Wayne Ek-Tournament day for the Okoboji Open
The night before the tournament the weather turned ugly, high winds, rain and tornado warnings. When we got up in the morning it wasn’t much better. Launch was at 7a.m. and weigh-in at 3 p.m. We were boat number 5 out in a 40-boat field.
Staying with our game plan we started in Lower Gar, by pitching black/blue ½-ounce Bitsy Flips and black/blue tubes to wood. Or swimming black/blue jigs along rocky shorelines. We stayed in Lower Gar for a couple of hours and left with five fish in the well. We did drop one fish.
Moved from Lower Gar to Minnewashta Lake and spent an hour pitching docks with no bites. From Minnewashta we moved into West Okoboji and checked on a small bay that had been holding fish. There were about five tournament boats in the front half of the bay, we moved to the far back of the bay; which had been holding the most fish. The back end of the bay looked like chocolate milk, at first I thought it was from all the rain run-off, but the creek flowing into the bay was running clear. I think it was from a massive migration of carp to the back of the bay as the water was in that 69/70-degree range for a couple of days. Mike did get one non-measure fish out of the creek.
Next move was to the north end of West Okoboji and the rock bars. We chased smallies up on the north end for a couple of hours with nothing to show for it. We then transitioned to the docks on the north end that had been holding fish, we were able to up-grade a couple of fish off the docks, which helped. We did drop what Mike thought was a good fish off one of those docks.
We moved back down the lake to Millers Bay and ran a series of docks looking for one good fish, we did get a good up-grade off these docks.
Time ran out, leaving us with a five fish limit, but one of them was a 15-inch fish. We did not have enough time to upgrade that one small fish. Our total weight for the day was 14.52-pounds, which put us in 12th place out of forty boats. The winning weight was 18.74-pounds and the big bass of the day weighed in at 5.58-pounds.
Well, that’s it. If you get a chance to fish the Okoboji chain, by all means take it. It’s a fun lake to fish in the spring, before it gets too busy. The next report should be right after the Minnesota bass opener. I have a local tournament and regional tournament that next week.