Anglers Express Blog
Hello fellow Metro Reservoir Anglers. I am pretty sure you all know me by now but my name is Eric Holmes and I am the owner for Anglers Express. I think I have seen everyone in the shop at one point or another and I truly appreciate all of your business. I wanted start something this year and see how it pans out. After each tournament I am going to break down my practice and tournament in a blog post. In this post I am going to describe the good the bad and the ugly. I am going to tell you the process I went through to find the fish, the baits I used and what worked and what did not work. I am pretty much an open book at the shop and I would like to continue. I thoroughly believe fishing is about sharing and helping others have a more enjoyable day on the water. This could potentially come back and hunt me during the tournaments but who knows it could also help someone win a tournament one day.
Practice
I practiced two times before this tournament. The first practice was the Sunday before Memorial Day. I launched early at 4:30 heading north and fished the 2 main points above the bridge on the right. I found post spawn bass schooling on the points. I caught a few good ones on a clear spook and some on a drop shot throwing a morning dawn roboworm. I used a 7’2’ medium light spinning rod with 8lb fluorocarbon and ¼ tungsten weight. I fished all over the north trying to find a pattern but there was little no luck fishing a consistent pattern. I caught a few on a wacky rig, a few on a drop shot and a few on a biffle bug with a hard head. I did have a good with my best 8 going about 20 pounds. The issue was I had to junk fish jumping spot to spot. Fishing against a field of 21 boats does not really allow for too much junk fishing and jumping a lot of spots. I was hoping for big post spawn and summer type of pattern to be developing but I just did not feel like the fish were there just yet.
My 2nd day practice I choose to run to the way south and fish Prettyboy Cove. I call this my hero or zero cove. It has bit me more then I bit it back but on Tuesday I found stained water and I found the fish. I started out on the main lake working everything out there for a long time but the water was clear and void of bass. When I got to the dirty water the game changed. I started catching bass and good ones. I was even seeing good 3-4 pound cruising fishing and they were biting. It was not easy to leave them alone. I was catching them on a wacky right 4” smoke purple senko, 3/32 shakey head with the green weenie robo worm and ned rig. 4 inch green pumpkin with 1/15oz head. Ned rig rod is St. Croix Legend Tournament Bass Wacky rig rod with 4lb or 6lb fluorocarbon line and a 2500 series spinning reel.
Tournament Day
Prior to the tournament I made up my mind to go to PB cove and either make a run at a good finish or blank. Good news is we got a good draw and were able to get ahead of the pack and even better news no one followed us to PB cove. Although, this did make me second guess your decision making but we stuck with the plan. We started out on the left hand side of the big point which I think it is called Shembecklers point and instantly got a keeper on a green pumpkin ned rig. We followed the shore back towards the back of PB cove. There was nothing on that big point and zero bait but as we rounded corner there was bait everywhere. So we started down the shore with shaky head, ned rig and zoom speed craw. We quickly picked up 4 more fish. As we worked the shore line and deeper spots we picked up a few more and had a limit by 9:00. As soon as the sun came out our bite went away and we struggled for a while. The right hand side of PB cove that has deep wood was dead although we did miss one very very good fish over there. It would had really helped out bag out but it just spit the ned rig. We worked all the points in PB cove with everything in the boat. Drop shot, ned rig, shaky head, crankbaits, spinnerbaits and biffle hard heads. Nothing at all. So one more loop down the left hand side and we culled out 2 more fish. Needing a bigger bite was left the back of PB cove and headed north. We stopped on a few spots on our way out as I felt like the few days after practice could had sent the post spawn fish further out to the main lake. We missed another good fish in a tree which would again had helped. As we pushed further out we hit a beaver hut and culled up getting out another small fish.
2 hours left and what to do? We made the choice to go find dirty water in the back of a cove so we choose frog hallow. Sure enough as soon as we got to the back and found dirty water we were able to cull out 2 more fish.
In the end our best 8 fish came on a green pumpkin ned rig, big mouth lures spinnerbait in blue gill color, owner shaky head with green pumpkin trick worm and zoom speed craw in green pumpkin.
What do I think I could had done better? 2 of our better fish came on the spinnerbait so I think working the same areas where I got the ned rig bites with a spinnerbait or squarebill could had produced a bigger reaction bite from a post spawn female. There was zero wind in the backs of the coves so I did not choose to throw it very much. I could also worked the back of some of the smaller cove in back of PB cove.
Congratulations to the top 3 boats and especially the winners in Gordon and Wolfe.
On to the Loch Raven
