It’s been a while since I posted anything, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been fishing!

I’ve fished a couple of tournaments, practiced fished for future tournaments, and caught a lot of nice panfish with Lesa and her dad. It’s been a fun fishing summer.

I fished club tournaments on North and South Twin Lakes, the Manitowish Chain, and the Minocqua Chain.   The Minocqua Chain was the site of the Red Neck Challenge and included two other clubs…more later.

Overall I’m doing better but nowhere near where I’d like to be. I’ve really been enjoying fishing with the club – it’s a great group of guys that really know how to fish. I’m continuing to learn a lot from fellow club members.

North and South Twin Lakes started out great as my non-boating partner and I each had two keeper fish in the boat really quickly. We were fishing reeds. My partner was throwing a frog and I was throwing a jig and pig.   Was lots of fun – I really love wrestling nice bass out of weeds/reeds. But then the fishing began to slow down and we were stuck on 2 fish each for the next several hours.   Finally about 45 minutes before we had to be back at the launch we decided to fish some docks on North Twin.   Right away we got into fish and each of us brought two more keeper fish to the boat.   Had we had another 15 minutes, I’m sure we both could have limited out – but unfortunately we had to head to the launch for the weigh-in.

Here’s a couple of my fish at weigh in….

The Manitowish Chain tournament was a fun tournament. Fishing was pretty difficult for many of us but we still caught fish. I had the opportunity to fish with Mike Anderson. He’s our tournament director and is a good fisherman. He actively fishes both the Hodag Bassmaster Club and his high school club.   He does well at both clubs.   I really enjoyed fishing with Mike. There’s a picture later in this blog of Mike and a really great fish – don’t miss it!

Mike and I started fishing Clear Lake on the Chain. It was pretty slow and so we moved to the east side of Clear. We started catching largemouth but they were just a little short to keep. We moved to Little Star where the fishing was slow but we still caught a few smallies – we were able to put three keepers in the live well. All three came to the boat on jigs with sweet beavers.

We tried Island Lake but there was a lot of boat traffic and it just wasn’t a comfortable place to fish. So we headed back to Clear Lake to fish the reef one last time and to be close to the ramp for the weigh-in. While we were fishing the end of the reef I was able to hook and land a nice smallie of 3.84 lbs. It turned out to be big fish of the tournament. I was surprised it held up but it did and I was thankful it did!

On Saturday the club fished the Redneck Challenge on the Lake Tomahawk and Minocqua Chain. This was a larger tournament and included two other clubs – one from Merrill and one from Shawano.

It was a really windy day and the temperature had turned cooler. My fishing partner and I headed for a flat that was located off a deep drop-off. I had caught fish there before and it felt like it would be a prime place to fish but we never even got a sniff! So we headed out to fish some deep humps and I caught a couple of keeper smallies. Finally we were on the board! However, it slowed down (again!) and so we headed to Midlake, the second lake on the chain. There I caught another keeper, this one a nice largemouth under a dock.   And then I caught another largemouth that was just barely a keeper.

After fishing slowed again, we headed to the third lake in the chain – Lake Minocqua. After catching some short fish we decided to go back to Lake Tomahawk to fish the humps again before heading to the launch.   I was able to catch one more keeper fish and had a limit of five at this point.

It was time to head to the launch – we arrived about 1:50, ten minutes early. We tied up the boat and began to get ready for the weigh-in.

As it turned out the fishing had been slow for many of the participants. I wish I could have done better but did okay within our club – there was a tight grouping of our club members for second place and below within our own club – I felt lucky and fortunate to grab second place!

As I mentioned before, Mike Anderson was fishing in this tournament – with his dad, Rich Anderson. Sounds like they had a great day together fishing and Mike caught an absolute pig of a largemouth. It was big enough to win Big Fish of the tournament.  It weighed a whopping 4# 12 oz!  Take a look at the sow below!

On Sunday Mike and I decided to pre-fish Trout Lake in anticipation of the tournament on the 15^th. It was a day of off and on stormy weather. I caught a nice fish right off the bat and then the lightning, thunder, and rain began.   We waited the weather out on an island and then started fishing again. About thirty minutes after we started fishing again, rough weather started coming in again. We decided it was time to pull out for the day.   The one fish I caught though, was a decent one – 4# 11 oz.

I’m looking forward to the tournament on the 15^th – hope that fish is back where we caught her!