MIxing things up

I went out to Lake Ballentine near Madison Lake about a week ago. I'd heard good things about the action out there, both for bass and northern, and was interested in giving it a shot.

My fishing partners for the day were Danny Williams, a former standout athlete at St. Clair who is know going to school for golf management at Arizona State University, and his older brother Mike, who happens to have a pretty decent collection of newspaper clippings and photos of some pretty impressive fish.

One of those newspaper clippings happened to have a 15 pound striper, which was one big fish.

Mike Williams likes to fish bass, so naturally, we expected to get on top of some serious fish between the two of us. Danny Williams likes to get sun, and fish on occasion.

While pitching docks, locals would come out and tell us the big ones were "out there." One fella told us to work the weeds for northern.

We did all of that and then some, but Danny was the only one who actually caught a bass — two, as a matter of fact. Yours truly missed two fish. The first one, a fat hawg that boiled the water next to the boat, ran deep and snapped my line — operator error here; I set the drag too tight only moments before.

The second I missed on a scum frog — again operator error as I set the hook too soon.

The boat traffic, according to the locals that day, was the busiest they'd seen in a long time. The small public landing was full for most of the day, and the lake definitely was abuzz. Mike Williams blamed the boat traffic for our slow day, and was already making plans for a weekday trip where he could "enjoy" the lake.

The trip to Ballentine came on the heals of a trip to Lake Francis, which fell through. That trip, however, will take place tonight. We'll shoot for bass and northerns, but, as always, all fish are fair game.

I'll post a fishing update from Frances later.

Pair of tourney winners

Well, I finally have results for you from the Lake German Tuesday Nite Walleye Tourney that took place July 14.

Nate Brunz and his teammate Andy (see below for more on Andy) pulled off the win, weighing two fish for a 10 pound, 8 ounce stringer.

Brothers Tom and Ken Davis finished second with one fish weighing in at 6 pounds 4.6 ounces. This also happened to be the big fish winner on German, which netted the pot money for big fish from East Jefferson. If you'll remember, the field was skunked at Jeff and all prize money carried over to German.

Third place went to the team of Troy Bessman and Steve Wolfe. The duo weighed one fish at 4 pounds, .8 ounces.

The tournament returned to Lake Washington Tuesday. Tournament director Tim Hobbs said the walleyes weren't nearly as big as the first time the tournament hit Washington — Stu McKee and Roger Kramer edged Bill Holland and Dan Griep despite weighing one less fish — plenty of small walleye were caught.

Bessman and Wolfe pulled in first place with a three fish, 4 pound 8.4 ounce stringer. Coming in second was McKee and Kramer. They weighed two fish at 2 pounds, 3.6 ounces.

Holland and Griep weighed in one fish at 1 pound, 4.1 ounces, which narrowlly handed them third place. Hobbs said he weighed in four other fish that landed between .9 ounces (wow, that's small!) to 1 pound, 2.4 ounces.

Hobbs said he expects a full, official tally of the standings later this week. I'd been tracking the progress of Holland/Griep, Kramer/McKee closely, because early on these two teams were the teams scoring all the points. Unofficially, I have them locked at 44 with two regular season tournaments to go.

This is very unofficial, however, as points for each tournament can be awarded for just showing up, and also for just weighing a fish. And I also have a sneaking suspicion that the team of Bessman/Wolfe isn't far behind the other two teams.

More on Andy
As a journalist, I'm trained to track down the facts. If you can't verify something, you cut it out or write around it. But here on this blog, and specifically with these walleye tournaments, I'm in a unique situation.

Nate Brunz and Andy were the German winners, but Hobbs couldn't come up with a last name for Andy. And with the increasing popularity of cell phones, I couldn't find a listing for Brunz to call and ask him.

Now, if this were going in our newspaper, I'd start calling other anglers from the tournament, hoping one or the other would know his name. Then I'd call him and verify. I will still do this to make sure Andy gets his proper credit, but I don't want to short change him now by not mentioning him along with Brunz as winners of the German tourney.

So if you know who Andy is, drop me a line. If you're out there Andy, drop me a line. In the meantime, I'll do my homework.

You might wonder how this could happen since both were fishing in a tournament, but until the newspaper started snooping around the walleye tournaments, there was probably little need for Hobbs to gather last names and correct spellings and such. Several of the anglers in this year's field have said that the best thing about fishing the tournaments was the camraderie.

Several of the anglers admit knowing a lot of the competition strictly through the walleye tournaments, so things like last names don't always crop up and complicate things.

Leave it to me to come along and make a casually event just a little more formal. Doh!

Boater up

Do you remember your first car?

I do — a 1986 Honda Accord with a moonroof and power windows. The radio wasn't that great, but it had a tape player, which I thought was the coolest thing next to the moonroof and power windows.

I bought that Accord after my senior year of high school. While playing a legion baseball tournament in Minnesota Lake, the moonroof went out on me and it rained that night. This was my first mechanical experience with a car, and needless to say, if it happened again, I'd be able to fix that moonroof.

Of course, I've had a few vehicles since that Accord. Starter cars are a must if you plan on respecting what you come to own later in life.

But, until recently, I've never owned a boat. I always imagined my first boat as a 14-footer with a one-armed bandit for a motor. I've operated plenty of those boats, but never had I owned one.

Now I'm the proud owner of a 1988 Lund Tyee — with a blown motor. I have no mechanical skills when it comes to boats, much like I had no mechanical skills when I bought that Accord. Yet I'm still very excited to get started.

This boat has a steering wheel, depth finder, trolling motor and a livewell — the equivalent of the moonroof and power windows from that Accord. It was my brother-in-laws starter boat before it became mine.

He upgraded to a new Lund Tyee, which is a beautiful boat by the way. I look at all the outings I had in his old boat, my new boat, and I feel fortunate to be able to start with this Lund. I also look at his ability to upgrade after paying his dues with an older boat, and I'm excited to know that I'll learn what I need to learn now, so some day I can upgrade to a newer boat, as well.

But for now, I'm learning; I'm learning about motors, I'm learning about boating regulations, and soon I'll be learning to back up a boat trailer. If it goes anything like the small trailers I backed up when I worked at U-Haul, well, I'm probably screwed.

So if you see me in the near future struggling at a boat landing, make sure you come up and laugh in my face. And then, after you gather your composure, reassure me that you were once a rookie at the boat launch, too, and that everything will get better.

Choice reading

We're in that time of summer where we get bogged down by hot weather (not so much this year), summer plans and life in general. For me, this means very little fishing. But I'm still able to get in some reading from time to time, and I came across a great bass article from Russ Bassdozer on weed fishing. Don't let the bass angle in this article throw you, because plenty of fish like the weeds.

 

Frustration

Well, apparently I'm a liar. 

I still don't have results for last weeks Tuesday Nite Walleye Tourney. I talked with Tim Hobbs last week, but results weren't available. He really couldn't talk much about it that night because he was busy.

But since our last talk, we both keep missing each other. So I will continue to try and track down results. Perhaps I'll give Stu McKee a call and see how he and Roger Kramer did and how they feel about the season to date.

Berkley's Gulp Alive

John Cross wrote about the Gulp! Alive! minnows in Sunday's edition of the Free Press. John's old school, and he has great journalism ethics and beliefs. If any of you caught his column, he didn't name the little minnows he invested $20 in.

His point is that he's just like every other non-pro, and he has to pay for his lures. And since he pays for his lures, well, the manufacturer can just buy ad space in the paper if it wants marketing.

Now, I'm not making fun of John here or belittling what he wrote. I definitely have learned a lot from that man. I rather enjoyed the column, and I'm sure he figured many people knew exactly what artificial wonder he was talking about.

But here on the blog, I've come to believe that the more that I can offer you in way of links and other tidbits, the more informed you can become. And like John, I realize a good many people knew instantly that he was talking about Gulp! Alive!.

However, a reader e-mailed me a few weeks back asking me to break down some basics to fishing. This reader said the Internet can be overwhelming at times, and often fishing articles and columns are written for the more advanced fisherman.

So for the few out there who didn't know what artificial bait John was talking about ... well, now you know.

Walleye update

Talked with Tim Hobbs briefly today. He wasn't able to give me an update yet on Tuesday's walleye tourney at Lake German. I'm hoping to have an update for you sometime this afternoon.

It did sound like they caught a few out on German, so that has to be good news for the German and Jefferson Lakes Sportsmen's club. I imagine they like hearing success stories from the club's lakes.

Took the son out fishing Thursday. Best outing yet for the youngster. He's getting pretty good at casting, and that makes me proud.

It is amazing how easy it is to keep a kids interest when the fish are biting. Especially when, like today, they catch one on their first cast.

That hooked Tyler for sure. Other outings, he's lasted anywhere from half an hour to an hour, but mostly because he's trying to run around at the open space out at Madison Lake. Sometimes just trying to cast like his Daddy is enough to keep his interest.

But today, after 11 sunnies for him and eight sunnies and a walleye for the old man, the boy still wanted to fish more. We spent nearly two hours fishing, and he complained about leaving.

Now that's one heck of an outing. Even made his old man beam like a new father.

Reel memories

I was cleaning in my garage the other day, and I started organizing a new area for my fishing stuff. I have a few old tackle boxes I've set aside for my son.

One tackle box is filled with things I no longer fish with, for one reason or another, but will be neat for a little boy when he gets his first tackle box.

I've also stopped bringing several spools of line with me, mostly preferring to have one extra spool and four poles, which can be a load at times, too.

Among my minnow buckets and ice fishing tackle and poles, I also have several reels I've used over the years that have gone to heck.

My first real reel purchase came in 1996, which was the spring of my freshman year at then Mankato State.

I bought a Daiwa spin-caster with a little wooden knob on the end of the handle for $60. I probably spent my money foolishly at the time, considering I should have put it toward expenses, but that golden beauty lasted me nearly 10 years and brought me many memories of big fish, among them my first 5-pound bass.

I also used a Quantum S220 with a firing pin. The firing-pin option, basically a flip switch with a pin that allows the line to be hooked without actually flipping open the bale and grabbing the line, sold me on the reel at the time.

This option also came with my Daiwa. I look at those two reels now and think I was foolish to love such a little gimmick, mostly because of all the times the little pin inside the firing switch would catch the line and send my lure on a kamikaze dive toward my face or neck.

But I also have three cheap reels I purchased at Gander Mountain, and the bales on those reels tend to snap shut for no apparent reason, also sending my lure on a kamikaze dive toward my face or neck.

As much as I fish, you'd think I'd want to go back to investing bigger money in my reels and poles. Logically, I'd love to be frivolous when it came to my fishing equipment.

But that's not realistic, and I'm not a pro. I think if I ever tried to fish tournaments where money was the drive to compete, I'd spare no expenses on equipment. Unfortunately, I'm not and there are better bills to concentrate on.

Do I regret spending cheap money on Gander's reels? Absolutely not. I'm a big believer that if you pick through poles and reels and find deals when there are deals to be had, you'll be happy with your equipment and it will last you a while.

Even those newer reels lasted me a couple of years. At $20 for a cheap reel, a person could still come out on the cheaper end of the shelf life of some of the more expensive reels.

Then again, you might have to teach yourself how to dodge lures if you opt for the cheaper route. It could be interesting; you might enjoy the adrenaline rush. And if nothing else, when the reel goes ca put, you can throw it on a shelf and look at it from time to time for fond memories.

Looking for reels? I'd suggest checking out reviews first. A couple to consider would be Fishing Reel Reviews (I know, real simple, huh?!) and TackleTour.

Back for more

I'd like to tell you all that I've been hitting the lakes with the same consistency as the past few years, but then I would be telling a lie.

Weddings, holidays, family reunions ... we're in the thick of summer. 

But that doesn't mean I'm not thinking about fishing all the time. Lately I've been thinking about a big bass I let off the hook last Friday. Fishing a scumfrog — I'm continuing to hone my skills with this lure — I missed a modest strike, then casted back out to the same spot and hooked into a big one.

The strike reminded me of a shark attack out of the movie Jaws. One second, my frog is resting on top of the water. And then, with a quick, if-you-blink-your-gonna-miss-it move, something came from beneath the frog, snapped it, and the frog was gone.

I've been working the scumfrog a lot lately, mostly to work on my timing. With all topwater lures, the key to a good hook set is getting the slack out of your line. The frog is no different, except that the wait to get your line tense can seem like minutes, not seconds.

This is sort of what happened when that Jaws-like attack on my frog took place. A reader suggested I count to two before setting the hook whenever I fish with the frog. So earlier in the day, with other strikes,  I did count to two, which improved my hook set dramatically.

But when that lunker snatched up my frog, I forgot the essence of counting because everything happened so fast. The normal violent, hungry strike was gone, replaced by the quick unseen.

Perhaps I didn't quiet set my hook on that lunker's lip. Perhaps I didn't even really give a good tug for the hook set at all. I'm not really sure. But that hawg stayed low with a lot of pull, driving the end of my pole into my ribs as it ripped through the water.

And then it shot its body up and out of the water, gave that signature bass shake, and poof, my frog was gliding, almost floating, 15 feet above my head, the line falling slack onto my shoulders as the frog dropped behind the boat.

It's been a while since I've seen a bass that big. Even I had to sit down for a second and just stare in awe.

A friend once asked me if it makes me mad when I lose a big fish like that. I suppose. I'm sure it makes most anglers mad, if even for only a little bit.

But truthfully, whenever I lose a good-sized fish like that, I spend a good part of that day, and the next few days, thinking about the one that got away.

After all, it's the memory of the one that got away that drives us back to the lake, back to the hunt, and maybe, just maybe, another shot at the one that got away.