My Best Tournament Day Ever!!

[fisher98]

This past Sunday my BASS Club was having our yearly Mystery Tournament on a local metro lake that we have never had a tournament on. We met a Perkin's in Roseville at 4:30 am for a bite to eat and a bit of comraderie....Each individual gets to put a lake selection into a hat and the last lake to remain is the lake that is selected. Well on this day there were 2 clear cut favorites that people had picked, Big Carnelian, and the other is a lake in the Chisago/Lindstrom Area. Well someone decided to pick a random lake that is the farthest from our meeting place, Lake Sarah, which is located on the western-most part of Hennepin County, a 530 acre lake that no one within our club has ever fished...well needless to say that the majority of our club members were not happy with the situation, but we headed to Lake Sarah anyway!!

This is were the story gets real interesting....my partner and I began the day in the eastern basin fishing buzzbaits and spinnerbaits which was around 7:00am....I caught a 3lb. fish on a buzzbait early..followed by a 2 lb. fish on a spinnerbait. We then moved to docks were we were skipping Senkos and pitching tubes....Within the next hour I picked up 2 more nice fish shallow, which were in the 2-3 lb area. So at about 9:00am I had 4 decent fish, but nothing huge!!

We next made a move to the western basin. I found an area that had rocks out in some deeper water. I began casting a Carolina rig to probe to area for more rocks..I quickly had a nice bite, but proceded to straighten out my hook on the hookset. I threw a marker buoy to mark the spot. I re-rigged the carolina-rig with a new hook, and added a new straight-tail worm. I threw a few more cast and had 2 more bites, but missed the fish again. I put the carolina-rig down and picked up one of my drop-shot rigs(which I never put down the rest of the day!!).

Over the next 5 hours my partner fished an area that was about 20 yards by 20 yards. We had finally figured out how to catch these fish. Our lure of choice was a drop-shot rig with a 4 inch finesse worm. The spot was a rocky break that was 9 feet on the top and quickly dropped off to 16 feet of water. I caught 20 fish from this spot over the next 5 hours with the smallest fish being 17 inches and the largest fish being 20 1/2 inches, but the majortiy of fish were in the 19-19 3/4 inch range. My partner who had never fished the drop-shot rig before, picked up a total of 3 fish for over 10lbs., and had more fish hooked that were not landed.

This is the best school of big fish that I have ever found. My winning weight for my top 5 fish was 24.91 lbs.(the largest 5 fish of my day were as follows, in inches: 20 1/2, 20, 20, 19 3/4, 19, 3/4) and our club only has paper tournaments,the final weight probably was over the 25lb. mark, but I took a lot of pictures that day of the thick fish that we were catching. This bag shattered our old club record by almost 3 lbs and will be very hard to beat.

I just wanted to share probably one of the best days of fishing that I have ever had in my life, and hopefully I will someday experience this again.....The Professional athletes always refer to "Being In the Zone"...well this was my time to experience what that feeling felt like....and it is hard to explain!!

Special thanks to Jesse...Catchin-whoppers, and Alphid!!!

Fisher98

[ocf]

sounds like a great day on the water, bet you were happy with the new lake

[Bullwinkle]

Quote:

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Well someone decided to pick a random lake that is the farthest from our meeting place, Lake Sarah, which is located on the western-most part of Hennepin County, a 530 acre lake that no one within our club has ever fished...well needless to say that the majority of our club members were not happy with the situation, but we headed to Lake Sarah anyway!!

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So that's why you put that lake in the hat..... good idea Seriously though good job. That's one heck of a bag.

[Deitz Dittrich]

very cool!!!!!

[rippinlips]

Fisher I know what your talking about our club was out there about 4 years ago and my partner and I set a new bag record of 37.04 lbs of fish for 10 fish, and then the following year my partner and I fished a money tournament out there and we fished the same spot as the year past and came in with 24.21 lbs for 5 fish. Ever since then I go back there every year and fish the same spot and the fish are stacked in there.

[bass-o-matic]

I wish I would have known this a couple of weeks ago, as I didn't do too well in our club tournament out there

[ocf]

i might go there if i get a chance

[Huskiedevle]

About a decade ago I worked for a guy who lived on Lake Sarah. His son used to bass fish there religiously, and always had reports of decent catches.And that was ten some years ago. The lake is obviously still doing well.

[ocf]

sounds like an awesome bass lake