Official BR.com MO Members Tournament Results

[Valascus]

Well folks...I would say that all in all, that was a very successful (for a certain someone) and very enjoyable day for everyone involved. Special thanks to everyone who participated! I was very glad to meet all of you in person and would gladly fish along side any of you!

Mike (NeedEmp) waxed everyone and was on HIGH quality fish all day! Kudos to him for an absolutely awesome day on the water. Between the Mike and his son, they were able to boat more than 20 bass...far more than any other participants!

I have a few pics, though I will admit, not many...there are many other members that have taken video and pics as well. Chuck (CLTodd), Dan, Mike (NeedEmp), all have some good pics to share!

The day was perfect weather wise...got a wee bit windy...and by a wee bit I mean a gale. The fishing was very tough and no one could get a solid pattern going. Everyone seemed to catch fish using a different technique. Jigs, by far, won the day though. I will post more info a bit later...along with the pics I have. I have to save them and prepare them for posting.

[Needemp]

I don't have pics yet, but will soon. It was a great day meeting everyone and stickin a few pigs. Can't wait to fish with you all again. The best part of the day was the excitement on my 9 year olds face. That was great!

Our day consisted of a limit by noon. My son and I boated 25 bass, 8 keepers, and a 5 fish total of 23 1/2 pounds. I started out with a barely legal keeper at 9:30. Then at 9:45 caught one close to 2 pounds. Very next cast was a 6 1/2 chunk. At about 11:00 I boated a 5 1/4. At around 1:30 I caught an 8pound 3 oz (new PB by 4 oz) and culled a 1 1/2 pounder I had. The key was rocks, wind and shallow water. All keepers came within 5 to 10 feet from the bank and the 3 hogs were right on the shore. I had to basically be in the wind to catch the quality fish. I knew starting the day off that this was a very old lake with lots of silt. I eliminated all water that had a mud bank. I figured those fish were ready to spawn, and the rocks offered that to them. There were three basic areas with rocks, the dam, a northwest set of jetties and an east set of jetties. The dam had no breeze whatsoever and the NW set of jetties didn't offer deep water. So I concentrated on the east jetties. Finally, I quickly gave up on any area that was sheltered from the wind. The chop on the water was imperative. All bass were caught on a brown 3/8 oz jig with 4" Powerbait pumkin w/ green sparkle trailor. I definately noticed that the bass held on longer to the Powerbait trailor than with ordinary plastics. Needless to say, it was a great day!

[5bass]

Sounds like a good time was had by all! Congrats on the win NEEDEMP and yes, the bass rarely spit out anything Power Bait.

[ring fry]

Well, got home about 10:30 last night and was at work this morning @ 6:00  Needemp, thanks for kicking our collective butts.   :-[  What a great time!  It's pretty cool putting faces to names and the general fishing BS.  Nice little lake.  

My two keepers came from the rock piers at the other end of the lake.  Probably caught 25 - 30 fish total, and all of them didn't add up to needemp's best five.  There are sure a lot of 14 -14 3/4 inch fish in that lake.  Pretty much same situation as Mike's.  Most of my fish were on the rocks, shallow, on the windy side.  Went through the first time with a rogue, then came back with a 1-, then back with a medium diver, caught fish on all.  Only caught a couple on jig.  Largest one was on the rogue and the smaller one on med. diving norman.  Hard to fish sometimes with all the bobber lobbers there, but was the only place I could catch more than one fish at a time.

Anyway, congratulations Mike and son.  Very nce and polite kid.  Got an 8:00 shotgun golf tournament I got to get ready for, so I better get to work before my assistant fires me.

[Fishing Doug]

All,

Sounds like you had a good time...I am bummed that I missed it. I didn't realize Little Dixie held bass that big.

FD

[cart7t]

After we passed you ring, I pulled 2 14" shorts off those rocks with a wiggle wart. Tough fishing for sure.

Believe it or not, Little Dixie was once a little known big bass hotspot back in the days when the lake was loaded with scads of timber.

Somethings up with that lake though,  the conservation dept. has put the slot on it to get the fish to get past 15" and it doesn't seem to be working.  I was last there 4 years ago in the fall and loaded up on the same size fish we did yesterday.  I was thinking then, "man, this lake's gonna be hot in a couple years"

Hot, it's not.

Except for Mike anyway.  ;D

[harshman]

It was too bad that the only thing my wife and I caught alot of was sun

Was still a trip I will not soon forget , I can't wait to see some pics.

Caution the following picture is not for those with a weak stomach...I warned you

Harshman

[cart7t]

Yikes!  

Had you been paying attention during any of Roland Martins shows, you'd have known to slather those gams with plenty of sunscreen before you went out!

[harshman]

Unfortunatly that was with sun tan lotion .......just not a very high spf. Lesson Learned

Harshman

[KU_Bassmaster.]

Had you been paying attention during any of Roland Martins shows, you'd have known to slather those gams with plenty of sunscreen before you went out!

Yeah .... on top of your ears ... on your nose ... and all over your face ;D ;D

I have about the dumbest burn line right now from the other day. I put on sunscreen, but I was wearing a visor. The visor covers up above my whole hairline, but it doesn't fit snuggly against my head on the corners. The very top right and left corners of the of my forehead (about an inch below my hairline) is burnt. I look like a d**n idiot ... but some might argue I look like that anyways. : ;D

BTW - Sounds like a good time. Congrats to Needemp. Can't wait to see some pics.

[Daniel My Brother]

It was great to meet all of you guys on Saturday. Thank you Valascus for putting this together, and thank you Dink for hauling me around the lake all day.

Sadly, when I got back to the cabin on Saturday night, my camera was missing! I have no idea where I left it, I was carrying it around with me and probably set it down someplace and just left it. I'll call the lake, but I'm not holding out much hope. If by any chance you guys should find an old hp digital camera that's literally held together with masking tape, please shoot me a PM.

Again-great meeting you guys and CONGRATULATIONS NEEDEMP! A nice guy and a helluva fisherman.

[cart7t]

Sorry to hear that Dan. Have you checked with Dink? Maybe it's still in his boat or truck?

[Daniel My Brother]

I checked with Dink, but no luck. He's going to keep an eye out for it.

I probably just set it down someplace and forgot to pick it up. :-/

[Needemp]

Hopefully I have some pics comin soon

[fishinTracy]

Hi everyone-I had a lot of fun at the tournament yesterday.  Thanks for making me feel so welcome even though I was the only girl.  You all are a great bunch of guys and I really look forward to seeing all of you again at the tournament next year.  Happy fishing

p.s. It was rather hilarious watching my husband crawl around on the floor today because his legs were too sunburnt to walk!

[Valascus]

Disclaimer: I know the pics need to be resized. I am working on modifying them now. As soon as I have them all resized I will modify the post!

The back of my neck is absolutely fried Harshman...to make matters worse I had to go out and mow the lawn about yesterday at about 11:00am. The sun sapped a ton of energy out of me by the time we had left. I was starting to doze off on the ride home. I am glad to see everyone made it back alright. Man...Dan that sucks about your camera...The last place I remember seeing a camera...dunno if it was yours...was sitting on one of the benches in the pavilion. I don't recall seeing it there when we left though...so I don't know if you picked it up and set it elsewhere. :-/

Anyways...lemme see if I can get some of these pics to post.

The prize!!

The launch...which was absolutely hilarious. There is a 10 hp limit on this lake. Any engines bigger than that had to go at idle speed. Now...you see the Bassmasters tournament with the huge armada of boats flying at top speed, it was quite funny to watch everyone idle out.

GMAN expertly manuveuring his boat during the launch. We had to do some interesting manuveuring a couple times on the lake...which was no one's fault. There are a TON of logs and stick ups that are impossible to see, hence the idle only speeds allowed. We hit one coming off of one point and we couldn't even see over the bow of the boat! No damage was done and no one was hurt, so it was kinda funny cuz we were both like "What the @#$%?"

Here is Lizard_Man (Scott) and his son preparing to launch. Sorry the pic may be a litle far away, that was at my little camera's max zoom.

Here is NeedEmp looking over a point just across the cove of the ramp. I don't believe he pulled anything off of it...all of his damage came later.

Here are Harshman (Jason) and his wonderful wife fishinTracy (Tracy...duh ).

Here is our Kansas participant Ring Fry! He did pretty well, but like most of us had small fish syndrome all day!

Here is the BEAST! I'll put it to everyone this way...Needemp could have only caught his 6 1/2 pounder and he would have won. then he followed up his 6 1/2 with a 5 1/4....and then finally this monster. He got them all off of working the three same jetties all day. Everyone else did indeed catch fish, but it always seemed like they were about 14 inches. He and Ring Fry were the only to (I think) who got some keepers. But anyway here is the big fish of the tournament...by far!

After the tournament ended...we all gathered to see the big girl snap a few pics and see her off.

She swam off a little disoriented, but lives to be caught another day! It was great seeing the look on Mike's son's face when his Dad showed that monster off at the launc site. He is definately going to be part of the next generation of bass fisherman and has a great teacher in his Dad. Most of the lures that Mike won he gave to his son. There were a few home mades that some of the guys pitched in that he was interested in, but as a whole his youngster got a good boost to his tackle!

I am glad everyone enjoyed themselves. We will definately have to do this again sometime. I think everyone caught something be it big or small. I don't think we had any skunks running about. Most of them were smaller fish though. Nobody cared though. It was just fun to get out and fish some new water and meet some of the folks off the site.

[Siebert Outdoors]

cool pics Val. What a great crew. I had alot of fun. I cant wait to do this again.

Harshman,  Ouch,  nothing worse then sunburnt feet.  

[roadwarrior]

Congratulations to everyone!

Great story and thanks for the pics.

[senile1]

Congrats on the hogs, Needemp!  It sounds like all had a great time.  

[.ghoti.]

Nathan, kudos for pulling off a safe and successful outing. Wish I could have been there.

Cheers,

GK

[cart7t]

Hopefully CLTodd will get his photo's up soon.

Aside from the wind it was a great time.  Hopefully we'll be able to think of a location for our next get together.

[dink]

I'm already on it, cart.  I'll be PM-ing you guys with some suggestions hopefully soon.

By the way.... I fished Wash Co on Sunday and saw some pics of a NINE that was caught a week ago!  I think that lake may be coming back into her own.  I caught 5 keepers with two of them over 4.  

[cart7t]

A 9?  

Now we're talking!

I've got a few ideas for lakes, a couple over your way and a couple in MO.

We'll probably wind up having to vote on this one.

[Needemp]

MY VOTE IS FOR LITTLE DIXIE

[Needemp]

Here are my three pigs for the day.

I caught this 6 1/2 pounder at about 9:45. I had just caught my second keeper of the day, took a picture and let it go. The very next cast, I caught this girl in about a foot of water right in a small group of branches. She ate a 3/8 oz homemade jig with a rootbeer Barbed-wire skirt and 4" Powerbait Chigger Craw in pumkinseed/grn flk

This was my 4th keeper and 2nd pig. She went 5 pounds and 4 oz. I caught her in 2 feet of water with the same lure.

I was already having one of the best days I have ever had, then I stuck this baby. 8 pounds and 3 oz, my new PB. Same lure and she was also in about 2 feet of water. I'll never forget what it was like to look down and see her at the side of the boat.

By far my best day ever ;D