COTM West 2025 - Recap
Record turnouts on Monday night meant record amounts of fun. Back to when I first started fishing in Southeast Michigan a 40 boat tournament was a big deal. So to get the opportunity to do that every Monday night is something I don’t take for granted. That doesn’t come without it’s challenges though.
With that many boats it is incredibly difficult to bumble around, catch a decent bag, and still do well. We are usually going in blind to any Monday tournament unless there has been a recent weekend event. So, it is a lot of guessing every week. So many times, we would somehow figure out how to catch a decent bag only to get our money back or finish first out the money. I’ll be honest that was really frustrating me at one point in the season. Making some good decisions and making it work but just not getting the desired results.
But Trevor and I were having fun, catching some fish, and learning a few things. We overcame the struggle of having all 3 girls in the boat with us for a Grand River tournament and finished 2nd. They usually are pretty good luck and next year will probably be around more often. It is tough with summer camps, a couple weeks of visiting grandparents, and late bedtimes that make it tough. Summer went by too dang fast again this year.
We’ve always wanted to steal team of the year from Dave and Kyle at this series. Which seems about impossible to do and it seemed even harder to catch Jacob Policka and Brayden Vallie this year. But the end of the year can get tricky, I always have in the back of my mind that getting a limit in the last few August events can be a challenge. We weren’t even thinking about it when we finally won an event at the Grand River. Tough fishing but we caught a few of the right ones and had 14 pounds. Next up was Muskegon and we had caught quite a few fish early in the night but happened to be in the right place at the right time. We got right in a hurry with a school of smallies and won that one too. White Lake was next and we caught another good bag to finish 2nd there and somehow had the lead by 9 points.
Muskegon can be a beast to do well on for the season finale. I figured we needed 13 pounds to have a shot at maintaining. Getting a limit was the first order of business and an old school schooling spot gave us a 5 bass limit to start. We took some gambles from there but nothing ever paid off. An approaching storm sent us to the weight in a few minutes early but luckily our 12 pound and change was enough. It felt good to pull that one off and it was another great year of fishing Monday nights. It is a great series to fish if you are looking for something on the lakeshore. Very well ran and the weigh ins are efficient. I’m ready to get this last D&R event out of the way this weekend and fully focus on catching kings out of the bass boat. I’ve gotten a little taste of it already and it is all I want to do!