I fished the last Ottawa Valley South Bassmasters tournament of the year last Saturday on Lower Beverly Lake, we found a nice mix of largemouth and smallmouth bass, and a bunch of unwanted pike, but we needed one big fish to round out our top 5 keepers, finished a rainy day, with a respectable 15.5 pounds.
Baits producing fish for me Big Bite Baits Suicide Shad and Smallie Smasher, ChordaWorm Lures ChordaStick and Spinner Aas Chatterbait. We fished 4 to 10 foot weed flats and fished 20 foot ledges with dropshot.
Back out on the water on Sunday with my buddy Scott on Big Rideau Lake searching for one hawg bass to win the $10,000 top prize in the Shootout Fishing League Big Bass Championship.
We launched Scott's Crestliner in the early morning darkness with not too much difficulties, given the lack of light and low water at the launch.... proceeded to the boat check-in and ran to our first spot and waited until 8 am when we could start fishing... we caught a couple smaller fish right away, but nothing to make run to the weigh-in scales. So we moved to a new location looking for that 6 pounder.
We continued moving around to different spots... fishing shallow.... fishing deep.... using flipping jigs, chatterbaits, underspins with swimbaits, crankbaits, stickbaits and dropshotting. We had a good day catching numerous fish on various baits, but we were just not getting any big fish.
A few hours into fishing our first "cool" thing of the day we catch a nice pike with a tag in it from Dr. Cooke's Fish Ecology and Conservation Physiology Lab at Carleton University, after recording the information on the tag and a couple quick photos, we released it to continue growing.
We continue to fish in the rain and fog catching a variety of smallmouth, largemouth and pike.
A little later in the day we catch a nice 3.5 pound largemouth bass, this fish also has a tag in it and we record the info and release the fish.
For the Big Bass tournament you were allowed to weigh in fish throughout the day, up until 4pm, the day was getting late now and we decide this is "last cast".... well my partner Scott on his last cast gets a nice largemouth and we quickly net the first... this was our biggest fish on the day and since we had to go by the weigh-in anyways.... we decided to weigh in the fish....
4.18 pounds so no big fish today, and no $10,000, but a good day on the water.