By Lee Duracz

The Birth of the Polar Bear Opens

A couple years ago my good buddy and fishing partner, Jeremy Bunnell, asked me to fish Bob Evans’ tournament on Klinger Lake the Saturday after thanksgiving. This tournament had been going on for years and I had just heard about it from him.

I usually started to put my bass rods down by the 1st week of November and started to switch over to walleye, lake trout, steelhead or various panfish and mostly with live bait. It wasn’t that I stopped liking to bass fish at that time, it was just extremely hard for me to get good numbers of quality bass that time of year. Knowing this tournament was coming up, I was trying to prepare myself on how to catch fish on a blade bait, one of the best baits to catch bass when the temperatures drop below 50 degrees.

Jeremy pointed me to the Zona videos on michianaoutdoorsnews.com and told me there was one about fishing a blade bait that I needed to see. He sent the link to my phone. The funny thing is, only the audio loaded and I stared at a black screen listening to Mark Zona explain how to fish the bait.

This was a blessing in disguise, because it allowed me to picture what he was saying in my head without distraction of the video. A few days later we found ourselves at the ramp on a very chilly morning at Klinger Lake. We took off when our number was called, armed with silver buddies and ready to try out what we learned.

It didn’t take long to get frustrated with not getting bit and falling back to old favorites that produced the same results. We had no fish three hours into the day.

We don’t have quit in us, however. I picked that silver buddy back up and started moving around more and really focusing on what Mark Zona had described as the proper technique to work the blade bait.

All of a sudden I was reeling in a cold lethargic 14-inch keeper largemouth. This wasn’t my first fish ever on a blade bait but it was the most important one I’d ever caught.

I’d caught a random one here and there by tearing them off the bottom in the spring, but never really had much confidence in it. The next cast I replicated exactly what I had done and missed one, a few casts later a shorter fish came in the boat.

We moved into a spot that was loaded with fish and we started pulling in several quality fish, caught a limit and culled as well.

We had just got hooked by the blade bug. We weighed our fish, finished in the money and were less than a pound out of first.

We started hitting several local lakes and the river, experimenting with depths, sizes and different colors and we not only were consistently catching fish, but we were catching some nice ones as well.

The whole time we were fishing in these frigid temps we were in heaven. No lines at the boat ramps, no pleasure boats swamping us; just a brisk breeze on the face, frost on the carpet and the true natural beauty of the lakes coming out. That first winter after the post-Thanksgiving tournament we were hitting a different lake at least one day each weekend and catching good numbers and quality bass until the ice came on after the first of the year.

While Jeremy and I were out there enjoying our late season fishing, we came up with an idea to bring others into what we were seeing and feeling on these cold fall fishing trips. We created a tournament circuit that was more about the fishing, the friends and the experience.

We wanted the Polar Bear to be a little different. For example: No membership fee. We didn’t want guys to feel like they “had to be there” to make a classic or be in the running for an angler of the year prize. We know guys like to hunt and have lots of honey-do items to complete after the regular bass season. We just want guys to come out and enjoy it when they can.

We added the critter pot. If the bass aren’t cooperating with you, something ends up on your line in 7 hours of fishing. The critter pot goes to the person who legally catches the largest non-bass species of legal size. We had a perch win, a pike win, a white bass win and a carp win – four different species in all four events.

We try to pick lakes with good numbers of bass of both types, and different critters.

We don’t start at sunrise; that time of year it’s much better to let the sun get up a little before you idle out onto the water. It gives everyone time to eat breakfast and grab a big pot of coffee to keep warm for the day.

After every tournament I post pictures and results on FB for everyone to see. I don’t care if you’ve won a $100k at a tournament or $50; it’s always cool to be recognized.

We launched the circuit in 2016 and averaged around 15 boats for the 4 events. We had one on Magician last year where it was near blizzard conditions and die-hard teams still showed up and we had an awesome time.

The guys that fished loved it and the word quickly spread drawing new faces at nearly every event.

When we had anglers asking last April if we planned to do it again, we knew that we had to keep it going. We plan to fish the first three Saturdays in November and the Sunday after thanksgiving to avoid conflict with the tournament that Bob Evans puts on.

The November 11th tournament will feature a small pizza party afterwards at our one official sponsor Clear H20 to help celebrate my 38th birthday and hopefully give the guys who are fishing a look at all the great stuff Darrin stocks over there.

In summary, we created the Polar Bear opens for guys like Jeremy and me who wait till the ice is on the lakes to winterize our boats and get cabin fever quickly. It’s for the die-hards who hold onto that last bit of open water and not only like to go out and fish, but love the excitement of the tournaments and joy of the tall tales of lost giants and broken lines at the ramps afterwards. We hope to see more participation this year and look forward to another great Polar Bear season.