2024 Fishing Plans

My time at the show also led to many talks about what we are all fishing this year. I’m in a similar spot to last year where it is just better to focus on a couple of things and sleep in my own bed until classic time. The good news is there are plenty of options and a few of them made me think pretty hard this season. I’m still missing the adventure of new fisheries the Big Stack series took us too and I strongly considered signing up for the 2 event solo stack series. In the end I chose not to pursue that but I feel like in the next couple of years I should mix in something interesting again.

So what is good locally? Of course the D&R Sports series. I’ve fished every season of it so far and I don’t see a reason to stop now. Well run by the WMB crew, tons of contingency prizes, and great competition. The only drawback I see with this series is having no separation of the east and west divisions and therefor no angler of the year incentives. That seems cheap to me given the level of competition and the effort guys are putting in to compete. I understand it is so you can mix and match divisions to qualify for the classic but many of us are only fishing a single division and trying to be the best in that. I’m indifferent to how the lakes are this year. Muskegon first, Grand 2nd, and wrapping it up on White. That could go either way for me in all of them but doesn’t really set up for anything I really feel great about based on last season. However it is usually pretty rare to have things from the last few seasons carry over to a new tournament year.

I do feel great about the fun that WMB Case of the Monday’s West is going to have this year. I’m not going to spoil any of their announcements but there are going to be some major incentives this season. I think we averaged over 30 boats last year and I expect that number to grow. If you are looking for fun and competitive weeknight series to fish that also qualifies you for the WMB Classic this is a good one to check out. I believe we are sticking to the Grand, Muskegon, and White again this year. Maybe this year Trevor and I also work the WMB Classic in.

I’m sure Trevor and I will jump into some HOTD tournaments this year too. Probably no practice just go fishing style but who knows how it will shape up. I don’t have anything for sure circled on the calendar this year. The memorial day tournament is another one that I’m unsure of this year. For one, I absolutely hate fishing on Monday but it is a good event and the only game in town that weekend. It feels wrong to not be fishing opening weekend but I’m also not running anywhere so weather and time to practice will probably determine what I do for that one. Most of the season you can get by with minimal practice but in those smallmouth spawn events you will get smoked if you don’t put your time in.

A major disappointment is there is no west side Payback Bass tournament this year. But I also don’t blame them with the lack of support they got from west side teams. It can be tough to schedule something else in with so many good tournaments already available and I fell victim to that a few years also. But it was a good event with an awesome payday and I hope they will be back someday.

The wildcard is jumping into a St. Clair event at some point this year. Most Likely it would be a D&R and it would be a fun change of pace. The boat traffic over there is probably the biggest deterrent to making the trip as the fishing is spectacular. I have a place to stay over there and everything, it just boils down to committing the necessary time to make it worthwhile.

There is a newcomer to the lakeshore in the BAM series. They have a Saturday division that looks interesting but it is too many tournaments to commit to with the incentive of making their classic. Their classic is on Muskegon this year which makes it really attractive but as soon as I saw the off limits was during the peak of salmon season that made the decision an easy one. At this point in my life with the busyness of home and the girls, I am a big fan of off limits for classics. I love that the D&R Classic is a 1 day official practice and yes you are behind the 8 ball if you don’t go pre practice. The pre practice can be challenging to work in but sometimes you can get lucky like we did last year without it. I can also see the fun in making it more of a fishing vacation and taking quite a few days to practice like a lot of the guys do for the WMB Classic. I know at some point I would much prefer getting more days to fish. So I don’t care either way!

The last interesting event this year and one that I’m going to try and fish is the BASS Nation State Championship on the Grand River. The big change is that they qualify the top 6 (I think) right to the national championship and you can skip a regional tournament. The national championship qualifies someone to go the classic and I think I’ll try hard to get in that top 6. That’s also coast guard festival weekend and it is open to run. That is going to be one interesting 2 day tournament.

The last options are some WMB Sunday Funday’s and Shoreline Bass Tour. Shoreline is a prepay entire series deal so that isn’t really an option for me during the year. It has been a minute since Dave an I jumped into a Sunday Funday but maybe this is our year to go have some low stress fun again. I also anticipate you’ll see Mabel at some more tournaments this year like some Mondays or other random weeknight divisions. This is the year for her 4 pounder!