D and R Sports Cadillac and Mitchell 2026 - Practice

I was excited to see Cadillac and Mitchell on the D&R Sports schedule this year. I’ve heard the fishery is recovered from its collapse a few years ago and that fishing was fantastic again. Plus I’ll always have a soft spot for this place. In 2017 Shaun Ford and I won the D&R Classic and a boat there. It was a highlight in my fishing career and fishing was amazing back then. I was hoping for a similar event this go around.

The big change now was how would forward facing sonar change things. I heard a lot of talk about scoping smallmouth in Cadillac and how it was the winning way. Before it wouldn’t even have been a thought on a lake like this. I’d just go right to the grass and not even think about anything else. While I knew we’d have to try it, my heart was in the grass and that is where we would start.

It had been a long time since I’d been there and Trevor had never been. But years ago before that classic I had mentioned I spent an entire day side imaging up there. That was key to winning that event and I had high hopes there would be isolated grass in the same spots this go around. We just had one day to practice, the day before the tournament. We were going out of Kenwood Park in Cadillac this time and it seemed like a good idea to try and find a quick hitter spot in Cadillac first thing. I had some really isolated grass beds (so I thought) in there and we were going to run a few of those. Those isolated grass beds had turned into acres and acres of grass. When I say grass on this fishery, I’m mostly talking about cabbage. Which is unique because we don’t have much around home. But there is lots of it here, I also saw coontail and eurasian milfoil in a few places on the lake.

I did not get a good vibe from Cadillac so we were off to Mitchell rather quickly. There were big plans for more isolated clumps. Those clumps had blown up in Mitchell too and we were struggling. Catching a few here and there with not much size. A couple 3 pound bites but with no friends around them, it didn’t seem to promising. All of the stuff I really had high hopes for was just not clicking yet. It seemed like it needed to be connected to a something that contacted the bank (even if it was hundreds of yards offshore). It was like the fish hadn’t wanted to migrate across open water yet this year. We had gone there pretty much committed to flipping only. There was no experimenting with winding baits but there was a little senkoing thrown in. We found one area that had some activities with that. It gave us a little hint but we were not able to duplicate that anywhere. Back to looking for those magic flipping spots and it was a grind.

We tried some docks but with the calm day forecast for the tournament that wasn’t high on the priority list. In between some docks and looking for some sparser cover bites. We noticed a fish floating and if you see a fish floating it is a rule that you have to troll over and see what it is. I’ve seen pictures and videos before but never in real life have I seen the pike on pike crime. I don’t even know how this happens but the picture and video speak for themselves. Ironically it is the pike that got “eaten” that survived the whole ordeal.

We were into the afternoon now. We had some stuff to fish but really none of it was that good. Thoughts of smallies in Cadillac were creeping in (if that didn’t work we would just practice Mitchell during the tournament). But we were going to force a couple more areas first. Things got rolling and we stayed in Mitchell much longer than we expected. Unfortunately I stuck one really nice fish and we had poked a few others throughout the day. We were shaking everything off now and they were just swimming around with it. It was specific what we were looking for but not as specific as I’d like it. There was room for them to move around and need to be relocated the next day. Where in years past there was so much less cover that you could really call your shots. We probably had 17 and change for the day but knew that would be very tough to duplicate on tournament day. We felt like we could get solid fish but that 4+ bite we got during practice was just going to have to be lucky.

We did put some time into Cadillac which was probably a mistake. We caught some fish but nothing that seemed promising and I was actually glad about that. It would be full commit to Mitchell on tournament day with flipping sticks the weapon of choice. That was exactly what I had hoped to do before this event. We were just doing it in different places and we didn’t have them as pinned down as the past. There was just so much grass now for them to hide in. I do know one thing, I wanted a good boat number because we had a stretch we really wanted in the morning. Luckily there was no rain in the forecast tonight because we were tenting it at Mitchell State park. I’ve had some experiences tenting it at tournaments in the past and I did not want another one of those nights! On the bright side we did find our good buddy Mike Elkins randomly crossing the street as we were leaving the gas station. One of the highlights of practice day for sure!