My First Bass Tournament

I joined a bass club last year, K-W Cambridge Bassmasters, but did not get a chance to fish any tournaments. A year later and here I was, finally signed up for my first bass tournament – Lower Buckhorn Lake on July 6th. I was anxiously waiting for Wednesday to find out who my boater would be, and I ended up with Andrew Liorti.

On Saturday, I woke up at 2AM and was on the road by 3 to meet Andrew at 4AM. We got to the launch point at Sunrise Resort and got our gear ready and launched the boat. I got to park the truck and trailer, then help another angler launch his boat and park his truck. I then went and joined Andrew in the boat and got ready for blastoff. We had to head through the channel to the main lake for blastoff.

Heading out for blastoff.

After blastoff we didn’t go too far before setting up and starting to cast. I love to frog fish so I started casting my frog, and on the fifth cast I got a small cast and I thought, “This is good, I’m going to get them!” But that would be the only bass I managed to catch on a frog all day.

Andrew was alternating between casting a wacky-rigged senko and a tube jig. He was getting some bites on the tube but they were all too small to put in the livewell.

We decided to make a run down the lake. Once we were out of the shallow water Andrew dropped the throttle and we were on plane, doing 60 mph in seconds. This boat felt like a rocket! I’m used to a small aluminum boat with a 9.9 hp motor on it, not a 19-foot Nitro bass boat with a 200 hp Mercury motor on the back. We were to the next spot in minutes.

The rocket.

I was casting a shaky head with an Xzone Slammer on it when I hooked into a nice largemouth bass at a weed and rock edge. It was a good fish, at least 2 lbs, but he got off. We fished some more and then decided to move to a nice spot that Andrew knew.

I changed to a curly tail grub, just to try and get some bites to help figure out a pattern. I caught a bass on a weed edge and saw another one chasing him. I told Andrew to throw in there and he caught one too. My fish was just over 12 inches long, so into the livewell he went, making him our first keeper of the day. Andrew’s fish was a little too small, but before we moved on he also got one in the livewell. It was starting to come together.

We moved down to a point and Andrew cast in behind the weeds and BOOM! It was a big fish. He played it through the weeds and I grabbed the net and landed the fish. We now had two small fish and a kicker in the livewell, and just needed two more to get our limit.

The big fish.

We were having luck with texas-rigged senkos and craw-style baits, working weed/rock edges. We got the two fish to round out our limit and set about trying to cull the smallest ones. A new spot did not have good weed, so Andrew looked at his GPS and picked a spot that looked like it would have the right stuff so we made a big run. We pulled up a few minutes later and it looked good.

Lots of areas like this to fish on Lower Buckhorn.

Starting to cast, we both hooked up with some small fish. Not big enough to cull any from the livewell, but that meant there were fish around. We landed some more then Andrew got another another nice fish and we were able to cull one of the small ones. A little further down the shore Andrew landed a good fish and we were able to cull the last tiny one. Now we were looking good – we had a limit of good fish and one really nice fish. It was getting close to weigh-in time so we decided to head to the launch and fish a couple of places along the way.

Back at the ramp everyone was getting ready to weigh their fish. We were last to weigh in and there were some nice fish coming in ahead of us. Andrew was not sure we had enough to win, but I was pretty sure we had it. It was our turn and we ended up with a 5-fish limit of 14.16 lbs, with a big fish of 4.83 lbs. We won the tournament and big fish and were pretty happy. Andrew did great as he got most of the fish and I netted them.

Getting ready for weigh-in.

Winning was not the objective for me, but doing so was a real bonus at the end of the day. I went to learn and to meet some new people, and to learn new tips and techniques for catching fish. In turn, I fished a technique I was not good at – flipping with creature baits. I have never had any luck with them but that’s what was working and I wanted to pull my share so I adapted. I fished a craw-style bait and got a fish on it that helped our limit. I also learned how a tournament day on the water works.

I would like to thank all the boaters of K-W Cambridge Bassmasters for giving us non-boaters a chance to fish with you. Special thanks to Andrew for being my boater and a great guy to fish with. Thank you to K-W Cambridge Bassmasters for putting on the tournament. It was a great experience and I can’t wait for my next tournament.

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A note from Argosgirl (Rebecca): There’s a little bit of confusion about this post – it was written by Darrell and he was the one who fished the tournament. But thanks to those who thought I did this well! One aim of switching from ‘The Argosgirl Chronicles’ to ‘Argosgirl Outdoors’, was to make the blog more of a joint venture between Darrell and I, and he has written several posts now. To tell who wrote the post, look beneath the post’s title – it will say ‘argosgirl’, or ‘Darrell’. I’m working on making that more noticeable 🙂 Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

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Darrell

Darrell is a certified fishaholic living in Southern Ontario. As a multi-species angler he enjoys chasing pretty much anything that swims, and has recently started fishing in bass tournaments. He also enjoys participating in conservation activities.

Latest posts by Darrell (see all)

• My First Bass Tournament - July 9, 2013
• Father’s Day Fishing On Lake Ontario - July 1, 2013
• Four Tips To Get You Ready For Spring Fishing - April 7, 2013