As you may have read a few weeks ago, my dad and I recently signed up to do a fishing tournament on our home water in Southern Minnesota. Since this was our first tournament we didn’t have high expectations for the day and we just hoped to catch one or two fish.
We arrived at our cabin around 4:30 on a Friday night to prepare our boat and to get all of our stuff ready. Also, we had to go to a meeting for lake selection and for a couple of other rules. We got the lake we wanted and also got a pretty early starting spot at 8th.
The next morning we woke up around 6:00 am in preparation for the tournament. Our breakfast consisted of some bagels with peanut butter on them. We loaded up the boat and shoved off to head to the boat launch. We arrived at the boat launch and went through the necessary check in procedures. We were told that the weather report looked perfect for the day. We sat in the launching area waiting for the seven boats in front of us to launch so we could hit our spot and start fishing. The spot we had chosen was the same area we had been fishing all year which consisted of a marina and heavy cover. One of the boats that launched before us was able to reach our spot first so we started a little further down the lake. At right about 7:30, we had a fish on and landed a small 12.5 inch keeper. Small, but it was just big enough to keep. By the time we reached our spot the other boat had left so we were able to fish it. Before I knew it the line was whipping out of my rod. I thought I had a monster bass, but by the time I got it on the boat we figured out it was a big northern, not the target species but at 26 inches it was still a good fish. Just a little later we had a “double header” which meant that my dad and I both had fish on at the same time. We landed them and they turned out to be a 3 pounder and a 2.5 pounder. After catching a bunch of small 10 inch bass we decided to move to a new spot. At this new spot we caught a few more small keepers. At about noon we turned around and headed back to our starting spot. We pulled in a few nice fish and culled out some of the smaller ones.
For the rest of the afternoon we didn’t have any more bites so we headed back to the weigh in site to make all of our fish stayed alive. The tournament we were in had a “small fish award” which gave $200 to the boat with the smallest fish. A few boats had weighed in before us so we had an idea of the competition. Our small fish was weighed first, it weighed 1.1 pounds, but we were edged out of the prize by .01 pounds, a real disappointment. We finished the weigh in with a 10.91 pound bag which finished us in the top 20 out of forty boats. We didn’t win but we felt it was a good showing for our first tournament.
We finished the day with a steak and shrimp dinner banquet at the local VFW. It was overall a fun experience and one I would recommend to any fisherman.
Outdoors in Minnesota 