Classic Tournaments Incoming!

We’ve made it to the end of the year and classic time. Normally it doesn’t work out to do both the WMB and the D&R Classic but with this years D&R at the Grand/Muskegon and WMB at Houghton it makes sense. It also makes it tough with so much else going on. Deer hunting/waterfowl prep, fall turkeys, salmon, the girls sports. It’s just chaotic and I always feel so behind after it’s all over. We’ll do our best with the rest of it but I’ll put most of my energy and time into these classics and getting the girls and opportunity for fall turkeys. June is all practiced up and ready to get after it at 6 years old this fall.

I’m excited to get to Houghton and have 2 days to practice. Usually that is just a 1 official day and sort of chaotic between checking stuff and finding new stuff. I have only fished there a few times but I’ve found some good stuff and usually do well there. Trevor and I finished 5th in the last D&R Classic there and I think if we could figure out a few more things that maybe we could improve on that. Although we are going to be there earlier this time so things may be totally different. I’m excited to find out and while we normally just fish for smallmouth maybe we’ll dabble in some green ones this time. I know there are some really big ones in there. Regardless I know that one of our biggest weapons will be MEGA Side Imaging and we’ll have a lot of time behind the wheel there. I do know that for once we’ll have a good boat number (boat 2 due to our AOY on Mondays) and we’ll have the option to start on something obvious for once. I’m hoping we can save a few things for day 2.

After that we’ll have a couple weeks and it will be time for the D&R classic on the home waters. We don’t fish that much in the fall here so I actually feel like we know Houghton better than the local waters. But we’ll still be comfortable and confindent, we just might not know exactly what moves to make. I hope to get out a little bit before the off limits week and I’m sure Trevor will too. We’ll be splitting practice up on the 2 different fisheries and we are lucky to have 2 boats to do that. I know it has to be challenging for the guys who need to cover 2 lakes with 1 boat on the official practice day. I’d expect you’ll see more smallmouth weighed in than normal on these fisheries. We’ll have a good boat number in this one too at boat 4 so I hope to get on something good. A couple fast starts would be nice for us because we have struggled with that all year. However we always seem to find a way and never give up!

I think I have one more trip with all the jigging and skein rods in the boat and we did get out one evening for a quick family trip. But everything else is ready, all the bass rods are ready to go including some of the new TFO Resolves. The girls and I also made a quick trip to D&R Sports to get some tackle and pick up some gift cards we had won for fishing the series. They had a ton of fun and wanted to pick out all the baits, now they’ve got their very own tackle box to keep them in. I did find out I have a missing stern light pole so I had to replace that and am waiting for a little more tackle that USPS sent to Florida despite being in Grand Rapids. I did have one other fiasco with a broken off fuel in water sensor on my motor. It involved removing the whole VST and was mess. Nothing would get that piece out. I eventually had to take a fine jigsaw blade and saw through the plastic while being careful to not damage the threads. The last thing I wanted to do was have to drill and tap the VST. It was one of those 5 minute projects that just turned into a nightmare but we made it to the other side and are stronger for getting it figured out.

Lot’s of bass fishing blogs coming up in the next few weeks and hopefully they are easy to write (they are always easy if it goes well). If not you’ll get those details too, just know they are a lot more painful than the good tournaments!