D and R Sports Tournament 2026 Muskegon Lake #2 - Tournament
No expectations, nothing to lose, and no real game plan going into this one. Practice was very mediocre and the plan for the day was just to go fishing and let the day unfold. We felt oddly comfortable with all that. Sitting 20 points back from AOY meant our only hope was to win and hope the leaders struggled. We were going to set the hook as many times as we possibly could and see what would happen.
As far as places to start on, there were no sure things. Some places we could gamble on for sure, maybe we get lucky and they are there feeding on shad. Then there were 4 or 5 places that fish were schooling on shad. Those fish weren’t tournament winners but they could get you a great start and possibly a nice one or 2. We drew boat 25 and actually got to start where we wanted to. The only entertainment there was a boat coming to an abrupt stop while trying to cross a sandbar. Luckily it seemed like no damage was done and they were back off on their way. The area was lifeless and we were off to start making a lap around the lake. We had a couple places to pull in before we started rotating the other shad schooling spots.
One thing I really noticed was the grass was in major decline in a couple of these areas. I was counting on some bites but the grass was just disappearing. A combination of the time of year, lack of sunlight penetration from the algae bloom, and just general fickleness of coontail. It is frustrating to watch good spots disappear throughout the season and year to year. One other culprit to the coontail decline is likely the hundreds of invasive mute swans on the lake. The DNR made a post last week stating that they eat or uproot 20 pounds of vegetation a day. That’s a lot of pounds of aquatic life when there are hundreds of swans doing that every day. It also means less grass taking up nutrients in the lake therefore more nutrients available for the algae bloom we have going on. I don’t know how large of a role the mute swans can play in that but they are far out of control on Muskegon Lake and aren’t benefiting the native ecosystem at all.
I think it took 4 stops to catch our first keeper. It wasn’t a bad one but we didn’t want it at the end of the day. It did cause us to linger around in the area a little longer. Fishing some stuff that we never fish but just felt right, we picked up keeper number 2 doing that. Both of those came fishing slow, exactly what we hadn’t planned on doing right away. Things could turn around in a hurry if one of these shad oriented areas would fire. It was windy but we still had about 4 different types of topwaters ready to go and a bunch of winding baits. Every single shad spot was a bust! I was so confident we could catch 20+ keepers off of one of them too. They weren’t going to be huge but it was supposed to be fun. Instead they were non existent and there was no fun to be had. We’d burned about an hour and a half with 2 fish to show for it. It would just be nice to get an easy start for once!
Keeper number 3 also came fishing slow around some shallow cover. This area had a lot of life and really should have been good. We could never get on the actual juice but there should have been some friends hanging out somewhere. On the move again, we’re always on the move. The next few moves would prove to be good ones and our day would start trending upwards. A lot of it really blends in from here on out. There was no dramatic decision made like our last Grand River tournament. We just locked in and went to catching them. Coikes, drop shots, neds, worms, jigs, Carolina rigs, crankbaits, nothing too exciting but just consistent.
It wasn’t long and we had a solid base of our bag in the boat with none of those fish from this morning. We needed that big bite, the best bite we had so far unfortunately came off halfway back to the boat. It wasn’t a big one, maybe a little over 3 pounds but we really could have used it. There was one new spot that was really loaded and a bunch of fun. Big thanks to Humminbird MEGA Side Imaging for revealing another treasure. No matter how many we caught there, we just couldn’t trick a magnum into biting. Our rotation was good and we were getting pretty dialed in to what was the right stuff for the day. We finally got that kicker bite we needed and it actually made it to the boat. Lot’s of time left and one or 2 more of those and we had the potential to make things interesting.
We tried and tried and tried, but it just never happened for us. There was maybe one more bite throughout the day that could have been a nice one. We caught so many fish that felt like nice ones though that it is impossible to say unless we laid eyes on them. I knew the weights would be down and fishing was overall very tough. I think this time of year is always a challenge on Muskegon, combine that with the algae bloom, and a lot of places missing grass. It was going to be a tough one and the weigh in sure reflected that. We sat in 2nd place for a very long time, giving us some false hope that we might pick up some bonus points for AOY. In the end we slipped to 4th (full standings) and fell 3 points short of AOY. That one fish may have done it because we needed basically nothing to jump 2 spots. Our downfall was the disastrous day on White. We catch one decent fish there and this is a non issue. It was a great day for us no matter how you look at it but I’ll be honest it hurt a little inside at the weigh in. A lot of hard work goes into this and while I love getting top 10’s at D&R, it’s been a moment since we’ve won a tournament. It was a GREAT season for Trevor and I though. 2nd on Muskegon, 5th on Cadillac and Mitchell, our downfall 34th at White, 7th on the Grand River, 4th on Muskegon, and 2nd in AOY. 74.78 pounds of bass weighed in against a bunch of boats, amazing competition, and a lot of dudes I’m proud to call friends. Huge congrats to Don/Brian on the AOY season and all the other winners/check cashers throughout the year. Huge thanks to the WMB crew, D&R Sports crew, everyone else involved, and all the event sponsors. There are a ton of sponsors this year and there is a ton of money given out every tournament at the weigh in! We’re still waiting to be called for one of those but hopefully at the classic we’ll get drawn, see you there!