Shoal Lake Fall 2021
Day 1
Ian and I had been anticipating this tournament for a while and were super pumped to fish this 2 day, 40 Boat Slug fest against some great competition. Shoal Lake is an incredible place that allows you to catch great numbers of both Smallmouth and Largemouth bass. After figuring out a consistent Smallmouth pattern Ian and were confident as we sat in the bay waiting to take off as the 4th boat. Fall tournaments are quite a marvel as most days the fog will rise off the lake as the sun begins to climb the treetops. It makes for some beautiful scenes and even better fishing!
As we blasted off in Ians skeeter and made it to our first spot we were pleasantly surprised as the first few drops put some brownies into our live well. Within a half an hour of the tournament commencing we had 18.5 lbs and the fishing was stellar. We can’t claim to be the Smallmouth pros but we had found a great school of fish that were ready to eat some Ciscoe look alike’s. The first school held several fish that were over 4lbs and the day only got better from there!
After culling out some of the mediocre Smallmouths with a beautiful pair of 4.45LB Ciscoe eating machines we decided to chase some of Green giants that roam the back bays of Shoal Lake. After an hour and a half of flipping, pitching and a few off the wall techniques we landed our largest fish of the day, a 4.70 LB Largemouth.
After catching our big kicker we went on one more Smallmouth mission and landed another meaty, wide shouldered Smallmouth a half hour before weigh-In.
Day 2
We start off day two with a about a 3 pound lead, the morning starts off strong with a chunky 4.25 LB Smallmouth in the box. We quickly filled our limit with 18.75 lbs of smallmouths, then moved to into some largemouth areas.
The large mouth bite was still going strong but it was very evident that the bigger fish had moved onto a different pattern. We fished for about an hour and a half and caught about 15 largemouths ranging from 1.5 -3.5 lbs, which just wasn’t there size we were looking for. We went back to smallmouth fishing with the thought of returning maybe later. The lake was like glass so we burned some gas touring around different areas of the lake, Predominantly targeting bigger solo fish. After about three hours of smallmouth fishing and no major upgrades we decided to try our luck for a big fall largemouth again. The bite had definitetly slowed down.
We had about 30 minutes left to fish and we have 19.10 in the livewell, our small fish being a 3.7 lbs smallmouth. We ran a little bit of new water but nothing was bitting, until 3:50pm. I cast my chatter bait threw a beautiful clump of coontail ripping it through the grass my rod doubles over. I immediately think my bait is stuck in the grass, but the “grass” started moving sideways and I knew that only meant one thing. Ian reaches for the net and this fish pops out of the weeds and into the net, with only minutes left in the tournament I toss the fish in the live well. Ian started the boat and I culled the fish before taking off to weigh in. As we pull into the bay not knowing how much that last fish helped us, we pulled up to the scales anxious. Ian walks up to the scale and hands the fish to weight master Bryce, 19.88 lbs was our weight which was good for the win. Over the two days we accumulated just over 42 pounds of bass.