Tournament News Powered By Lake Drive Marine
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(Provided by MDNR)
Michigan Encourages Tournament Directors to Register Their Events
Photo by David Hamrick
As temperatures continue to warm, many anglers are looking forward to fishing the open water season. With this in mind, the Michigan DNR reminds anglers coordinating bass fishing tournaments in 2017 to register those tournaments online via the Michigan Fishing Tournament Information System.
The system was initiated in January 2016 after the Michigan Natural Resources Commission issued Fisheries Order 215.15A in 2015, requiring all bass fishing tournaments to be registered online.
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The sixth annual Bernie Behnke Scholarship tournament is set for Aug. 20 at Coldwater Lake.
The Behnke tournament has become one of the largest in Michiana, with several quality prizes given away in drawings as well in tournament awards. It has raised more than $40,000 since inception and will award about a half dozen $1,500 scholarships this year.
Entry fee is $140 and all entries must be received by Aug. 10. The first 50 boats get priority positioning at takeoff and are eligible for a cash drawing.
Tournament hours are 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Lake Drive Marine. Entry forms are available at www.lakedrivemarine.com.
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(Provided by R&B Circuit)
Gipson/Noe Bed Fish Their Way to R&B Win at Wawasee
John Gipson, Jr., (Battle Creek) and Tom Noe (Benton Harbor) have set the pace for the R&B Circuit West Division. They won the Wawasee event April 29th with 14.35 pounds and pocketed $731.
Friday during pre-practice they spent hours moving through the many channels on Lake Wawasee looking for bedding fish. The found the bigger fisher in channels with dark water and had 30 waypoints.
During the tournament, conditions were not ideal and many of their best fish were directly in the wind. However, this turned into an advantage.
"If you could see the fish, they would not bite. The wind made us less visible and the fish less wary," Noe explained.
They made long casts with swim jigs matched with Missile Baits Shockwave trailers to the beds and had a limit by 9 a.m. They covered four different channels and caught 12 legal sized fish.
Denny Cook (Auburn) and Rick Sawyer (Albion) rotated through three spots on Lake Wawasee to finish second ($443) with 12.45 pounds. All three spots were weed edges on flats between 6-8 feet of water. It was a slow bite as they boated just 7 keepers, with three of those coming in the last hour. One of those fish was the Native Pride Tackle Big Bass - a 4.20-pound largemouth that earned them another $336.
Ken Plencner (South Bend) and Neil Vanderbeizen (Otsego, MI) brought in 11.24 pounds of fish to finish third ($332). Without practice to develop a game plan, they began fishing traditional smallmouth spawning grounds. They rotated through three areas and dragged tube baits. When they came across a bed, they set up camp and slung tubes at them.
With seven keepers that were all identical in size, they left the lake and explored channels looking for a bigger largemouth where they found their biggest fish, 3.27 pounds, and worked it for 10 minutes before it fell to a drop shot rig. They made another critical cull by flipping a jig under a dock in the same channel.
More information can be found at www.randbbasscircuit.com.
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(Provided by Casting Couples)
Jim and Sam Hipp (South Bend)
Jim and Sam Hipp (South Bend) caught five smallmouth totaling 14.19 pounds to win the Casting Couples Open event on Lake Maxinkuckee last weekend.
The winners ($300), the only male/female team in the field, used tubes and drop-shot rigs in 6-8 foot of water. Their catch included the second largest bass of the day, a 3.29-pound smallmouth to garner a tackle pack from Money Mouth Baits.