St. Jude/ Dick Hiley Bass Classic - Lesson learned
The St. Jude/Dick Hiley Bass Classic was held this past weekend on the Mississippi River pools 4&5 out of Wabasha, MN. 72 teams set out to find the winning bag this year with Brent Haimes and Matt Larson doing just that with two limits weighing in at 47.15lbs, great job guys! As for Connor and I it was a good tournament ending day one in 7th with a limit weighing 22.47lbs. Day 2 didn't go as planned and fishing for most was very tough, we did manage to scrape together a limit weighing 17.63.bs giving us a 2 day total of 16 fish for 40.10lbs. The standing though will show we ended in 39th place with 22.47 as we were late to check-in on day 2 and had that days wight DQed.
3 lessons learned this year,
1. Never answer your phone while standing on the deck of the boat one bounce and it will hit the water!!!
2. Always be aware of where your partner is standing in the boat as we both took a bait to the back of the head, ouch!!!
3. PAY ATTENTION to the time, even if you are 2 min. from the check-in point.
Our practices went well for this event and we both learned a lot of new water. I spent 6 days down there Weds-Fri the week before and went back the Weds. the week of the tournament. Connor was able to go down Sun. and Mon. and the Fri. before hand. As I like to power fishing I spent most of my time throwing a 1/4oz. Outkast Swim jig, shallow running crankbait, and did some flipping. Connor did much of the same as we were trying to cover as much water as possible. The weather was perfect the first 3 days down there with temps for 70-80 and sunny. Weds. was my best day on the river in the spring period as for numbers the fish just plain had the feed bag on. Thurs I spent my time down on pool 5 and caught a bunch more fish and one thing was becoming apparent, the fish were in certain areas. You could fish for miles and not get bit then hit the right area and it was like every cast. I wasn't able to find the quality fish I was looking for though, so I spent Friday back on pool 4. Checking some new and old water the bite was much slower for some reason. The water temps have stayed constant around the 53-55 degree mark and the water was lower than any other St. Jude tournament I've fished.
The week of the tournament I went back down on Weds. and started back down on pool 5 with about the same results as the week before, with fish being a little more scattered and few bites. They seem to be pull water as the flow was very strong but still found most the fish I did catch on wood in current, flippin a Outkast Tackle naughty bug. So Thurs. I spent the day back up on pool 4 and fished all new water and found our starting spot again spending the day covering water with the swim jig. Friday was a blessing in disguise as I planned on fishing Lake Pepin but with the wind that was blowing I decided to stay in the backwaters of pool for checking areas I've fished in past years but hadn't checked yet. This helped solidified our pattern we would fish for the tournament as we have found most our fish in the dead shallow grass waiting to move to the bank to spawn.
Tournament days found us starting on pool 4, which as we approached our starting spot ,realized they were drawing the pool down hard with the recent rains. Things started out well, with us putting 3 fish for 12lbs. in the boat in about 10 mins. but that was it. We checked a couple more spots around the area that had fish in practice but with the hard draw down there was now water left and the fish had pulled out. So we ran to another area of grass that we both had fished and caught our other 5 fish to complete our limit. All these fish came on the swim jig or spinnerbait. Day 2 we started back on the same spot as day one only catching 3 fish again but with a large difference in size. We left there with 3 for only 6lbs and headed to our other grass spot catching 2 more there including a 3lber. Hurting for bites and size we decided to head for pool 5 hoping to fish some new water, though as the gates of the lock opened for us to head down another boat was pulling in heading up with only 3 fish now we aren't sure if we made the right decision. Our first couple of stops didn't net us anything but frustration as we fished past another boat they hook and land a 3lb fish. We start bouncing around and are able to put 3 more fish in the boat and decide to head back to pool 4 and check our starting spot. This produced nothing for us and with only a half hour left we ran up towards the check-in area in hopes of some last minute heroics. Instead we boated 2 short fish lost track of time and came in 2 min. late! This resulted in our bag for day 2 being disqualified. We decided to way our fish anyway to see what might have been. They weighed 17.63 and would have put us in 10th place good for a $500 check.
In the end the kids still win with the 72 teams raising over $100,000 dollars again, with over $750,000 being raised over the past 11 years. Thanks to all those involved in making this tournament happen and look forward to being back next year even if I am living in KY.
3 lessons learned this year,
1. Never answer your phone while standing on the deck of the boat one bounce and it will hit the water!!!
2. Always be aware of where your partner is standing in the boat as we both took a bait to the back of the head, ouch!!!
3. PAY ATTENTION to the time, even if you are 2 min. from the check-in point.
Our practices went well for this event and we both learned a lot of new water. I spent 6 days down there Weds-Fri the week before and went back the Weds. the week of the tournament. Connor was able to go down Sun. and Mon. and the Fri. before hand. As I like to power fishing I spent most of my time throwing a 1/4oz. Outkast Swim jig, shallow running crankbait, and did some flipping. Connor did much of the same as we were trying to cover as much water as possible. The weather was perfect the first 3 days down there with temps for 70-80 and sunny. Weds. was my best day on the river in the spring period as for numbers the fish just plain had the feed bag on. Thurs I spent my time down on pool 5 and caught a bunch more fish and one thing was becoming apparent, the fish were in certain areas. You could fish for miles and not get bit then hit the right area and it was like every cast. I wasn't able to find the quality fish I was looking for though, so I spent Friday back on pool 4. Checking some new and old water the bite was much slower for some reason. The water temps have stayed constant around the 53-55 degree mark and the water was lower than any other St. Jude tournament I've fished.
The week of the tournament I went back down on Weds. and started back down on pool 5 with about the same results as the week before, with fish being a little more scattered and few bites. They seem to be pull water as the flow was very strong but still found most the fish I did catch on wood in current, flippin a Outkast Tackle naughty bug. So Thurs. I spent the day back up on pool 4 and fished all new water and found our starting spot again spending the day covering water with the swim jig. Friday was a blessing in disguise as I planned on fishing Lake Pepin but with the wind that was blowing I decided to stay in the backwaters of pool for checking areas I've fished in past years but hadn't checked yet. This helped solidified our pattern we would fish for the tournament as we have found most our fish in the dead shallow grass waiting to move to the bank to spawn.
Tournament days found us starting on pool 4, which as we approached our starting spot ,realized they were drawing the pool down hard with the recent rains. Things started out well, with us putting 3 fish for 12lbs. in the boat in about 10 mins. but that was it. We checked a couple more spots around the area that had fish in practice but with the hard draw down there was now water left and the fish had pulled out. So we ran to another area of grass that we both had fished and caught our other 5 fish to complete our limit. All these fish came on the swim jig or spinnerbait. Day 2 we started back on the same spot as day one only catching 3 fish again but with a large difference in size. We left there with 3 for only 6lbs and headed to our other grass spot catching 2 more there including a 3lber. Hurting for bites and size we decided to head for pool 5 hoping to fish some new water, though as the gates of the lock opened for us to head down another boat was pulling in heading up with only 3 fish now we aren't sure if we made the right decision. Our first couple of stops didn't net us anything but frustration as we fished past another boat they hook and land a 3lb fish. We start bouncing around and are able to put 3 more fish in the boat and decide to head back to pool 4 and check our starting spot. This produced nothing for us and with only a half hour left we ran up towards the check-in area in hopes of some last minute heroics. Instead we boated 2 short fish lost track of time and came in 2 min. late! This resulted in our bag for day 2 being disqualified. We decided to way our fish anyway to see what might have been. They weighed 17.63 and would have put us in 10th place good for a $500 check.
In the end the kids still win with the 72 teams raising over $100,000 dollars again, with over $750,000 being raised over the past 11 years. Thanks to all those involved in making this tournament happen and look forward to being back next year even if I am living in KY.
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