I had the pleasure of competing in 2 bass tournaments this summer. It's been about 24 years since I've fished a tournament, I teamed up with good friend and fellow guide Rick Writz. The tournaments are part of the Wisconsin River Series, a very well run and respected tournament trail with some great fisherman!

The first one we fished was on June 23rd on Lake Nokomis. We had some decent practice for the event and put together a good plan. On game day we put 4 solid fish in the boat in the first 2 hours and then flat, hot, sunny, high traffic conditions kind of shut our fish down. We ground it out catching some short fish and made some adjustments. Finally stuck a nice 3 pond plus fish that we unfortunately lost at the boat. I haven't had that sinking feeling of losing a fish for many years. That's tournament fishing.....lol. We ended up in 19th place out of 45 teams. Some beautiful fish brought in!

The second tournament was on August 11th on Lake Mohawksin. Once again we had some decent but limited practice outings and came up with a good game plan. We were able to capitalize on the early morning bite and put a decent limit of smallmouth bass in the boat in the first couple hours. We figured we needed to upsize at least 3 of our fish to have a shot at the top ten. The fog burned off and we were once again faced with flat, sunny, hot conditions which really slowed down our action. We made some adjustments and kept grinding it out. Rick popped a nice 3 pound smallmouth which helped our weight. The rest of the day we caught some short fish but nothing to help our weight. We went to the weigh in knowing we had executed good but felt our weight would be lucky to make the top ten. Fortunately we were wrong. Must have been tough for many others also. We ended up with a fourth place finish with 12.06 pounds of Smallmouth. Very happy with the results. Congratulations to all that participated! It's just a great way to learn more about fishing in a competitive way.

We did manage to qualify for the Wisconsin River Series 2018 Championshipon on the Stevens Point Flowage in September, but will unfortunately not be able to compete due to prior commitments. Look forward to fishing a couple more in 2019! My hats off Phil Skoug and his helpers for running The Wisconsin River Series tournament trail!