Gander Mountain Tournaments?

Have any of you fished the Gander Mountain tournaments?

If so what are they like?

It looked like at some of the tournaments they did a combined weight (team) total for the Pro and the Am. Is this really the case?

Do you know when they usually announce the schedule for the following year?

Thanks

JT Bagwell

jerimiah

i got my schedule last year at the illinois bass federation presidents meeting i cant rember if it was febuary or march

acording to there rules you fish as a team but the boater has full control of the boat the non boater pays less entry to fish then the boater but can only win 3000 and the boater wins 10,000

I wonder if any of the boaters has had the ethics and given the non boater the 10 grand if the non boater put the boater on the fish and boated all the fish I highly doubt it

i dont know what kind of turn out they got in illinois division but i herd the pool 13 tourney drew quite a few

There schedule for next year can be seen at http://www.classicbass.com under the 2005 tournament schedule.

BassBoy,

Thanks for the link. Either that isn’t a full schedule or they have done away with the tournaments in Illinois.

Dusty,

I think the combined weight thing can go both ways. If the boater gets all of the keepers, I really doubt that the Co-Angler is going to give him/her $3,000. I don’t think it is unethical for either party to keeper the full amount that they win regardless if they catch a fish. That is the nature of the beast in tournament formats like that. Personally I don’t like the idea but I don’t make the rules and I have a choice to fish them or not.

JT Bagwell

yep but they can be lucrative

JT,
It looks like they combined the WI and IL divisions. I think the only IL tournament last year that drew a good crowd was the on the Mississippi.
I have read a couple of your articles in Insideline and they are very informative!!

Thank You Bass Boy.

I think part of the problem with the low turnouts for the IL tournaments, was lack of promotion. I never saw advertising for these tournaments anywhere. BFL has tournaments on some of the same bodies of water and they were drawing much larger fields. The higher entry fees may have also been a factor as well.

Maybe at some point this tournament trail will really take off from a popularity standpoint and they will come back to Illinois and other surrounding states.

JT Bagwell

I think your right about the promotion JT, I was sitting out on a wing dam when they left sunset marina this summer and did’nt even know it was going on, I did see a gander mt trailer sitting on the road when I put in but had’nt heard anything about it on radio or newspapers.

That’s Funny

I live not too far from SunSet Marina and I didn’t know they were here either.

Tony we are practically neighbors. lol You are about the only other person from this area that I have seen on a fishing forum. Do you fish any of the local tournaments or anything?

JT Bagwell

No, JT I’m not too much of a tournament guy, there is another guy Tony Aspia on here that just lives down the road ,he and I fished the IDA tournaments this year at red wing,but I have a lot of friends that fish the bass tournaments so we probably know some of the same people. Its great to see local guys on here and actually there are quite a few, I put in at sunset and usually fish during the week,so if you see me say hey! I have a black lund Mr Pike 18 with a 150 merc with IDA decals on the side.

Tony,

I will definately hollar if I see you on the river. You do the same if you should see me. As of right now I have a red Triton TR20 with an Optimax on the back. If all goes right I will have a new one in the spring so it might be a different color. lol

JT Bagwell

jt

congrats on your second place finish them 14 inchers never looked so good at a weigh in before did they

as for the gander moutain bass tourney coming out of sunset i had there schedule and it wasnt even on there to my knowledge they fished pool 13, rend, shelbyville, and i cant rember the other one

Thanks Dusty.

It was crazy up on pool 13. I caught about 30 fish but I could only manage 4 keepers. The funny thing was I had several 13″ fish that I know weighed more than my keepers.

I knew I was in trouble before I went up there because every spot I knew had a duck blind on it and that made them off limits. The night before I had decided that I was just going to get out my flippin’ sticks and do what I do best. For the most part I was just hoping that I wouldn’t get skunked because the day before in practice I only had one 10″ fish the whole time.

During the tournament I fished the entire day (minus the 2 hours I wasted in the morning) with 3 flippin’ sticks on my front deck. I was just slowly working some wood near deeper water.

Hope to see you in the spring.

JT Bagwell

Ps: I talked to a guy from the Gander Mountain Tour today and he informed me that they did in fact combine the IL and WI divisions because of a problem with participation in IL. Oh well, I guess I might just have to learn some WI lakes and rivers next year.

i had kinda the same experience like that up there one other time

i was fishing one point in browns before it was off limits i took 5th place in 3 straigth tourneys off the same spot

one day we took 3 limits of bass off of it but we had one fish that would bump barely i mean it was one of them i dont think i should weigh it but it took a 16 inch fish to cul it out and it was just a tick heavier on the balance beam

yeah i kinda worry about the staus of a few lakes in illinois as a bass fishery they seem sto have alot of small fish but once they get keeper size they disappear i think shelbyville is very bad for this

This is one of the reasons pool 13 river tournaments draw better then most other tourneys in the state

Plus it seems to me Illinois isnt as good with there fisheries money as other states (I hear this is one of the reasons browms lake in pool 13) is catch and release only

Dusty, I agree.

I don’t think IL does enough to help build good fisheries. There are big fish in Shelbyville but you have to work to find them. After having some big name tournaments in IL the local government should realize the profit potential that is available from hosting these events. That alone should give them more incentive to get our waterways back in shape.

Look at pool 16 for example. I remember fishing areas like Sunfish slough when I was a kid and it had good water depth. Now you only have 3-4 feet maximum depths when the water is high. The amount of backwater areas on this pool has really wasted away.

JT Bagwell

i agree ilinois could do alot more of course the sorps could 2 but in pool 19 theres still great fishing but 1/2 of the backwater thats there has limited boat acess after it gets to normal stages

pool 19 has a lake identical to sunfish it is called fish lake it has silted in very very bad but can still get in there majority of the year but there is limited water

one of the problems with pool 19 is alot of the islands are privately owned i believe thats on the iowa side but they dont own the water but i think the state or corps let it go cause its private property? just a thought

as for shelbyville one of my team mates in a 8 man weighed i believe over 40 lbs in 2 days on that lake but days like that are few and far between for even the locals