I've Finished My Livewell for 2012

Check out my best fish of 2012 by clicking on the Livewell 2012 tab under my blog header or just click on that link.  It was a pretty good year considering I barely fished after hurting my back on June 28th:  I was OK for the Bass Snatchers Leech Lake Tournament on the 30th.  I was in worse shape for the tournament at Whitefish Chain on the 15th of July , although I didn't mention anything in the tournament recap.  My back and leg were really giving me issues by the 28th of July at the Pokegama Tournament.  And my back went out on me totally the Thursday after I went out on the Launch at Eddy's with Spike and Dad on Monday July  30th.  I only blogged twice in August and September with my last fishing of the year being at the Fishers of Men Fall Outing on Sept 27-29.

I Caught A Fish And More Are Coming

I was convinced by Lowell Borgan that  I should go to the Fishers of Men Fall Outing when he offered to pick me up and told me I could fish with Dave Lindmark out of the GEM Pontoon.  Yesterday I was picked up by Lowell and Art.  When we got up to Lutherdell there was some time before dinner so I went out in the Lutherdell pontoon with Art and Jim Druk.  Art got 4 pike and I got 1 and had several follows.  I can't stand up to fish very long before I have to sit back down. Hopefully I'm not gonna be super sore from my first choice of beds.  It's 3AM, I woke up and found a stiffer mattress.

The weather is gonna be perfect!

I will have Pictures later today.

Fall Outing Last Year!

Amazing this had not made it up here by now. This is video of me and Cyberfish catching some nice fish on the 2nd day of the Fall Outing. The biggest was 36" and more than enough to put me on top for FallEE WallEE.

Fishers of Men Club Twin Cities Fall Outing Report

(FallEE WallEE the Fall Outing Tournament Trophy)

On Friday it was cold very windy and wet in the morning. Nobody wanted to go out in it. Around 1PM it dried up, still overcast, and I was willing to go out but nobody with a boat wanted too.

On Saturday I fished with Gary Pflipsen on Mule Lake. Conditions were clear, then cloudy, then clear again with little to no wind and it got warm enough that I fished for about 3 hours in a T-shirt.

When Gary and I arrived we motored a fair ways North of the access and started fishing the West shoreline. I got the first fish which was this largemouth.
It bit on a green pumpkin Strike King Pro Model tube on a leadhead jig. Gary got then next bass which was a 15+ largie caught off a dock. I got another decent bass on the tube. I was missing a few bites.

In the calm and overcast I started throwing topwater and I caught an 18" pike on a Lucky Craft Gunfish. Gary caught a nice mid 20" pike off a dock with a Senko. Finally we got down to the Narrows and on the North point I got largies number 3 & 4 on a PB&J Yum Wooly Bug. 4 Bass was the limit for bass in the FallEE WallEE Tournament. I believe bass #4 was 15" and my biggest of the day. To the East of the narrows we started seeing a lot of baitfish activity on the surface so I started throwing topwater. I got an 8" largie on a clear bluegill Deps Buzzjet Jr. I put on a motor oil Yum Wooly Bug and caught my second pike which was a meager 14 inches long. 2 was the tournament limit on pike and it was this fish that won me the top spot for 2010 on FallEE WallEE. I caught one more 11" largie on the bluegill Deps Buzzjet Jr. and a 12" largie off a dock on the Strike King tube.

When the sun came out in the afternoon the fishing got tough and I didn't catch any more fish.

As it turns out fishing was kind of tough on everybody. Several of the guys had their 4 bass, but didn't get their limit of pike. Because of this and Gary Pflipsen and Mike Thompson not participating in the tournament I won the top spot on FallEE WallEE. Gordy got second and Jim Druk got 3rd. Gordy was fishing out of his new boat on Boy Lake and Jim got his fish on Three Island Lake fishing with minnows.

Fishers of Men Club Twin Cities Fall Outing Weekend

I will be leaving tomorrow around 6AM in the morning for the Fishers of Men Fishing Club Twin Cities annual Fall Outing held once again this year out of Lutherdell Bible Camp on Boy Lake. For the past couple of years I have been fishing with Dave Lindmark in the GEM pontoon boat, but Dave won't be there this year. I have no clue who I will be fishing with and what lakes they will want to fish. It's pretty much suppose to be cloudy and very windy tomorrow out of the NW. I am going to try to talk my boater into fishing Mule Lake because it has clear water which is better with overcast/wind and it has a lot of protected shoreline from a NW wind.

Saturday is suppose to be much nicer and I'm hoping my boater will go to Townline which has good pike and bass fishing. Those are the lakes I have fished the past two years and we've done quite well.

Hopefully the rain we are getting will be gone by the time we start fishing tomorrow.

Fishers of Men Fall Outing 2009 Sept 24-27

My 1st Bass on Three Island Lake.

I fished all 3 days (Thur-Sat) out of the GEM pontoon with Dave Lindmark and Mike Thompson.

Day 1 Thursday Sept 24th-
I met Dave Lindmark and Mike Thompson at Lutherdell Bible Camp around 1PM. We got our stuff put in the cabin and then Dave wanted to take a nap, so I picked out a couple of rods and went to fish off the camp docks. At the last of the 3 docks, usually the best spot, I made a cast between the dock and a pontoon boat with a smoke tube and was rewarded with a 15 inch largemouth. I headed back up to the cabin pretty much as Dave was getting ready to roll. We took on a Teen Challenge graduate named Aaron, and two Fishers of Men Club boats were going to follow us. Dave had decided to go to Three Island Lake because it is close and we would be coming back for supper at 6PM. Three Island had been a good bass and pike lake for GEM this summer. It turned out to be kind of a bust for us under the sunny and calm conditions. We caught a few really small bass and a few small pike. Mike and I lamented the fact that we were going in for supper and wouldn't be on Mule Lake for the prime time evening bite.

Day 2 Friday Sept. 25th-
Since the Minnesota Teen Challenge group brought their own boats I wasn't needed for taking guys out in the camp pontoons, so I ended up in the GEM pontoon with Dave, Mike, and a Teen Challenge guy named Dave. The Day 1 Tournament allowed for the length of my best pike, bass (largie or smallie), walleye, and muskie combined. We picked Mule lake not so much for the tournament as for the opportunity to catch the largies and smallies in this bass catch and release only lake. Mule has clear water and conditions were sunny, then partly cloudy until about 3:30PM when it looked like it might rain but it never did.

We started off fishing on the South End of the lake by a downed tree. I tossed my smoke tube by the tree and missed a bite. Teen Challenge Dave cast his tube into one of the branches and we broke him off. I tied him another tube and when I casted back at the tree I got the first fish of the day, which was a rock bass. Mike Thompson worked us out onto the weed flat going East. I picked up a couple of small pike on a black spinnerbait while the other guys caught some bass on plastics. Eventually I switched up to a black/blue Strike King Pure Poison chatterjig and landed my first bass (1st picture) and this healthy 16+ incher.

A little later on I caught a 23 inch Pike on the Pure Poison.

Eventually we stopped working the SE corner of the lake because it was sunny and calm. We headed towards the access to work the West side of the lake which had some wind blowing on it. As we worked this shoreline Dave Lindmark got the only two smallmouth we would catch. I did see one nice smallmouth follow in a largie that Mike had hooked. As we worked this shore it was kind of slow but one of us would pull a fish every 10 minutes or so. Action picked up some as we got to the North end of the lake when I popped a couple and missed one on a smoke tube, while Mike got one, and Dave caught then lost one. It had clouded up at this point so the fish were probably turning on a little bit.

After another lull Mike hastily worked us towards the North Narrows Southern Point trying to get us there before the sun would pop out again. Mike got a quality hit on his popper and I threw in behind him with my smoke tube. I was reeling in quickly to make another cast when a bass swirled on the tube and missed. I let the tube sink and it was inhaled by this 17incher.

Mike thought we were going to get into a flurry but I think those were the only two fish we pulled off the Southern Point. As we were working that point the wind came up quite a bit from what it had been out of the East. As we worked our way to the North Narrows North Point I got a 16" largie that hit the tube on the drop. As we worked our way into the wind along the North point I switched up to a white/chartreuse gold bladed Strike King Pure Poison chatterjig and I immediately nailed a couple of small pike and then had a quality 28 inch class pike get hooked up and take a run but before I could get it in it pulled off. I was super disappointed because that was a money fish. I got a couple of largies on the Pure Poison, including a 15", and then the lure got bit off. It was the only white/chart gold blade that I had and my efforts to replace it were in vain as I stopped catching fish while the Dave's and Mike managed to get a few and miss a few. We worked all the North end points and went back to the North Narrows Southern Point one more time and then it was time to head in.

I had 40 inches which was 4th best for the day, but got me 3rd place in the money pool. Had I got the big pike I missed I would have been 2nd.


Day 3 Saturday Sept. 26th-
Day 3 was FallEE WallEE Trophy Day where the top 3 for the days tournament would get to put their name on the back of the plaque/trophy. The tournament would be decided by the length of one's 3 biggest bass and 3 biggest pike which is the same way things were decided last year when I got 1st Place. Because of tournament parameters the smart move was to hit Townline Lake because it has decent sized bass and an excellent average size for pike including many 30 inch class fish. Townline was where I won it last year. Today I would just be fishing with Dave Lindmark and Mike. It was fairly breezy all day out of the SW with clouds early giving way to warm sunshine in the afternoon.

I started off fishing a silver buzzbait and was rewarded with some solid pike from 24 to 26 inches. Mike Thompson started catching bass on the inside weedline with tubes, so with 3 nice pike under my belt I switched up to that. Mike was out fishing me on the bass but I managed to pick up 2 on a junebug Powerbait tube texas rigged on a jig. We got to some slop and I lost a bass on a Horny Toad but soon after that picked up my 3rd keeper bass on the Toad. Fish were in the slop but we didn't do a very good job of catching them. It's hard to say if they were mostly bass or pike. The sun came out and we decided to head back to where we started. Lindmark still didn't have a fish at this point and it was after noon. Mike and I started off working the inside weedline again and we both managed to upgrade our bass but Mike had the edge with bass while I had the bigger pike. Eventually it seemed we had run the best bass water so we headed out and tried for pike. Mike slowly started to upgrade his pike and Dave eventually got a few fish. I struggled to get bit and switched lures, eventually getting bit on a white with silver blades Terminator Spinnerbait, but after catching a couple of fish it got bit off and once again I struggled to get bit. Eventually we worked our way to the NE end of the lake where there is an abandoned beaver dam that can hold some nice bass and unfortunatley for me it was Mike who pulled a 17incher out from under the pads. I got an 18incher from the same spot the previous year.

Next we went to work the weeds off of one of the points on the North End of the Lake. We pulled a couple of pike and were working our way across the flat when I had a bruiser of a pike come out of the water while missing my spinnerbait, the fish followed to the boat before darting away. Mike Thompson threw after it and it struck at his spinnerbait and missed. Mike did a figure 8 at the boat and hooked up with the 29" inch fish which would win him his 1st FallEE WallEE title.

As time was closing in I had the brite idea to put on a Mann's Minus One crankbait and I upgraded a half inch and got a couple of other nice pike. I was kicking myself for not thinking of this lure sooner.

For the Day I got 3rd Place behind Mike who beat Lowell Borgan by a half inch. Lowell also had a 29" Pike, unbelievably from Mule Lake. However Mike forgot to get in the money pool, so I got the 2nd Place money.

So FallEE WallEE for 2009 is:
#1 Mike Thompson
#2 Lowell Borgan
#3 Dave Maas

Note: Lowell and I are both on FallEE 4 times and both during the exact same years (2003, 2004, 2008, 2009)

Fishers of Men Fishing Club Fall Outing

Full fishing report at the BP Fishing Log Blog...

Fishers of Men Fishing Club Twin Cities Fall Outing

Once again it is time for the Fishers of Men Fishing Club Fall Outing not that any of my blog readers would know because I have not blogged about it in years past. This is an event that I have participated in for the last 10 years. It actually seems like I have been to more than 10 of them. It was at my second Fall Outing that I was given the nickname Basspastor. This year we will be going back to Lutherdell Bible Camp on Boy lake North of Longville for the first time in 3 years. Last year we went to Camp Shamineau on Shamineau Lake and the year before that we went to Broadwater Lodge on Woman Lake all the years before that were at Luther Dell.

It used to be that the big draw was walleye fishing on Leech Lake, but in the last few years since walleye fishing has been poor on Leech no one has been fishing it and last year we were West of Brainerd. Since the walleye fishing has come back strong on Leech I suspect that a lot of the guys will be going there. I really do enjoy that Fall Leech lake jig and minnow fishing, but I am probably going to hit Mule Lake for the bass and Town Line Lake for bass and pike. We have a pretty good sized group coming up this year and so they need me to bring the Trophy so I can take someone out.

In years past we have had Ron Lindner, Vikings great the late Wally Hilgenberg, Cass Lake Guide Merv Heischmidt, and famous Leech Lake Guide Chip Leer as speakers. Once upon a time even I was the featured speaker. I have many great memories from the Fall Outing and hopefully this year will be no different.