Bassmasters is something I watched growing up as a kid. Watching professional fisherman battle for top prizes and honors in the most competitive fishing series on the planet never once occurred to me it would eventually be a reality for me.
Getting my feet we in our local club tournaments and dabbling in some national events has prepared me for this event with Bassmaster Kayak Series out of LaCrosse Wisconsin.
Growing up, our family had a camp along the bank of the Mississippi River near La Crosse and I've spent years fishing the backwaters in this area for bass. But, I knew if I was to be competitive in this event I would have to find places where I could target bigger fish rather than the large quantities of smaller fish we usually would encounter.
I pre-fished and got on a really good afternoon pattern of big largemouths in the shallow pads. The problem was the bit didn't start getting good until about noon. I located a decent concentration of smallmouth bass in practice that I would target in the early morning hours while I waited for the main event.
Unfortunately, the fish I'd found in practice weren't there or weren't cooperating and I was left with only 4 very small bass past the halfway point in day one of the tournament.
As the soon got higher and temps rose, I charged into my swampy shallow areas and pounded away with the topwater frog. The action started heating up around noon and I managed several good culls to complete a solid limit and put me in striking distance to finish toward the top of the leaderboard in this two day tournament.
Stay tuned for the day 2 video to see how things played out!
#kayakfishing #bassfishing #kayakbassfishing #mississippiriver
30 окт 2023
