A busy August in Sunset Country

It's been a while since my last entry.  I have barely had a day off since early August between the tournaments, guide trips and filming some TV segments.  It's been fun but I think I kind of bit off a little more than I could chew with my time.  The next few weeks should be fun...I love fall fishing and everything has slowed down quite a bit.  Here are a few highlights from the past few weeks.  

The Kenora Bass International, our big Lake of the Woods tournament www.kbifishing.com took place in early August.  Chris Savage have fished the tournament together since 2000 and have been lucky enough to win it twice.  Last year, we led the event for two days, then crashed on day three.  The same thing happened this year.  We hung on in second place for each of the first two days then things fell apart on day three and we landed in 19th.  Not exactly the finish we were hoping for!  Over the first two days we caught some good largemouths and smallmouths - flipping a Northland Slurpies Brush Beaver and casting a Jackall Binksy topwater bait.  Caught some muskies during the KBI too!  

After the KBI, i got in a few days of fun fishing and caught some walleyes and bass.  Here, Ethan Belrose and I are holding on to a few bass from Lake of the Woods.  He is one of the best young anglers I have ever seen!  

On a rainy Monday, the crew from Johnson Outdoors (Minn Kota / Humminbird) visited Lake of the Woods.  We caught a bunch of walleyes and cooked up a great shore lunch.  A fresh shore lunch is one of the highlights of the trip from many anglers that visit Sunset Country www.ontariossunsetcountry.ca

Later in August we had the 10th annual International Falls Bass Championship on Rainy Lake and the Rainy River.  Scott Dingwall and I have fished this tournament together since it started and have had some good finishes over the years.  This year we had the toughest fishing we have ever had at this event and ended up with a 9th place finish.  I caught some big smallmouths like this one during practice but the water level dropped in the 24 hours before the tournament started and the fishing just got a lot tougher.  We'll be back to try again next year.  It's a fun tournament and very well run!  www.ifallsbass.com

After the I. Falls tournament I headed back down to Rainy Lake for some redemption.  I got the opportunity to be on the Scott Martin Challenge TV show and we had a phenomenal day on Rainy Lake.  We caught a bunch of four pounders, it was actually one of the best days I have ever had on that lake.  Look for this show to air some time in January.  It'll be a good one!  

Last week we had the Bassin' For Bucks tournament in Sioux Narrows, also on Lake of the Woods. www.bassinforbucks.com 
Mike Reid and I have fished this event for all 18 years that it has taken place.  It's a fun tournament that we look forward to every year.  After finally winning the tournament last year we had high expectations this go around.  We started off strong with a 19 pound bag on day one, but we struggled to catch big largemouths over the next couple of days and ended up in 3rd place.