D and R Sports Muskegon Lake 2026 - Practice

Usually practice gets a dedicated day the week before the D&R tournament. This week was complicated though. We had our Monday night tournament on the Grand River which worked out well despite the tough weights. It was a good start to the week with a 2nd place out of 39 boats.

We both had a lot of other stuff going on. I’m lucky to be really busy doing some Great Lakes Science this year. I had a lot of days that were dedicated to Lake Michigan work. Thursday brought a 70 boat tournament to Muskegon Lake so that day was out. My boat was also at Camp and Cruise getting figured out. Huge thanks to them for getting me in, getting it diagnosed, and getting it fixed! I got it back Thursday night which gave me time to get out on the lake Friday. Both of us hate practicing on Friday but this time around it was our only choice.

You know that had to be the weather day too. Rain/wind but no actual storms at least. Trevor was going to practice in the morning and I was going to get out in the afternoon. I still had a lot of stuff to clean up from our big week on Lake Michigan and I wanted to be out there when the alewives were most active. I missed the worst of the rain but the wind was just so frustrating. It was rough getting around or really doing anything. We split up with 2 different practice strategies. My main objective was to try and find a couple of big schools we could capitalize on early. That’s where the alewives would come into play. I wanted groups of bass that were feeding heavily on them. It didn’t take long to determine that catching green ones would be easy but catching a big green one would just be dumb luck. Typical post spawn funk type stuff where big largemouth just seem so random. I did uncover a couple areas that were holding a decent amount of fish but never handled a big one. I did get clued in to a couple smallmouth on beds that were not big but also could be some great filler fish if we got some big largemouth. It was a good clue that would get investigated more under better conditions. I had to totally rely on MEGA Live 2 in Landscape mode for that. it was so dark and windy that you couldn’t see well in water that was a foot deep. I did find a lot of areas that were loaded with alewives but there weren’t a lot of activities with them yet or the bass were just waiting until dark.

We really had nothing good to go on for tournament day. This doesn’t really bother us though and there was also a bunch of stuff that we just didn’t touch during practice. Was it going to be good on tournament day? Who knows, but there was no point in checking it before hand. Sometimes it works best to just go fishing and see how the day unfolds. We knew this was going to be an interesting one.