2014 Lund Tournament Trail

Lund Boat Company announces their Lund Tournament Trail

Lund Boat Company announces additional grassroots tournament support in Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario, Canada, for a total prize purse of $15,000.

New York Mills, Minn. (Dec. 3, 2013) – The history of tournament angling and support runs deep in the Lund Boat Company history. For several decades, Lund has offered contingency support to anglers who have aspired to be the best‐of‐the‐best and compete amongst some of the best anglers in North America. It doesn’t happen overnight and takes a great amount of time, effort and money to learn the skills required to be a professional angler. “We’ve discussed expanding our grassroots tournament support internally for a while now, and we have decided that this location is the perfect starting point for the Lund Tournament Trail,” states Lund Boats Director of Marketing, Jason Oakes. “Two important things we wanted to address were to strengthen our support of the grassroots tournaments, and to keep the costs to the Anglers down. So, there will be no additional cost to the angler to enter the Lund Tournament Trail.

Just support the local tournaments within the trail, and you will be automatically eligible for the Lund Tournament Trail purse.”

The Lund Tournament Trail is based off a simple point system by which anglers can earn points from six participating tournament venues. Anglers will earn 150 points for a first place finish,

149 for a second place, and 148 for third, continuing to decrease until the entire field has received their points for the respective tournament.

Points are earned and accumulated by each angler individually, even if they are earned while in a team format. Final point awards will be the highest scoring anglers in four of the six tournaments. Anglers have a choice to fish only four tournaments to qualify or to fish five or all six tournaments. Those fishing five tournaments will be given the opportunity to remove their lowest tournament score, while those fishing all six tournaments; will have the opportunity to remove their two lowest scores.

If you are fortunate enough to stand on the first place podium, you will net a cool $7,500 in prize money. In addition, if you fished out of a Lund Boat in each tournament – you would net an additional $2,500 for a total payday of $10,000. “Even though you don’t have to fish out of a Lund to win the $7,500 top prize, we certainly are going to award the top placing angler who did – we definitely want to support our anglers with a little bonus,” says Special Events & Pro Staff Coordinator Ryan Sproule.

The second and third place Angler of the Year finishers will receive $3,000 and $2,000, respectively.

The Lund Tournament Trail selected events are as follows:

 Russell Prairie Classic – Manitoba – June 7 & 8

  Dryden Walleye Masters – Ontario – June 21 & 22

 Minaki Walleye Classic – Ontario – July 5 & 6

 Gary Roach Pro‐Team – Ontario – Aug. 16 & 17

 Red Lake Fall Classic – Ontario – Aug. 30 & 31

 Kevin Frykland Memorial – Manitoba – (Date TBD)

Please stay tuned for more information regarding the Lund Tournament Trail.

About Lund

Since 1948, Lund has been building boats from the heart of lakes country in New York Mills, Minnesota. Built with professional grade materials to withstand a lifetime of use, Lund Boats are guide tested and wilderness proven and demanded by more camps, resorts, fishing guides and professionals throughout North America. Whether the preference is aluminum or fiberglass, each boat is carefully designed with fishing features and optimal fishing layouts in mind. They’re engineered for maximum performance and superior boat control to effortlessly stay on the breaks and catch more fish, delivering The Ultimate Fishing Experience. Lund Boats – Built by Fishermen for Fishermen.

Lund on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LundBoats  

Deer/Fall 2013

Over the past few years I have had a lot of action on my website during the fall because I have been pretty active in posting photos of what's happening with our deer season - trail cam photos and pictures of the deer that we've harvested.  I know that many of my friends love to check out what we're seeing and usually I'm proud of all the great deer that we have here in Sunset Country.  

This season has been different.  After a long, cold winter with a lot of snow our deer population this fall was really mediocre, probably below mediocre actually.  My clients had a really tough season and we struggled to connect with the big bucks that we've been fortunate to see over the past five or six years.  Here are a couple of the biggest deer that I had on camera, both really good ones that any hunter would love to have a chance at, but usually I have several in this caliber on the go.  To make matter worse, we were getting a lot more nocturnal action than normal this year, most likely because of the high wolf population in our region right now.  

It was still a fun season, full of plenty of adventure.  My buddy Sean McAughey and I spent quite a bit of time together scouting around for deer and had some good luck with ruffed grouse, probably my favourite thing on the planet to eat.  

Sean got one one day on a big walk we did and when we got back to my boat he noticed that it only had one leg, and a "stump" for the other...pretty interesting.  He was totally healthy otherwise.  

There are still plenty of deer around, but we did seem to lose some of our mature bucks last winter.  I think the wolves get a lot of them early in the winter, after they are worn out from the rut period.  We also had a very late winter, so it was not a great growing season for antlers.  I had several deer that were actually smaller than they were last year and some of my friends mentioned the same thing.  

This was a big rub near one of my baits, always nice to see these! 

Caught plenty of fish this fall as well - some bass, like this nice largemouth, walleyes and a few crappies.  I'm getting the ice fishing gear dug out now.  

The boat has been put away and another deer season is nearing its end.  At this point I'm not sure what my plan is going to be for deer hunting next year, as far as guiding.  Hopefully we'll have a good winter without to much snow and I think we'll be on the right track for the deer to make a comeback, but another bad winter will be devastating. 

You can view trail cam photos that I captured of some of the deer around my stands and blinds right here - http://www.gussyoutdoors.com/trail-cam-gallery/2013-deer-trail-cam/ 

Enjoy.

End of the season in Sunset Country...almost!!!

The open water season is winding down for another year for me.  There is still plenty of time to get out there and catch some fish but I have been switching gears to deer hunting mode lately so I'm running out time.  I have had some good days on the water since my last post though...

My buddy Jamie Bruce and I got out in late September and had a pretty good day catching largemouths on Lake of the Woods.  We didn't catch numbers but we caught several big ones.  Here is a beauty that I caught on a Jackall MC/60 MR crankbait.  

We caught two of the biggest fish of the day on the same spot...

The last bass tournament of the year took place in Sioux Narrows, out of Whitefish Bay.  Here are my buddies Matt Rydberg and Brian McNanney with part of their 19 lb day two catch that helped land them in 2nd place.  Mike Reid and I teamed up for this tournament, didn't have great fishing but ended up with a 6th place finish and got the last cheque!  Here are the top six results:

Ted/Louise Stewner	18.27	18.64	36.91
Matt Rydberg/Brian McNanney	17.25	19.56	36.81
Alex/Darrell Kezsler	18.39	17.81	36.2
Rick Savage/Bruce Berringer	18.34	16.58	34.92
Murphy Paypompee/Francis Kavanaugh	18.35	16.4	34.75
Mike Reid/Jeff Gustafson	17.91	15.68	33.59

In early October, Sean McAughey and I hooked up and filmed an episode for my TV show, Fishing with Gussy.  We had an awesome afternoon catching some big pike on Lake of the Woods...all caught on a Jackall Squad Minnow 128.  It's an oversized bass jerkbait that these big pike love!  Show will air sometime in the new year.  

Last week I was able to get out with a couple of Winnipeg Jets players, Anthony Peluso and Dustin Byfuglien.  We had a fun day on the water, catching a little bit of everything.  We started off musky fishing and had a couple of follows, but no biters.  We then caught a few walleyes, some smallmouths and largemouths.  A fun fall day of fishing.  

Here is Buff with a couple of big largemouths at the end of the day...

Look for some deer pictures coming up soon! 

Shoal Lake Last Chance tournament

The annual Shoal Lake Last Chance tournament took place this past weekend.  Anglers were greeted with some great fall weather, though the fishing probably would have been a little bit better had the water cooled down a little bit more.  

My buddy Dennis Favreau and I spent a few days prefishing and found that the largemouths were biting a lot better than the smallmouths for us so we fished for largemouths exclusively during the tournament.  Things worked out and we caught five good fish each day which were good enough to give us the tournament win.  

We weighed nearly identical bags each day and most of our fish were all the same size.  We caught them on a variety of baits but the best big fish bait of the weekend was a 5/8 oz Northland Jungle Jig.  Black/blue was the best colour.  We also caught a few fish on wacky rigged Jackall Flick Shake worms (6.8").  

Though our fish don't get as big as they do in the south, we have some excellent largemouth fishing on Lake of the Woods and Shoal Lake.  These were all chunky, healthy fish.  

1	16	Jeff Gustafson / Dennis Favereau		19.30		18.68	37.98
2	36	Joe Pritchard / Hiram Archibald		17.40	4.20	17.52	34.92
3	32	Jamie Bruce / John Frost		17.90		16.50	34.40
4	33	Mark Libitka / Bart Stebnitsky		17.70	4.12	16.46	34.16
5	28	Carl Greene / Kendrick Penace	4.34	19.46	4.36	14.52	33.98
6	3	Jim Gustafson / Rick Savage		16.94	4.30	17.02	33.96
7	8	Tim Strempler / Terry McClymont		17.22	4.18	16.72	33.94
8	18	Scott Dingwall / Jay Samsal		17.56	4.24	16.14	33.70
9	19	John / Marc Gujez		16.58	4.06	17.12	33.70
10	12	Alex / Amanda Kezler		17.08	3.88	16.58	33.66

Bassin' For Bucks

The 17th annual Bassin' For Bucks tournament took place last weekend in Sioux Narrows, on the south end of Lake of the Woods.  My good friend Mike Reid and I have fished the tournament together since we were 13 years old and have had several good finishes without ever winning the event.  Things went our way last weekend and were able to pull off the victory in the three day event.  

The highlight of the event happened on the third day when I caught my biggest northern bass ever - a 7.19 pound MONSTER!  It anchored out catch of 19.76 pounds and was a big part of our win.  We had three good days of fishing and weighed in seven smallmouths and eight largemouths over the course of the weekend.  We caught our fish on a variety of baits - some topwater, some on worms and a few on jigs.  

1st	82	Jeff Gustafson	Mike Reid	16.48	19.20	19.76	55.44
2nd	4	Ted Stewner	Louise Stewner	18.14	16.16	15.72	50.02
3rd	58	Jeff Engstrom	Connor Burton	15.53	16.32	15.90	47.75
4th	6	Matt Rydberg	Brian McNanney	17.82	16.41	13.26	47.49
5th	11	Troy Norman	Andy Carlson	14.98	15.74	16.53	47.25
6th	75	Bill Straight	Leo Heyens	18.44	15.45	13.36	47.25
7th	32	Norman Lindsay	Dave Lindsay	16.43	14.91	14.75	46.09
8th	107	Bill Senter	Brian Durham	15.49	13.55	15.54	44.58
9th	72	Bill McGhie	Ken McGhie	13.90	16.08	14.13	44.11
10th	5	Roger Harrison	Dorese Harrison	15.91	13.89	14.30	44.10

Mike and I had a great week of fishing, and caught some nice fish in practice.  Here is Mike with a nice largemouth he caught.  

We have been trying to win this tournament for many years, so this was a sweet win!  This event is a fun one, you can find more information at www.bassinforbucks.com