing. The tournaments are a 2 fish limit and run from 4:00 PM to9:00 PM. Our win was also my first real tournament check. I sure hope its notmy last. We had 6.1 lbs of largemouth for 2 fish and caught them using topwaterfrogs in heavy vegitation. These two fish were a sample of 50 or so keepers thatwe caught on that particular outing. The second place finish consisted of the same exact spots that we fished for ourwin, only the quality of fish in the area improved. We caught 7 lbs 5oz oflargemouth for 2 fish and were beaten by an amazing 8-5. Any other night wewould have blown the competition out of the water. Go figure. The 4th placefinish, we brought in a 5-13 bag that missed the money cut by 2 ounces. Westruggled for the keeper bites, but caught some decent fish on swim jigs andcrankbaits. The final tournament that I fished with Ace Hardware was by myselfin my own boat. I had some very nice fish going the days before, and had a goodgameplan going into the tournament. I boated 9 keepers, none of which hit 2-1/2lbs. Sunny weather had fish going in slop earlier in the touranment, but theyshut off when clouds rolled in before I ever fished my better areas. Chalk itup to a lessoned learned..that's why professionals fish their big fish spotsfirst. I had 4-6 and wound up in the middle of the pack out of a 12' boat. This picture is of our 7-5 bag that earned us $50.

BASS Northern Divisional Jr. Championship 8/16/08 2nd Place, Big Bass

             After a win at State in La Crosse, I was on a roll and looking for another win on Lake Winnebago in Oshkosh Wisconsin. The tournament was held just 2 short weeks after the state tournament, and I was a little worried that other competitors might have an edge over me because our state concluded later than the other states in the divisional. One individual that made my road to success much smoother was Jeff Dyer. This man was amazing, putting us up in a nice hotel, calling me at my house the week before the tournament updating me with what was currently working on the big lake, and the night before the tournament, treating us to a great dinner at a pizza parlor. Thanks Jeff! On to the fishing. In the junior divisional, kids are paired by state with a boater from the adult divisional which occurred just the day before. The highest finisher from each state is the boater for the kids from that state. Ross Lemmens and I were paired with Brady Farrel, an awesome fisherman from Fort Atkinson. He whacked the smallmouth on the final day, so I was excited to get out on the water and get a look for my first time on the lake. The 25 minute run went very fast with thoughts of going to nationals and catching big smallies. Finally we were there, fishing a point off a reef in 4-7 ft of water. I immediately started catching fish on a tube with a jig insert, but the real challenge was deciding which ones to keep in a tournament where the no-cull rule was strictly enforced. I released a 15-1/2”er right away but decided after some persuasion by Brady to keep a 15” fish just 20 minutes later. Not long after that I popped a toad, which we figured to be close to 4 lbs. By 11:30 I had a limit in the boat, but only 2 in the box. There was a lull period for about an hour and the nerves were really starting to build during this time. I fished through it and as a wind began to blow, things were changing under the surface. The fish began to pile up behind the submerged point and if we could keep the boat on the spot, we were loadin’ up on ‘em. I quickly finished my limit of fat 2-1/2 to 3 lb smallies and although the fish were on fire, I couldn’t get myself to take the risk. I sat myself down and that’s when Ross caught 4 keepers in short order. After a grueling 25 minute run back to the launch, this time through 3 footers, it was time to discover my fate. At this time I thought I pretty well had it won, as 13-14 lbs a day in the adult tournament would score you a top 3 spot. I was the last to weigh in, and in the hot seat was Jacob Wheeler, who had just weighed in 13-6. I felt that I had enough but was waiting on the scales to make it official. And wait we did. Drop after drop of water flowed off the scale as the healthy smallies flopped over and over again. After about 30 seconds of weight loss and anxiety, my fate was sealed. The screen read 13-5 and I had fallen short by a mere ounce. An ounce that likely could have been lost in water alone. I was heart broken to say the least but looking back, very proud of my accomplishment. I represented my club, my family and our state with my competitive yet gracious style, and spent quite a while talking with Wheeler as well as congratulating him. It was a difficult time for me, but I’m looking to get after it in ’09! Ross Lemmens won his age group (11-14) with 11-4 for 4 fish. And my 4 lb smallie that officially weighed 3lbs 10oz was good enough for big bass of the tournament.

BFL Super Tournament 9/8/2008 -78th Place

           What a terrible tournament I had on this sad day at the end of the season in 2008. After an awesome season, I was looking to go out with a bang. I met my boater in the morning after needing a representative for the meeting the night before due to a football game. He told me he was from La Crescent and I was excited to be with a pool 8 local for the day. Unfortunately for me it seemed as though he did not have a whole lot going, and even pulled down on local stick Jim Johnson just to see what he was fishing. I knew the day was headed for trouble, and about all I could do was fish my little shaky worm as hard as I could and make precision casts. My one and only fish of the day came on a wing dam on pool 7 on the shaky head. The smallie weighed 2lbs 6 oz and put me in 78th place for the tournament. My boater, after locking back to Jim’s spot once again on pool 8 managed his one and only keeper a 1.xx largemouth. Certainly a day that I will not forget, but wish I would. I finished 67th place in points for the year after fishing only 3 tournaments. I am excited to see how I stack up in 2009 when fishing all 5 events.

2008 Wrap Up