Little River Lake Club tournament

This past weekend I spent both days on Little River Lake near Leon, IA.  This is a lake I haven't seen in about 15 years.  The DNR recently remodeled this lake and the fish populations are booming.  I don't say this too much, but the bass are over populated.  It was amazing how many bass I caught in two days, and add in all the other bass my club members caught, the population is huge!  That is good thing, however this particular weekend the population had many anglers shaking their head because the keeper bass over 15 inches were few and far between.
To say the least, fishing was fun, but at the same time frustrating.  It is hard to catch 30 plus bass and not catch a keeper.  A lot of anglers even reported catching more than that without a keeper.  Of course, as tournaments go someone will find the keepers and bring them to the scales.  This is one thing I enjoy about tournaments, no matter how bad or how good you think you did that day, a tournament really let's you know how did against other bass anglers.  This is one of the big reasons I fish tournaments, to measure up against others to really see how I did.  Some days one keeper is great, while others 10 keepers is great, fishing a tournament tells you that and you can see how you did.
Practice day found me driving to a lot of different parts of the lake checking things out.  Water clarity can help me focus things in this time year more than anything.  Water temperature is always on the forefront as I look around in April too.  I spent some time graphing and charting the lake with StructureScan too, which is something that I am getting more used to using to search our structure.  While fishing, I tried many techniques on Saturday trying to find a key bait that would lead to a few keepers.  This was a bust, as I didn't catch a single keeper.  Dozens of bass were caught that day, but nothing of good size, again, the lake is full of 13-14 inch bass, it's FUN!  However, as I sat at the motel that night preparing rods for the next day I decided to go with the basics and fish as hard as I could during the tournament with what I learned on Saturday.  Key baits I tied on were a jig, a River Green/Pumpkin Blue Hot Rod Baits tube, a chatterbait and a shallow crankbait.  I was going to sink or swim with these baits during the tournament.
Tournament day was another windy day and fish after fish were caught.  I am totally enthused to have Minn Kota TALONS on my boat.  These shallow water anchors allowed me to fish water patiently and slowly during the day even with 20+ mph winds.  I can set these anchors down and just focus on fishing, not running ht trolling motor or loosing the spot that I am trying to fish.  They really are amazing and is something that you don't really believe until you have a chance to use them first hand.  Another big key was the smooth casting reels of QuantumPT provides. It was no problem to present baits in that heavy wind.  It was a good two days of fishing, and even though I ended up in 5th place for the tournament I am happy with the results.  I know the lake much better and fine tuned some baits for the near future.  The lake will see me once again very soon, and I hope I can better my 5th place finish next time.

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