St Jude Tourney

Anyone know the final results of the KFAN St Jude tourney on Saturday and Sunday?

How about you this yeaar Jedsall? Did you enter?

Took 48.2 lbs in 2 days to win. I’m no good remembering names, and didn’t know the winners, so I’ll have to wait till the official results come out. I’ll post when I get them. It was a great tourney. Lots of great anglers, lots of big bags of fish. The best one day weight was over 27 lbs for 8 fish. Unfortunatly for me. I lost my big motor an hour into the tourney. Con-rod came out of the crankcase, both sides (oil pump failure) so I didn’t have the opportunity to compete. Special thanks to Dave Mansel from North of Minneapolis. A complete stranger. He allowed me to transfer my day 1 fish to his boat and take them up to the weigh in. Not every person would give the keys to a $40k boat to a stranger to help him out. He sat in Wabasha for 2.5 hours with my boat till I came back. What a guy. Unfortunatly without a tourney official to inspect his boat, or supervise the transfer, the tourney director had to DQ me day one. I didn’t have the heart to fish day 2 25 lbs behind the leader, when my partners boat had lost a coil pack this week in practice. We had no backup. I’ll be back next year. It’s a great tourney, for a great cause. Tim Allen the tourney director keeps a tight ship, and it’s the best organized, well run tourney I’ve ever fished. Limit after limit of hawgs was brought to the scale. To average over 3 lbs per fish for 2 days…wow. Shows you how good this river has become. We’re all fishing an awsome fishery, here in the upper miss. Got to step back and appreciate it when you see fish brought to the scale like we had in this tourney.

Jim

Wow, an average of 3 lbs. per fish?! Jedsall, you’re a tournament guy…could you help a college guy out who’s still cutting his teeth on the river?? Where would you say most of these types of limits come from? Don’t give me any specific secret spots, but, does this kind of action come from the typical visible spots like rip rap and wing dams or is there something else?

It’s not so easy to narrow it down to a particular area… but I’ll give you what I can. Biology tells you that at the time this tournament was held the fish were close to spawning. So the fish were VERY close to their spawning areas. The cool water temperature seemed to have backed the fish off the real shallow areas (At least in the lake). So the fish were at points, and the closest deeper water they could find to the area’s they wanted to spawn. Always in the spring I start fishing where the fish will spawn, and fish my way out to where they winter. They’re always somewhere in between… You just got to go fish them and find out what they are up to. Every year you fish them, you get a little smarter, you understand their habitat a little better, you get to know the river better, and you will start to succeed. Only shortcut is to team up with a person that will show you the ropes, or Join a Bassclub. That’s what I did. My partner, and a couple of other people, gave me a crash course on the river. A class I’m certain that my wife wishes sometimes, that I had never taken. LOL

Jedsall (and everyone else who shared info), I appreciate your insight very much! I hate to sound nosey, but there is just so much to learn yet! Again, I’m not trying to find out all your secrets and flock to certain spots. Maybe someday I’ll be a tournament fisherman, but as for now I’m a college student who’s fiercely (I think that’s a good adjective!) interested in the bass fishing scene on the river. I’m no idiot, I mean, we do pretty good out there, but there’s always more to learn and more spots to uncover!

One more question for you…where do the smallies spawn? I’d imagine the largemouth are in the backwaters and bays as in a lake, but what about the smallies? I heard that they travel great distances in river systems over the winter to spawn. Is that true? Would they head to the backwaters as well, to avoid the current on their nests??

It seems to me that spawning areas may be one of those “secret spots” that a successful tourney angler may want to keep to themselves. Even generalizations may lead other anglers to your area and soon a secret spot becomes a community hole. And who enjoys fishing community holes?

Well, I’d be interested in the most general piece of information, like “side channels,” which would be familiar to any fisherman worth his box of crawlers. The only thing I know of smallie spawning habits applies to lakes…apparently they like around 12 ft. of water with a rocky bottom. Of all the fishing mags I’ve read, I haven’t found a whole heck of a lot about rivers, and especially specific habits of the fish, other than “fish current breaks.” Let me say it like this…every year on mother’s day we get together with the fam and do some fishing off the shoreline. It’s a rip rap shoreline in a side channel with depth anywhere from 13-17 ft. I like to bang a little med.-diving craw colored crank along the rocks parallel to the shoreline. Now, I’ve had some pretty good results…one smallie actually snapped the treble hook, I mean just broke off one of the prongs! That was a nice fish! Anyway, what the heck are these fishing doing here? They are there all summer as well. Is this a spawning area?

I would never share any of my secret spots topwater… maybe just a couple of yours LOL. I suggest buying any of the well written books on Bass. You can find them at gander mountain, bass pro shops, ect. In them you can find out all you want to know about the General habitat and habits of river smallmouth. If you really want to be a student of the game, get a book, study, and go fish. They are not that hard to find if you spend some time on the water.

It doesn’t matter if you know the spots, you still gotta cath them. The last issue of Inside Line puts it well as “real” Pro’s don’t waste time trying to catch other peoples fish. I’m not even CLOSE to a real Pro, so of course I still try to use other’s spots. ) I’ve found that normally even though someone else went to a spot and tore them up, doesn’t mean you will to, unless of course you went with them and they showed you exactly what they were doing. Fish need to be patterned, not spotted. Just an opinion though.

I often thought “Why not find a pro, watch him and follow him around to find spots. Until one day I tried to follow Jedsall around, Now I know why pro’s have boats that go 105 mph.

This is discouraging to a guy in a jon boat with a 15 hp merc.

Any who,, stick with what you know, Youll have fun.

Jedsall? You still fishin the Everstart?

JignPig I am 99% sure the winners were Neaumen and Little, I am still waiting for the the results myself.

I’m not in the everstart. When I blew my big motor in the kfan, I went to a 280 offshore. Too big for their rules… Would have been a fun one to fish. How about you? You entering it?

Went to the kfan site looked up the results. To bad they posted the money and not the weight. 48 lbs to win.

FINAL RESULTS

NO. TEAM WINNINGS

1 George Liddle, Paul Neumann $3,250

2 Aaron Laroque, Joseph Hall $2,500

3 Rick Billings, Jeff Janet $1,750

4 Eric Kielb, Paul Kielb $1,200

5 Torrie Oswald, Robert Biehlar $950

6 Chris Luedtke, Brian Brown $850

7 Steve Sandberg, Scott Sandberg $700

8 Graden Hanson, Mike Vinci $650

9 Jim Merthan, Larry Carlson $500

10 Bob Chapin, Dwayne Finch $500