Dan84

Ya I was happy with the sizes. Most people think the big ones are on the east end but you would be suprised what you can find on the west end!

I had a great weekend on Rice Lake with my good friend Blake Rankie. We decided to enter a fun Bass/Walleye CSFL tournament on Sunday, so we got out and did some pre-fishing on the Saturday. After launching the boat around 1pm on the Saturday, we hit some of our spots to see if the fish were using the areas that Blake and I had done well at before. Conditions were fantastic and the winds were minimal out of the south west all weekend. We did very well in our best spots after just pulling up to them and taking a few casts just to see if the fish were using the areas. While doing this we managed to boat 4 fish over 4lbs in 4 different spots having left these spots right after we caught just the one fish. One fish was pushing 6lbs caught by Blake on a weed/rock transition in 12 feet of water. After having such a great pre-fish, we were very excited about our chances of winning the event. We had good reason to believe we could bring in 20lbs if not more based on our pre-fish. Considering we had over 17lbs with 4 fish and each one from a different spot we were excited to get back to our spots and fish them thoroughly on tournament day. Sunday comes and we get to our first spot and bam, right away we get our first fish, a 3.5lb Smallie. Within 40 minutes we have that fish and 2 smaller ones. The action slows so we make the call to move to one of our other spots we hit a big fish the day before. We get there and second cast I’m into a beast. This fish is well over 4lbs maybe close to 5. It spits the hook in mid air. After that the fish turn right off for us and we manage a few more fish less than 2 lbs in a couple more spots that also showed us monster Smallies the day before. Despite our amazing pre-fish, we could not duplicate our success on the day it mattered. The fish just didn’t seem to want to cooperate with us. We finished mid pack with a respectable limit of 5 fish but not enough to place in the money. Baits of choice for the weekend where Terminator Spinnerbaits in Chartreuse and double willow leaf, the new Rapala X-Rap Shad’s, and Rapala Taildancers in the perch pattern. We focused on spots ranging from 5-17 feet of water near weed/rock transitions. All in all it was still a great weekend, I learned a lot from Blake who is an accomplished Bass Tournament pro, who also appeared on Shaun Rickards Outdoor Adventures and is on the Shimano Pro Staff. I’m sure the next time we team up; we will do a lot better! The Smallmouth fishing is great right now on Rice Lake, so get out there and get into some fat fall Smallies. For more of my recent fishing reports you can visit http://www.trophyangling.com/ Daniel Miguel