Wheeler Lake FLW Tour Open

I have been gone from home for exactly a month today!  Tomorrow is the start of the final FLW Tour Open of the year at Sam Rayburn Reservoir in Texas.  I'm having a great time but I'll be happy to get on the road home when this event is done.  Here is a report from the Wheeler Lake tournament back in September.  
I had a decent tournament and ended up with a 33rd place finish, which I was pretty happy with.  It was tough fishing and stout field.  I got a check, so all good!  

My buddy Mike Reid from came down to Wheeler with me a fished the tournament as a co-angler.  He ended up getting a 30th place and a check as well.  We had a good time!  The week went by pretty quick.  

Wheeler has some smallmouths in it...not a ton, but there are some good ones.  This 4-11 fish was the biggest one that I caught there and I was very fortunate to catch it on day two of the tournament.  It saved the day for me!  

I caught all of my fish at this event on one bait - a 3/4 oz Rapala Rippin' Rap.  I threw it on a Shimano Crucial 7'11" medium action crankbait rod, a 7.0:1 Shimano Curado reel and 12 lb Sufix fluorocarbon.  I literally wore the nose off a couple of these baits...they were a hot bait there.  

Here is Mike with a couple of white bass...they are loaded in Wheeler and when you find them schooling you will catch two at a time on your crankbait.  They are very aggressive!  

I did get one big fish in practice off a dock...this one was on a 1/4 oz  Northland Jungle Jig (white) that I was pitching around the docks.  There are a ton of shad in this lake so that was my reason for throwing a white jig.  

August and I spent last week at Lake Fork in Texas and caught a few big bass.  I'll post some photos from there next week, as well as photos and a report from Rayburn.  

Bassin' For Bucks

Mike Reid and I fished the Sioux Narrows Bassin' For Bucks tournament last week on Lake of the Woods.  This was the 16th year for this top-notch tournament.  Mike and I have fished together every year, since we were 16 years old!  It's always a fun one for us and this year was no exception - we had a blast!  

We ended up with a solid 3rd place finish with a three-day weight of 52.94 pounds.  We were about a pound behind the champions, our friends Alex Keszler and Wayne Wagner of Winnipeg.  

We targeted largemouths throughout the event and had two really good days but had a tough time getting the big fish on day three.  The first two days we had overcast, cold, windy weather that really seemed to get the largemouths fired up.  On day three it got sunny and calm and it just seemed to kill our bite.  We were catching our fish on rocks mainly and it seems like when the sun comes out these fish move back to the weeds and we were just not able to catch the same quality.  Still, it was a great weekend.  

This was a big fish from practice, over 5 pounds.  I caught it on a Northland Dip-Stick rigged on a 5/0 Gamakatsu Wide-Gap Worm Hook.  G. Loomis makes a great rod for fishing these Senko-style baits...a 7'1" medium heavy rod that has a lot of backbone to pull this fish out of cover.  

Mike with a 5 pound plus fish that he caught in practice on a 1/2 oz flipping jig.  

Tournament champions Alex Keszler and Wayne Wagner.  They targeted smallmouths during this event and their consistency paid off.  They never had any of their catches under 17 pounds.  Congratulations guys!   

1st	48	Alex Keszler	Wayne Wagner	18.45	18.42	17.02	53.89	SM	3.56	4.37	0.00	7.93	LM	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
2nd	78	Bryan Gustafson	Darrin Bohonis	19.58	17.28	16.89	53.75	SM	3.86	0.00	4.38	8.24	LM	3.93	0.00	0.00	3.93
3rd	43	Jeff Gustafson	Mike Reid	18.25	19.42	15.27	52.94	SM	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	LM	0.00	5.29	0.00	5.29
4th	44	Matt Rydberg	Brian McNanney	20.09	15.88	16.28	52.25	SM	0.00	0.00	4.43	4.43	LM	4.60	0.00	0.00	4.60
5th	26	Josh Peacock	Kris Soderman	17.84	14.37	18.78	50.99	SM	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	LM	4.30	0.00	4.11	8.41
6th	108	Bill Senter	Brian Durham	15.73	15.52	19.21	50.46	SM	0.00	0.00	4.82	4.82	LM	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
7th	1	Darryl Galusha	Gord Adams	19.50	18.76	11.22	49.48	SM	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	LM	5.14	5.50	0.00	10.64
8th	11	Hiram Archibald	Joe Pritchett	15.88	17.43	15.94	49.25	SM	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	LM	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
9th	45	Ted Stewner	Louise Stewner	16.63	16.73	15.83	49.19	SM	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	LM	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00
10th	61	Genvie Grafham	Terry Grafham	15.38	17.90	15.58	48.86	SM	0.00	0.00	0.00	0.00	LM	0.00	4.44	5.15	9.59

Detroit River FLW Tour Open

Last week I fished in the second of four FLW Tour Opens that I'm doing this year at the Detroit River.  This is a great venue for a big tournament because its such a large system of water with Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair as well as the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers.  

I ended up having an okay tournament since I was lucky enough to slide into 49th place and earn a check.  I had a tough first day, only catching 12-10, landing in 107th place.  I fished St. Clair the first day and spent most of my day in one area and they just seemed to have moved and I couldn't get on them again.  I had a big area all to myself and there were plenty of good fish around it in the practice.  

On day two I went to Lake Erie and had a great day, landing 21-4, so I was able to make a good jump up the leader board.  

These fish were part of my 21-4 stringer on day two of the tournament

On-stage on day two with the big bag.  I caught most of my fish during the week on three different baits - crankbaits (Rapala DT 10's and DT 14's) as well as drop-shot rigs (Northland Impulse Jigging Leeches, X-Zone Slammers) and tubes.  

My Dad was down for the week with me to practice and help out so that was fun.  Here he is with a big one during practice.  

This is a really fun place to fish, provided the wind doesn't blow to hard!  We were lucky throughout the week that we were there that we didn't really have any bad weather days...I stuck around for a few days after the tournament and got on some big fish like this 5 pound smallouth.  

We don't catch these at Lake of the Woods!  This is a drum...they are absolutely thick on Lake Erie...my Dad caught about 50 of them during one of the days we practiced out there!  

There are two more FLW Tour Opens left this year, one at Wheeler Lake, Alabama and one at Sam Rayburn Reservoir in Texas.  The top five in points qualify for next year's Forrest Wood Cup.  After two tournaments I'm sitting in 9th, so I'm hangin' in there!  

It's been a while!

It's been a while since I've posted anything new on here...but I've been busy fishing, so forgive me!  We had the Shaw Kenora Bass International earlier in August and the past two weeks I've been in Detroit for the FLW Tour Open on the Detroit River.  Here are some photos from the past few weeks...  

My dad and my brother Ben finished 2nd in the SKBI...congratulations boys!  They had a great weekend, including the largest catch of the tournament (over 20 pounds) on day two.  

The new White Cap Pavilion tent was a great site for the event...it was awesome!  Good crowds showed up every day for the weigh-ins and the party on Saturday night was a blast!  

Team Canada won the Can-Am Challenge and the Frank Townsend Memorial Trophy...we had a great team this year - Dave Bennett and Mark Libitka, myself and Savy, Jess Swenson and Mike Reid, Matt Rydberg and Brian McNanney, Troy Norman and Jay Samsal.

Savy and I had a tough tournament and ended up with an 18th place finish.  We just couldn't get the largemouths to bite for us.  This was a big fish that Chris caught during practice, around 5 pounds.  We have had pretty good fortune at this tournament for the past several years so we were due for a tougher one.  We'll be back next year!  

Bronzeback and FFCBC

The past two weekends I have fished the Kenora Bronzeback Classic on Lake of the Woods, where August and I took a 5th place finish.  Then, this past weekend John Peterson and I fished the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship on Rainy Lake and walked away with a solid 3rd place finish.  

FFCBC champions Mike Luhman and Mark Raveling hoist the big trophy after the the tournament

The Rapala X-Rap Prop was one of our hot baits last week at Rainy Lake...here was a nice smallmouth caught during practice.

Getting ready to blast off on Day three of the FFCBC

Scott and Jeff Dingwall with the winners cheque at the Bronzeback Classic