D and R Sports Classic 2026 - Day 1 - Muskegon Lake

The first thing I noticed Saturday morning was the wind forecast had backed off and it was calm to start the day. I wasn’t a fan of that because I thought it might help the competition. It was going to change our game plan though. We were going “scoping” to start the day. It was between that or gambling on getting a big fish covering water. But with a target weight of 15+ pounds It was hard to ignore the scoping fish. I felt it was pretty likely that we could get 5 bites in an hour and that would put us around 15 pounds. It would give us the rest of the day to upgrade and fish really free to try and get a big one.

The thing about tournament fishing is that it rarely just goes perfectly to plan. Tournament fishing is just such a beast compared to just going fishing. It didn’t take long for us to figure out that it just wasn’t right today. We gave it a good effort but left there with 0 fish. It was good to know that it worked in practice during the afternoon so if we needed some 3 pounders it would be worth revisiting. Off we went and on our way to area number 2 we were passing by one of those places that you just don’t pass if no one is there. So we swung and an picked up one nice fish and one solid fish, I didn’t expect to catch any fish on swimbait today but that’s just how tournament fishing works. Be ready for everything and those were big time bonus fish for us It was off to the juice next and I didn’t expect it would take us too many casts to fill a limit in. When one didn’t bite on the first cast with an urchin, we knew something was off. Maybe it was the time of day or lack of wind at this point. We did catch one small fish that barely measured but honestly I was happy to have it. If this wasn’t firing we might struggle fishing similar stuff for the next several hours…and we did. Some of the best stuff was just empty for us. We did pick up number 4 on a crankbait and it was at least around 2 pounds. We rotated back through some stuff and the place where fish number 3 came from produced our limit fish on the same finesse jig that was so good on Houghton Lake. We could breath a little now but we had a lot of work to do.

We had been covering some water deeper but we decided to pull up a little bit. I got my chatterbait out and about 5 minutes into throwing it got a violent bite. If you’ve ever had a drum or a channel cat smoke a chatterbait, it was one of those bites (if you haven’t go to Lake Macatawa sometime). I told Trevor there was no way this was a bass and I was wrong. A 3.90 in the boat was the boost we needed and it got rid of that line burner 14 incher. We pushed the chatterbait some more and kept bouncing around to specific spots but it just wasn’t happening.

Things were a little more complicated today because Trevor had to get off the boat at 1. He was standing up in our buddy Peyton’s wedding and I had to get there immediately after weigh in. He was going to get picked up and we had to be in a convenient area for that. We needed to make moves around the lake though because the plan was not working at all. Man the lake was rough and we had a pretty good run to our non traditional smallmouth stuff. We had no choice but to take the beating. It almost paid off too as one over 4 pounds chased my jig to the boat while I was reeling in. I must have been fishing too fast or it just wasn’t meant to be. Sometimes though you just find yourself in a convenient area of the lake and start fishing around. We pulled up to a spot we hadn’t fished all year, not because it isn’t good but it just never worked out that we were in that area of the lake. Trevor loaded up on a good one and we culled out another smaller fish. We had enough at this point where we would be in it for day 2. That felt good but there was still work to do and if those scoping fish were still there things were going to be just fine.

We were close to a ramp at this point so we decided to fish around this area and drop Trevor off. This area can have some nice ones in late summer so we hoped a few were lingering around. I spotted one sharking the urchin while I was reeling in to make another cast. I stopped it and it bit, it was so close to the boat that it just came in on the hookset. It didn’t give us much but was another cull. The urchin is the only bait I’ve seen fish get so fixated on that they sometimes just don’t care how close to the boat they are. I’ve seen it a couple times this year and was just amazed those fish bit.

Trevor made that last cull and I dropped him off. He said blue was the next to go and sent me on my way. We always just have one of us culling to avoid confusion and that system has always worked well for us. At this point If I could head back an commit the next 2.5 hours to looking at MEGA Live 2, I would have a great chance to cull out our last small one. I had a couple stops in mind on the way there. It was time to use the wind to my advantage and hit some areas that a good one could pull up on to feed. Shockingly one of the best places in the lake was open for this and I can’t believe that I couldn’t catch one. The crankbait loaded up on the next stop and it really felt like a good one. I felt a little panic figuring out where the net was but this fish suffered some shrinkage when it got to the boat and wasn’t going to help. I was going to trolling motor over to the next hard spot but a dock looked just right in between. The chatterbait got hammered and I flipped a nice one in the boat! I threw the one on the blue cull tag back and we had all solid fish now. It was now time to go shake my minnow!

The bait was balled up this time but I just couldn’t find the bass. It was so disappointing but I suspect that can be the nature of the beast when scoping pelagic bass in deep water. I felt like there was a good chance these fish could be nearby. Maybe the wolf packs split up and decided to spread out and ambush feed. I just starting fishing whatever was nearby that looked like it would hold a bass. I picked up another good one right away, I was rolling now and feeling the momentum. We almost never weight any fish in the boat but I decided to put the one I was throwing back on the scale and it was 2.6. We needed a big one now and when fishing anything else that looked bassy didn’t work out. I switched it up to some hero spots for a big smallmouth. I took a lot of water over the front of the boat trying to do that and I just never got a bite. It was pretty crowded on the east end of the lake now and it was tough to find an open area and too rough for me to want to go super far at this point. Nothing exciting happened the rest of the day and I headed in a couple minutes early to get to the wedding. I was relieved to have a nice bag of fish, one we were in it for day 2 and also because I was going to have to leave immediately and didn’t want to appear to be pouting about a bad day. I had a few people offer to help bag my fish or help get my boat out of the water and I really appreciated that. It is great to have a lot of friends at these tournaments. Huge thanks to the WMB crew for getting me through the scales and on my way, they are the best! Amanda and I got to the wedding while cocktail hour was still going on and had a ton of fun that night (congrats Peyton and Andrea). Dave texted us the standings and we were pleasantly surprised to be sitting in 5th with 15.19. I wasn’t surprised to be sitting a few pounds back from first but I was absolutely surprised at the amount of 14 pound bags and fish around 4 pounds that got caught. I thought fishing was pretty darn tough and felt very fortunate to catch what we did but this crew always surprises me with how good they are at catching fish. Tomorrow was a new day and the morning was going to come fast. We also weren’t going to have any tackle rigged or really feel prepared for the next day. Other than charging the batteries the boat was just how we left it after Muskegon. Day 2 is coming soon!