On a Saturday night in July a few years ago 15 members and guests of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our July tournament at Lake Sinclair. Fishing from 6:00 PM to 2:00 AM we tried to beat the heat, but it didn’t work. I had sweat dripping from my nose even at midnight. But it was more comfortable that it would have been with the sun shining down.

After eight hours we brought in 19 keeper bass weighing about 32 pounds. There were two limits and seven people didn’t have a keeper to weigh.

Kwong Yu won it all with three bass weighing 9.91 pounds and his 7.14 pound lunker took the big fish pot. I had five at 7.28 pounds for second, Brent Terry came in third with five weighing 6.37 pounds and Russell Prevatte was fourth with two at 2.29 pounds. Kwong said he landed the big one on a jig head worm and eight pound test line.

I got lucky. After two hours of casting practice I went to a cove where there were some docks shaded from the setting sun. As I passed one dock I saw brush out in 12 feet of water on my depth finder and cast back to it, and landed a barely legal keeper. I noticed a strange blue and green glow under the dock and started fishing around it.

A man walked down to the dock and I expected him to turn off his lights. Instead, we started talking. Darrell Keith owned the cabin and he makes and sells Hydro Glow fishing lights. They were what was making the glow under the water. He said he tested his lights there and they brought in bass every night. As we talked it got darker and I could see shad starting to circle the light.

He went back to his cabin, saying a lot of fish would move in when it got real dark. At about 9:00 PM, at full dark, he came back out and I landed a keeper bass on a jig head worm almost immediately. He said he could see a bass swimming around and I got my third keeper on a crankbait. He left again and at 10:00 I landed my fourth keeper on the worm.

I kept fishing the dock and landed a fifth small keeper at 11:20 then one that culled the first fish I caught at midnight. Although I stayed there until 1:30 I did not get another fish.

If I had a dock or fished at night, I would definitely have one of those lights. There were shad around it the whole night but lights 100 feet on either side, one big bright street light type on the end of a dock and one dim light right on the water, never had a shad around them when I fished them.

The web site for Hydro Glow fishing lights is www.hydroglow.com. They are expensive but worth the price, I think!

Kenora’s Jeff Gustafson and Bemidji, Minnesota’s John Peterson Take First Place at Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship

from The Fishing Wire
By Jim Edlund

Jeff “Gussy” Gustafson and John Peterson quadruple-fist Rainy Lake bronze. The team finished with impressive 55.42 pounds over the three-day tournament.
Like the weather-beaten parchment of some maritime legend, the map of Rainy Lake should read “Here Be Dragons.” Straddling the border between Minnesota and Ontario, Rainy is a multi-species playground teeming with monsters: fat walleyes, giant crappies, big pike and linebacker smallmouth bass. With an expansive 220,000 acres of world-class fishing, it should be on every angler’s bucket list.

It’s also home to one of the most prestigious open team bass tournaments in North America, the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship (FFCBC), an annual three-day event that draws the continent’s best bass anglers in a veritable treasure hunt for the lake’s biggest bronzebacks.

Held this past weekend, July 25-27, the weather was as fierce as the competition. A hundred teams plied calm waters on Day One but rode out Day Two and Three in cold-front conditions, culminating in a more than ten degree drop in water temperature and northerly gusts reaching 40 mph. Not typically the kind of conditions for filling bags with big bass; yet, for many competitors the bite was excellent.

Case in point, 2013 FFCBC champs Jeff “Gussy” Gustafson and John Peterson, who weighed an impressive 55.42 pounds over the three-day tournament, finished first after five consecutive years in the top ten, including three third place spots.

“Rainy is one of my faves-lots of water and big fish,” said Gustafson.

We’ve been close to first place a number of times since JP and I teamed up in 2007, but like any big water tournament a lot of things have to go your way to win it.”

Northland Tackle’s John Peterson agreed. “Seems like the stars have to line up to win the FFCBC. But this year, on Day One we had nearly 20 pounds and Gussy boated a 4.72-the biggest fish of Day One- that really anchored us.”

Ultimately, though, it’s the result of a lot of hard work by the multi-generational team, who’ve spent the past ten years scrutinizing Rainy Lake’s smallmouth bass habitat.

“It’s not just about finding and catching the right fish, it’s about traversing a giant body of water and getting back home in adverse conditions. Rainy can beat the snot out of you. We’ve been adding to our game plan every year, which is a big confidence factor,” said Peterson.

For Gussy and JP that confidence boost is partly due to stringing together a trap line of high-probability waypoints, many in the southern part of the lake, where they’ve taken to hunting larger, lone wolf fish on isolated structure.

“The new LakeMaster Version 4 Woods/Rainy card has a lot more detail than Version 3, which really paid off for us. Helped me find nearly a dozen little humps and shoals that held fish I never even knew were there, even though I’d fished the area seven or eight years,” said Gustafson.

Once high-probability spots were identified during pre-fishing, Gustafson used Side Imaging to find the hard bottom corners with surrounding weeds. He’d then create waypoints to allow casting to the structure from a distance to avoid blowing out the fish.

“Especially for this year’s shallow-water game, the Humminbird 958 on my bow was set to full-screen GPS. Once the tournament started, we were fishing solely to what we saw on the map,” Gustafson reported.

Yet, rather than burn waypoints right away, they spent their time finding new fish the first two days of the tournament, still relying almost entirely on the lake map to locate new spots.

Gustafson says the detail on the new LakeMaster Version 4 Woods/Rainy card helped them locate fish-holding structure he didn’t even know was there, like the small hump in the image above.
“We found a couple new areas that ended up being pretty key in the tournament. By 8:30 am on Day One we had 18 pounds without touching any of our high-profile spots, almost every fish on a Jackall popper.”

At the end of Day One, Gussy and JP climbed into first with an impressive 19.17 pounds.

DAY TWO

Although they hoped for a repeat of Day One, Day Two greeted competitors with increasing north winds and falling temps. “The conditions were definitely more challenging. By 11 am we only had three fish. We pulled into an area and caught three pretty good fish on ½-ounce white and yellow Northland Reed Runner spinnerbaits – and ended up getting a few more upgrades, but it was difficult. We finished at 15.90 pounds, which dropped us into fourth place.”

DAY THREE

The weather only worsened on Day Three, furrowing the brows of competitors, particularly Gussy and JP, who had leaderboard space to climb.

“My buddies Jay Samsal and Troy Norman were in first going into Day Three, but only by a pound and change. Still, we were a little bit worried with the falling water temps and severe winds. So we planned to start dialing in our saved waypoints on the Humminbird.”

Gussy and JP could almost see the whites of their competitors’ eyes as they began Day 3 fishing a mere 300 yards from Samsal and Norman.

“We started on a point where we caught some of the better fish on Day Two and discovered pretty quick that this was no normal cold front situation. Although it was super windy, we ended up catching four big fish and a two-and-a-half pounder in the first half hour and then started upgrading the rest of the day.”

Added Peterson: “We found a school of big ones, which isn’t always easy. Normally, we’re picking one fish off a sweet spot here, a sweet spot there. Bass holding on an inside turn, a weedy area with boulders in a bay or a wind-blown shore or an isolated hump with the same stuff.”

“But we got into got into this little area where the fish were really hot for spinnerbaits. Just proves that you can have all the preconceived notions you want but the fish will bite where and what they want, we just needed to capitalize on it. My twin Minn Kota Talon shallow-water anchors kept us right on target, even in the extreme winds, so we could keep our baits right in the strike zone,” said Gustafson.

Their money spot was just one of 40 or 50 waypoints on the Gustafson’s Humminbird 1198, many of which were just the right combination of weeds and rock in water less than 10 feet with deeper water nearby.

With 19 pounds in the livewell that quickly, Peterson says Day Three was a thrilling final chapter to “a day from heaven and the day from hell.”

“It was blowing so bad you couldn’t distinguish bites on jigs or tubes, so we had to resort to power fishing spinnerbaits. Given the cold front conditions, we weren’t sure if it’d work, but it did. I think the water was so warm earlier this season that the drop from the high 70s to mid 60s actually helped the bite.”

Following relatively calm conditions on Day One, the bite soon changed from poppers and finesse baits to pure power fishing in the form of ½-ounce Northland Reed Runner spinnerbaits on heavy braid. Photo by Bill Lindner Photography

Peterson says normally the FFCBD is won with finesse baits, but this year was all about power fishing. “It’s just what the fish wanted. We covered a lot of water looking for biters-and the fish that hit spinnerbaits just about tore your arm off. We didn’t have to baby any of them.”

Peterson laughs when he says the first two days of the tournament neither of them lost a fish. It wasn’t until looking for those final upgrades on Day 3 that Murphy’s Law took effect.

“To be honest, while we were looking for a kicker we lost six big fish in a row. Of course, then doubt sets in-that you lose big fish in a tournament and you don’t win. But we had a bunch of wild jumpers that came unbuttoned and spit the hook. Likewise, we lost a fish close to 5 pounds a foot from the net. And we had problems with fluoro breaking. I’m convinced if we could have upgraded with half of those we lost, we would’ve come in with 22 pounds. It was probably the best day of smallmouth fishing I’ve ever had-all in the middle of a cold front.”

Along the way, Gustafson switched rods from a stiffer 7’2″ to a 7’6″ with a softer tip, and also substituted his Shimano Chronarch reel’s fluoro for 30-pound PowerPro braid.

“The longer crankbait rod allowed me to make longer casts and it’s softer tip made it possible to fish the heavy braid without ripping the hooks out of potential upgrades,” said Gustafson.

All said and done-Murphy’s Law defeated-the Kenora/Bemidji duo ended up with a 20.35-pound bag, enough to raise their confidence to where they thought they might have a shot at first place once back at the weigh-in.

Gustafson: “Anybody who’s been on Rainy knows that it’s big water with a lot of open stretches. Day Three made it uncomfortable for a lot of guys out there. But we were fortunate that we had a pretty good bag and didn’t have to run home at the last minute.”

Also the first pro bass competitor in recent memory to fish the FLW pro bass circuit in an aluminum V-hull boat, Gustafson says the FFCBC is a good example of how the hull of his Lund Predator 2010 eliminates one of the greatest stresses of big-water tournaments.

“We made it home without any problems – the boat isn’t real heavy and the hull design makes it possible to ride pretty high on big waves. Plus, fish were healthy in that big livewell. For guys who fish the Great Lakes it’s a dream smallmouth boat in big water. It’s not a big tank, rides comfortable, and gets the job done.”

Finishing a pound and three quarters above the second place team of Ryan Hyatt and Karl Wolff, Jeff Gustafson and John Peterson left Fort Frances with the rewards of a decade’s worth of hard work. Sure, they made a little money, but the team says the gorgeous trophy and respect from their peers far outweighs any monetary sum.

A couple of weeks ago 10 members of the Spalding County Sportsman Club fished our July tournament at Lake Sinclair from 5:00 PM to 1:00 AM. Or some of us stayed in the rain the whole time. Three people had gone home to bed by weigh-in time.

We had two five-fish limits brought in and the three that left early zeroed. We had 19 keeper bass weighing about 35 pounds and there were two bass weighing over four pounds each weighed in.

Al Rosser won with four weighing 8.39 pounds and his 4.41 pound largemouth was big fish. Raymond English was second with a limit weighing 7.70 pounds, I placed third with five at 7.19 pounds and Russell Prevatt had two at 6.55 pounds for fourth. Russell had the other four pounder.

Al fished with me and it started out tough. At 9:00 I had caught two keepers, both off boat docks. We tried a deep point first and bass and baitfish showed up on the depthfinder but we could not get them to hit. After an hour of trying we ran to one of Al’s favorite docks. Nothing hit there so we started working down the bank hitting docks.

I cast in front of the next dock with a jig head worm and realized my bait never hit bottom. My line was moving off and I set the hook and landed a good keeper bass. After fishing several more docks I skipped a Zoom Mag 2 worm under a dock and felt a thump. By the time I set the hook the fish was almost out to the boat but I still managed to land it.

At dark we went to a bank with a lighted boat dock but didn’t get any hits on it. Further down the bank, at an unlighted boat dock with no lights but some brush piles around it, Al go the big fish almost as soon as we started casting to it.

We stayed there for almost three hours and I got four keepers, all on the Mag 2 worm and Al got two more off it, after “borrowing” some of my worms. Then at midnight we ran back closer to the weigh-in ramp and fished a rocky bank. Al got his fourth keeper on a spinner bait and I got another one on a chatter bait.

I like night fishing, even in the rain. Sure is a lot cooler than during the day, and the bass bite!

On a Wednesday in May I spent most of the day at Bartlett’s Ferry Lake trying to figure out some patterns for a Spalding County Sportsman Club tournament. I didn’t for me but I did for my partner!

Although there was a strong current coming down the Chattahoochee River and I figured muddy water was on the way, the river was still only lightly stained and the bigger creeks were clear. So clear I could see the bottom about four feet down and I looked for bass on the bed. It is late for bass to be bedding but the cool weather this year had delayed the spawn on many lakes.

Not Bartlett’s Ferry, it seems. The water temperature was about 79 degrees and I didn’t see any bass beds, but I did see a lot of bream beds with fish on them. And I saw a lot of balls of bass fry with adult bass guarding them. Those fry looked to be a couple of weeks old so I guess a lot of bass went on the bed there on the last full moon.

When the water temperature and length of daylight is right, usually on the full moon in April around here, male bass find a shallow hard bottom and fan out a bed. The beds look like saucers on the bottom, since they are usually lighter than the surrounding area. The females will come in, find a bed or several beds to their liking, and lay eggs in them. Then they leave, not sticking around to help raise the babies.

The male will fertilize the eggs and stay with the nest, guarding it against bluegill and other water critters that want an easy egg meal. And he has a lot to guard. A female will lay 2000 – 7000 eggs per pound of her body weight! He won’t eat while guarding the nest but will chase off bream and other predators by biting at them. That often makes him easy to catch.

After the eggs hatch in two to five days the male will continue to guard them for a week or two, not eating the whole time. He is usually easy to catch during this time, too, since he is so aggressive. Then, after a couple of weeks, he gets hungry and will eat his own offspring!

I was surprised I could not get the males guarding fry to hit any of my baits. They would run at it but not take it.

I did catch a good many smaller bass, from 10 to 14 inches long, on baits fished around docks. Several times I would be reeling in a jig and pig or worm after fishing a dock and see the bass run out and grab it. That was exciting in the clear water.

When I got ready to head home and got back to the cove with the ramp in it I noticed a good current coming across it. That point is a big “community hole,” a place everybody knows holds bass and a lot of people fish there. With current running across it, bringing schools of shad down the river, I figured bass would be waiting to feed on them, and they were.

I quickly caught three on my new Pflueger Purist rod and reel, giving it a good test. I had spooled the reel with 12 pound Trilene Green line and was casting a #8 Shadrap. The outfit handled the 13 and 14 inch spots easily but I am a little worried the medium action rod is too light for big bass. But it casts well and is comfortable to fish with.

I also caught a few bass on a Carolina rigged lizard and a jig and pig. But I got a bit upset at what happened while fishing there. I had noticed two skidoos being launched at the ramp. Two teen-age girls got on one and their parents got on another. The girls came out first and went at a fast idle speed between me and the bank.

I was fishing about 50 feet from the bank. So the girls broke state law, did something very inconsiderate and were stupid. I let them know what I thought as they passed within 30 feet of my boat. The parents came by a few minutes later and seemed oblivious to what the kids did, but at least they didn’t come too close to my boat.

Stupid actions like that are why kids get hurt on skidoos. They come way too close to the bank, boat docks and boats running on plane and get hit or hit something. If you have kids, teach them the laws, safety rules and some common courtesy.

I expect a lot more such stupid stuff this weekend since it is Memorial Day weekend and there will be a lot of people on the lake that should not be there.

It is great to go to full lakes this summer, the first time in several years. But all the rain sure is a mixed blessing. It fills the lakes but fills my yard with mosquitoes and I think it encourages fleas that continue to be a problem.

The rain also makes it so humid it is hard to fish during the day. Even when it is not raining I sweat so much I stay wet. And the clouds will fool me every time. I don’t think I need sunscreen until I realize, too late, I am getting blistered.

Wednesday I went to Jackson Lake and met Jason Williams to get information for a Georgia Outdoor News article. He got there that morning and fished until he met me at Berry’s Boat Dock at 1:00 PM. I was disappointed when he told me he had caught some small bass but nothing over two pounds, what we needed for pictures.

The night before Jason and his partner had come in second in the Tuesday night Berrys tournament. They had 7.5 pounds and it took only nine pounds to win. That is a low weight for one of their tournaments and shows how tough fishing is right now.

Jason showed me ten spots to put on a map where he catches bass in the summer. Unfortunately, all ten were spots I already knew about and fish often. But that just shows they are good spots – when a fishing spot is good it seems a lot of fishermen find the same place.

We didn’t fish much since it was so hot. I was very glad to get back in my air conditioned truck at 4:00 to head home. I would much rather fish at night this time of year.

Last Sunday nine members of the Flint River Bass Club fished our July tournament at West Point, and the fishing was tough there, too. Several people stayed home because we figured the lake would be a madhouse since it was a holiday week, but the all-day rain kept most pleasure boaters off the water. We didn’t see a single skier and only a couple of skidoos all day.

After fishing from 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM we brought in 34 bass weighing about 41 pounds. There were only four largemouth weighed in. Five people had limits and there was only one fisherman without a keeper.

Al Rosser made it two in a row, winning with five weighing 7.02 pounds. Chuck Croft had five at 6.72 pounds for second and his 2.63 pound largemouth was big fish. Third went to Roger Morrow with five at 6.09 pounds and Don Gober’s limit weighing 5.93 pounds was good four fourth.

It seems the smaller fish bite better right now at West Point and Jackson than the bigger fish. And most of the fish caught at Jackson were spots, too. They are more aggressive and feed more than largemouth in any kind of weather.

The old saying “If it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have any luck at all” seems to be my motto lately. I keep shooting myself in the foot, losing bass I hook in a variety of ways. First thing that morning I had a strong fish pull off a chatter bait. That is a bad way to start the day. Then I missed a couple of hits on a topwater bait.

Al fished with me and caught a keeper at about 8:00, on the next cast after I saw a spot about the same size chase my jig and pig back to the boat without hitting it. Then I hooked and lost a bass in the same place on a jig head worm.

I did land one keeper from that point before we left. Then Al got another keeper off the next point we fished. A little later he got his third, then I caught a spot on a jig and pig from a brush pile.

The next rocky point we fished I felt a hit and missed the strike. As I reeled in I saw a bass weighing at least five pounds chase my bait almost to the boat and turn away without hitting it. Al got two more off the next point we fished, filling his limit.

A big school of fish came up and started feeding on top and Al and I had fun catching a some three pound hybrids. We kept two to eat but went back to trying to fill my limit. I got hung on a rock and as I eased the boat over to get it, shaking my rod tip trying to get it loose, a fish grabbed it and took off. I missed it but Al’s worm was right beside mine and he caught his sixth keeper. I finally got my third with just a few minutes left to fish out of a brush pile but that was it.

An even worse way to start happened at 5:15. We started down the road to Pyne Park ramp but a pickup was blocking it. I called the campground and woke the manager up and he said the ramp was blocked off because of all the vandalism in the park over the weekend.

Al and I got on the phone and called everyone in the tournament and changed to Horace King Ramp nearby. As we turned around in the campground, not easy in the dark with a boat, the campground manager came out and said he was moving his truck and opening the ramp, but it was too late.

The least they could have done was put up a sign at the highway saying the ramp was closed!