Saturday June 14, 2014. Just finished fishing the Granite City Division of Fishers of Men Legacy tournament on Lake Koronis in Paynesville, MN with my nephew Logan Procai.
The day started out wet, very wet. We launched in 8 position and it was dry when we launched but within about 15 mins it started raining and when I say raining I mean Monsoon Rain. It rained hard for over 2-1/2 hours. To make matters worse the water was up and had a lot of docks flooded. Koronis has historically been a lake that I can catch fish on docks very quickly and efficiently and with good size to them.
We started fishing my favorite row of docks and it became apparent quickly that the Bass were not holding under the docks as we couldn't even get sunfish to play with our plastic baits. after about 1/2 hour of no luck around or under any docks on this shoreline we moved to my secondary spot to fishing some dead falls and Reeds.
On my 3rd cast with a Black & Blue Leena Lures Ring Tube, I brought in a 12-1/2 inch Largemouth, okay a 12-1/2 inch bass does not have a large mouth but it was a fish and we were on the board towards our limit of 5. As they say you have to have 5 before you can cull so I wasn't worried about starting with this size fish. About 6 casts later I hooked into a 14 inch Bass, number two for culling later. We continued down the shoreline and Logan, fishing with a Black & Blue Swim Jig hooked into 13-3/4 inch bass, although we are catch fish I am starting to get a little worried that we'll be catch dinks all day long and we will not end up with much weight. We figured we'd have to see if we could find the bigger fish eventually. After fishing the Shoreline for about 1/2 I finally got the strike I was waiting for, I hooked into a 17-1/2 Bass that weighed 3.46lbs, now we are string to catch quality fish.
With 4 fish in the box we moved to a Reed patch I like to fish to see if it might hold a couple of decent bass to fishing out our 5 and maybe cull some of the dinks. After about 10 mins Logan continuing to fish with his Black & Blue Swim Jig Hooks into a 17 inch bass to complete our 5. Now it is time to start culling. Although we get a few more bites we do not catch any more bass out of the Reed patch and decide to hit some more docks near by but unfortunately we have the same results as earlier, not a single bite.
It had been about an hour so we decided to go back to the second shoreline we fish and caught our first 4 bass to see if the area may have reloaded or if we might be able to catch any fish we might have missed the first time around. This ended up being a smart move as it only took about 10 mins and I hooked into another 17-1/2 inch bass which was a very nice cull for the first 12-1/2 bass I caught, about a 2-1/2 to 3lbs upgrade. However, this bass ended up being the only fish we pulled out on the second pass through this shoreline.
We decided to move to other areas but did not have much luck catching any fish that would cull the 2 dinks we had left in the box. Until we moved to the West end of the lake and found a weed line fish were biting and quickly caught a 16 & 15-1/2 inch bass to cull out the two smaller ones. Not a huge upgrade but at least everything was 15 inches or bigger. The sun seemed to be attempting to poke out so I thought I would hit a couple of more docks to see if maybe fish were starting to seek some shelter and finally I hooked into a 16-1/2 bass with my favorite Black & Red Flack with Chartreuse Tail Senko to cull out the 15-1/2 and a short time later Logan hooked into another 16-1/2 in bass to cull out the 16, now everything is 16-1/2 inches or larger.
We decided to go back to spot number 2 one last time to see if any other fish may have reloaded before we went into weigh in but didn't catch anything that culled so the 13.56lbs in our sack (according to my Rapala Culling Scale) would have to be good enough.
At the weigh in it was discovered that there was an issue with the Official Tournament Scale due to it was clearly weighing in everyone's fish low and our bag only registered 10.86lbs a good 2.7lbs light. However, we resolved that it was weighing in everyone's bags low so we accepted our fate and ended up in 5th place out of 18 teams. Not a bad finish and we had fun despite being soaked to the bone. It was a good time spent with my nephew Logan and we are looking towards our next tournament together in August on Big Marine where we finished 2nd last year and are gunning for 1st this year.
Catch ya next time and remember "Just Fish!"
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