D and R Sports White Lake 2026 - Tournament
This one will be brutal to write. If you’ve fished tournaments long enough, you will inevitably have a day that no matter how hard you try…things just don’t go well. You might just be one bite away from getting that clue that changes your day but it just never comes. Today was that day for us. We also had big weather changes and I knew some of the things I was hoping for just weren’t going to be easy to do or maybe productive at all. However the big winds we had from the start to the end of the day might make some other things better. Always try and use that to your advantage even if it wasn’t what you were hoping for.
There were a couple particular places I had big expectations for. They fit the description of the specific clump I was looking for with MEGA Live 2 and were also on the edge of the grass line. It didn’t hurt that the couple casts I made around these areas produced quality fish. We were a middle of the pack boat draw and those 2 areas were close by so I was hoping I could get around one of them. We got the one we wanted and “went to work”, I was pretty surprised to not catch one there mixing it up between a crankbait and a dropshot. But it is really easy for them to move around on White Lake so we just started burning up some water in the area hoping for some quick bites. After we fished around for a bit we did the same thing on confidence area number 2, which also produced no bites. It was just so dang windy, the water was dirty, and surely if we covered some water we would get some bites. So we kept the trolling motor down for awhile throwing moving baits. I had hoped we could capitalize on when the fish should be actively feeding and then hope the wind calmed down later in the morning. Over an hour into the day Trevor caught one on a chatterbait and we could finally turn the livewells on. Things were just so weird and confusing, we made a switch to the calm side of the lake to an area that is always in the rotation. Today this area would fail us and while it wasn’t in the plans we made the switch to the narrows early.
Maybe a scenery change would get things going for us as it really couldn’t get any worse. We popped 2 small keepers in there before figuring out that wasn’t going to work for us either. It took me 2 hours to get my first bite on White Lake. That is a new record for me for sure and one that I’m not proud of. There was lots of good stuff to run and just general areas to fish. Getting on any of it proved to be tough. I think after this one there are some areas of the lake that I will just write off no matter how good they area. It’s a waste of time to even go look at them during the tournament. We finally slid up shallow and just started covering some water just to fill a limit if we could. It was 10:30 and we finally got 5, also maybe a new record for a White Lake tournament.
Things were so weird that we were just trolling motor down fishing docks now. It actually wasn’t a bad plan (definitely not one I saw us going with), the wind was keeping people away and we had a long stretch to ourselves. I haven’t fished a dock in forever on White Lake but on lakes like that they certainly can have big ones. I threw something slow and Trevor threw a faster and louder bait. If we could generate a bunch of bites odds were good that a few of them would be the right ones.
We did our job at generating bites up there and caught 15+ keepers. But just never even had an opportunity at a big one. It wouldn’t have taken much to drastically change our day. Just one good bite away from having a solid weight. We did get back out into the grass looking for upgrades too. That didn’t go well at all. We bounced around and tried all sorts of things, just never getting that clue. Finally at the end I thought we had that bite just for a few seconds but nope, dogfish!
That would end our day with just over 13 pounds and our angler of the year hopes. Because every time I feel like White Lake is just such a struggle everyone blasts them. That never fails! I will say that we at least salvaged our day and caught some decent numbers by going with the flow and trying something very unplanned. This was just a single day tournament but if it were a multi day event, it’s a move like that. That keeps you around to survive to tomorrow or salvages a day to keep your season going.
There are a few things I can think of that I would try under similar conditions next time but I don’t have any good excuses. We didn’t lose any big ones, get beat to the winning spot, or just not have a clue. It was one of those days where it just doesn’t work out and life goes on. We’ll be ready and just as confident at the next one. We’ve got some ground to make up and the Grand River is a great place to do that.