Mizike moving to Oklahoma

Times are constantly changing and I am about to be spending a lot less time with my roomate/friend/fishing partner Mizike. He has applied within our company for a transfer to Oklahoma City to be closer to family and friends and his family's farm.

He has gone through several interviews and will be making a site visit next Thursday for a 3rd shift Supervisor position. From my experience with the company its now down to not if he is getting the position but when.

I think it will be a good move for him. He and his fiance will be getting married in August, and it has to be a little rough living together out of a room in our basement. I'm sure they are ready for a place of their own to get their life together started. He will be closer to the family farm so he can help out there. He will also get a little bump in pay for the position as well.
We have had a good year. Once I got a promotion and we were not on opposit shifts any longer we have been able to spend quite a bit of time together. This year we started tournament fishing together, had many late nights drinking, and made it out on quite a few other adventures as well.

I am glad we were able to do so much together. I am a little sad that he will be close to 1000 miles away again and we will rarely see each other after a few weeks.

Time for Spring Maintenance

I learned from last year to have transportation and the boat ready for fishing early. I was stranded without a pulling vehicle last year for our second tournament when I waited until the last minute to get my hubs replaced on the blazer. Open water fishing will be coming right around the corner. This is a good time to get started making those repairs so your not stranded at home when you could be fishing.

This fall I had a grinding on the drivers side rear of the blazer. The blazer is mainly used for fishing so I don't drive it much during the winter. We had replaced the brakes last spring (so I thought)! I guess we had not replaced that one. It was rubbing metal on metal. We got it replaced with a new brake pad and went to pull off the other side and replace it and realized that we had replaced that one last year. We must have really been in a hurry to get to the lake that day. We replaced the passenger side as well this time so that they would both be new.

The blazer is ready to go this spring now. My tournament schedule starts a little later this year so I have more prep time and can get on the water to figure out the fish a little longer this year. All but a couple of the tournaments I have scheduled are as a co-angler this year. It will be a year of learning for me. It will also save a considerable amount of money between entry fees, pulling gas and boat gas. I think it will be fun being in the back of the boat, more fishing and a few less worries.

Club Meeting 2/1/10

Twin Rivers Bassmasters had their monthly meeting last night. It was an interesting meeting and there were some heated topics being debated for this years tournaments and the future of the club.

One issue was having the paper tournaments that counted for points. There are 2 paper tournaments in the clubs roster this year. The lake debated was lake Erie. The tournament is scheduled for June 5th and 6th. During that time you can only keep bass that are 18" and over.

A few of the members were arguing that paper tournament takes the fun out of the weigh in, as well as changes the actual weights of the weekend. They argued that you can catch an 18 inch fish that weighs 3 pounds or it can be a fat 18 inch fish that weighs 4 pounds. They also argued that we could have the tournament a few weeks later when the length limit drops down.

On the other side of the argument the other members said that there is an 18 inch length limit because it is one of the best times to fish that area. The bass are everywhere and will bite anything dropped at their noses. It makes for fun fishing and gives the less experienced anglers a chance to catch a lot of fish.

As a newcomer to the club I can see both points. My opinion however is that you are fishing for points to make the fish off and be the club leader at the end of the year. All of the other tournaments are weight not length tournaments. Also, if you are a decent angler you should be able to fish Lake Erie and find bass any time. We should schedule a fun trip for everybody to have fun and catch a bunch of fish at that time. If we are going to do a tournament at that time of the year we should use the length limit that is in effect at that time. Only 18"+ fish should be brought in and weighed. We don't go to lakes around here and say that any fish between 9 and 12 inches should be written on paper so that the less fortunate anglers can have a weighed in fish.

I'm not saying I won't fish the paper tournaments, I would love to get out on Erie and slay the crap out of Bass. There wouldn't be anything better, and the only way I could do that is if the club has the tournament at that time. There were members that are not rejoining this year due to the paper tournaments.

The other issue that was debated heavily is the future of the club. The main topics that were brought up were that there is not an incentive to remain a B.A.S.S. club anymore, and that there is not the camaraderie that there used to be in the club. There were quite a few members that will not be renewing their memberships this year.

All of the arguments seemed to point to one thing to me. This club is set up to fish club tournaments. There is no advancement past that as there used to be. In order to advance to any other level you must participate in the B.A.S.S. Federation Nation tournament trail or the Weekend Series. In the past camaraderie was built as the competition lead to the opportunity within the club to advance to a regional and even further. There are only a couple guys in the club that fish the Federation Nation trail and there is hardly any representation for Twin Rivers Bassmasters within B.A.S.S. besides that. Last year Twin Rivers did not compete at the State Chapter level.

One solution for that might be for the club to help with the dues and try to get some of the members to become active in the Federation Nation or Weekend series or compete attempt to get members to the State Chapter level in order to compete outside the club level. Part of my plan is that once I learn enough that I would feel confident is to fish the Federation Nation trail. I would use the club as a gateway so that I could compete, as you must be a member of a club to fish those tournaments.

The club also talked about switching to a FLW club. The other idea that was passed around was to not be affiliated with either as you have to pay dues each year and most of the guys just want to fish the club tournaments anyway.

I think the B.A.S.S. affiliation is a good drawing point for members still. I do wish the structure was different and the club tournaments counted for something more than bragging rights at the end of the year. I am joining the club to learn and fish with some guys that do well at many tournaments outside the club. I am fishing the FLW BFL series to learn but if I do well I could advance to regionals and even further.

In Twin Rivers Bassmasters, I think the clubs are for competitive fun. If you want to get serious, fish the Federation Nation or Weekend Series tournaments, the club sets up their schedule to keep those dates open. You could also fish the Opens.

First Fish of the Year Family Competition

The family competition of catching the first fish of the year has been concluded. After several years of holding the title I fell short this year to Dad. After a lacksidasical attempt on my part Dad decided to drill some holes in the ice and put forth his best effort to knock me off the throne.

I spoke with him this weekend and he said on the 23rd he was in Northern Kansas visiting my aunts and uncles and him and my uncle snuck off to Norton lake for a couple hours. He said he was using some wax worms my uncle brought and they hauled in a bunch of bluegill and a few crappie. He said that there were quite a few fishermen from Colorado out on the ice fishing as well.

Back in the prime of the lake a lot of fishermen from Colorado and Nebraska use to fish there. The lake must be getting good again since it flooded in 2008 and they left it full this time.

He also said a blue herron came down on the ice near him. He tossed a bluegill about half way between him and the bird. The bird jumped up and he thought it was going to fly away but it flew right to the fish and stabbed it, flipped it in the air and ate it. Wish I was there to witness that.

All of the good fishing reports I have been hearing around here is that Indian lake is producing real well through the ice. Limits of saugeye are being caught along with crappie and bluegill. I was speaking with the head of Team Bass Xtreem and he was saying he has made it up there quite a bit and has had some good luck.

I will probably either make it up to lake Erie to ice fish or wait for the ice out before I go fishing again.

The Twin Rivers Bassmasters meeting is tonight. I really enjoy going to the meetings. After not having one last month, I am ready to see how everybody has been doing. Hopefully I can get a couple fishing trips scheduled with the guys before April so I can get nominated in and be an official club member before the tournaments start.

Berkley 10" Original Powerbait Worm

I have a few favorite lures for bass fishing. Each year I add several favorites to my arsenol. Last year was no different. I started to realize what a difference larger baits have in catching larger bass while I was on my trip to Kentucky lake. During a rainy day there we traveled to Nashville and ended up in the bass pro shop. I picked up some Berkley Powerbait Original 10" Power Worms in the red shad color.

The next day I was trying them out. I was off a secondary point where I saw a ton of bass surfacing. I started out catching them on top water but the bite was still slow so I started using a spinner bait. The bite picked up. Then I tied on one of the Power Worms. On the first cast I had a bass on. The rest of my time spent on that point was a blast. I wore out almost the whole pack of worms catching bass, and I was using each worm until it fell off the hook since I only had the one pack. I had it Texas rigged with a 3/8 oz black bullet weight and would drag it on the bottom for a bit then lift the rod tip. As the worm came off the bottom the bass would hit it almost every time. The bass were mostly 13-14 inches which gives me a lot of hope for catching 12"+ bass here.

I tried the worm out in several parts of the lake and continued to have success with it even in spots where my other go to baits were not working.

I know these have been around for a long time but I hadn't ever tried them because I thought they were made for huge fish. With a 12" length limit around here and a lot of the bass being just around that size I didn't want to miss an opportunity to fill my limit. Now I realize that I may have missed that opportunity by not giving them a try.

Lack of motivation this weekend

I am having a little difficulty getting over my lack of motivation over the weekend. I had a few things that needed to be done and all I did was sit in front of the t.v. on the computer most of the weekend. It could just be the winter wearing on me. I always get more active in the spring.

I did run my full tilt account from 60.00 to over 200.00 Friday night but busted on Saturday when greed overtook and I tried to get to 250.00 in order to cash out for some fishing fund money.

Saturday my wife and I went to our church to donate blood. She had scheduled us for the middle of the day so pretty much shot Saturday besides that. It took about 3 hours for both of us to give blood while 1 watched the kids.

Mizike and I had talked about fishing on Sunday, but we both stayed up real late Saturday night and slept in on Sunday. He had a date that afternoon with his fiance so we stayed home.

We both got onto farm town in facebook and had fun with that last night. Today I am wondering why I never got around to clearing anything off that increasing list of things that need to be done. It was nice relaxing but that list gets out of control really fast.

Hopefully this evening I will get a membership at a gym. I think getting in better physical shape will help me stay motivated in other aspects of my life.

Short Sunday Trip

Our plans for this weekend changed Friday evening as work was ending. The person that told us he was going to take us ice fishing ended up saying that he was not going to go. He had called ODNR to check on the ice thickness and they said that it would not be safe.

I had been getting reports that it was 10 inches thick the week before. I am definately not an ice expert though and have fallen through the ice before so I took ODNR's word and decided to do something else.

Saturday I went to Gander Mountain to see if they had any good lures in the discount bins. They had strike kings lures on sale for 2.00 each, so I bought about 20.00 worth. I got 2 series 6, 2 series 5, a series 1, a red eye shad and a diamond shad along with 2 bags of strike king finesse worms.

Sunday Mizike and I decided to fish under the damn at Alumn Creek. We started driving up there and were about 10 minutes away when we decided to go to the Deer Creek dam on the opposit side of the city.

I had reasoned that with all the water they let out in the fall dropping the lake to winter pool they probably released a lot of fish that would be stacked up under the dam.

When we arrived it was about 40 degrees and raining. We fished for about an hour. Several others had been there for a while and nobody was having any luck. We decided to go to the main lake and look for some of our lures we had lost last year since the water is down 20 feet or more. We walked several miles of shoreline and found tons of hooks, sinkers and swivels. We also found a few in-line spinners, a spinner bait, buzzbait, red eye shad, another lipless crankbait, a hot-n-tot older version, and several bobbers.

By walking the shoreline we got a good closeup look at the structure in the lake. There is some awesome structure along the riverbed but a lot of the bottom is mud and flat. The area I had fished a lot last year had rock running out in the water quite a ways and was neer the river bed. Another spot near the boat ramp that I thought looked good was shallow and flat, the only rock it had was right on the shoreline.

I think it will be a good idea to spend some time fishing the riverbed this season as it holds most of the structure on the back half of the lake.

I am going to try to make it out one more time this winter and get some pictures or video of where the structure is. I might even try to GPS the better structures.