Alright, this is gonna be windy.
Had a tournament this weekend on Mined Wildlife Area in Southeast Kansas. If you do a Google search, it sounds amazing, a fishing haven that every person should want to fish where 10 pounders live in each one of the around 1,000 strip pits. Anyone who has actually fished them knows they're a giant headache, filled with weeds, dinks, and frustration. They don't fish or pattern like a lake for the most part, you just go fishing and hope to catch bigger than average sized fish. I've fished them a few times and have a couple pits I like, but if they're not on, I'm lost.
I started prefishing early Thursday morning at my favorite pit. Right away, I caught a nice one on one of my blue bladed jigs.
Maybe 10 minutes later, another nice one on a 10" worm in a laydown.
Awesome, things are going to work out great!
I spent over 12 hours on the water, fished multiple pits, ended up catching maybe 20 bass all day and most looked like this.
Friday, I started on a huge pit that starts deep and clear, and ends shallow and muddy. I'd hoped I could find big ones in the weeds in the back. I found lots of fish, but they were all small and all very skinny.
I did find some huge bluegills and redear sunfish, which were more fun than the bass I was catching.
Also found a spicy pinata.
And I hope old boy wasn't in his stand when the tree decided to blow up.
It was another 12 hour day. My biggest bass of the day by 5PM was 15.75". I was exhausted, had just fished a pit with 1 bite and wanted to just quit, but I decided to fish 1 more. Smaller pit, stained water, lots of laydowns. I swapped out my flipping bait to my trusty black and blue Big Bite Baits craw tube, and one of the first laydowns I flipped to, produced a nice fish.
A big beaver dam gave up a big bite that pulled me back into the brush and broke me off. At the back of the pit, I stuck another good one.
That was it, I was coming back here tomorrow.
Saturday, I got to the pit really early, hoping to play defense. I could hear cars driving all around, one pulled up and looked, then turned around. I ended up being all alone. One of my first cast of the morning, scored a big crappie on the bladed jig.
Maybe 10 minutes later, I skipped a wacky rig up to a laydown. The fish barely moved until I set the hook, then she was on the top immediately, wallowing around. She shot towards me, flared her mouth open, and my bait came out. Easy 18+ inch fish, not how I wanted to start the day. 30 minutes later, I was flipping a big tree with the craw tube and got a super light bite. Fish was really heavy on the hookset, burned out deeper, ripped drag, just a super strong fish. After a brief but intense fight, I had slid the net under a 19.50" right as the hook fell out.
I fished over halfway around the pit before I got my second bite, a 15" fish on the tube.
Then I went on a dink streak, catching a 12, 12.25, and 12.5 to fill out my limit in the next 30 minutes. Then I got a decent cull with a 14.25, everything the rest of the day, was on the craw tube.
A few minutes later, culled out the 12.25" with a 15.75" fish.
Right before I finished my lap around the pit, I culled the 12.50" with a 15.25" fish.
So it was around 9AM and I had 79.75". My goal started out for the day was 75" because prefishing had been so bad, but in the back of my mind, I really wanted to reach 80". With the way things were going, that seemed like a sure thing. We were fishing until 3PM, and when 1:30 rolled around, I'd made 3 more laps around the pit and only managed to jump off 1 fish that would have probably helped, the rest were really small. I was going to just stick it out, but then, just like the year before, and otter showed up. This one was circling me and making all kinds of noise, swimming through my brushpiles. I knew what little chances I had at this pit, were gone.
So with a little less than 1.5 hours to go, I loaded everything up and drove. I didn't know for sure where I was going, but I had 1 little pit in mind. I'd never fished it, but when I got there, it looked similar to the one I had been fishing, right down to the big beaver dam. I threw minimal gear in my kayak, and shoved it down the mud bank. No depthfinder, no camera, a few rods, and 50 minutes left. I went straight to the beaver dam, and caught 5 dinks in a row. They didn't help, but it felt good to be catching again. I thought maybe there was only dinks here, but there had to be 1 big pond boss. I was flying down the bank, fishing any cover I could. I hooked one with my blue bladed jig as soon as it touched down that pulled really hard, and just came off. There was a big swirl and heartbreak left, but I kept going. I found another, smaller beaver dam to flip. I caught a small one, and then next flip, a 14.50"! I finally hit 80" with just about 20 minutes left.
I was so happy, I pitched back into the beaver dam, thought it was stuck, but realized it was moving so slightly. It was so heavy when I slammed the rod back, I thought it was buried in the brush, then it jumped, instant heart in my throat moment, I had found the pond boss. She dug deep, turning my kayak, I was begging and pleading with the fish, reaching with the net, and I know everyone around heard my war cry when that fish hit the net. Less than 20 minutes, I put a 21.25" fish on the board.
I fished the last few minutes with a pounding heart and shaky hands, but caught no more fish.
I couldn't see the scoreboard all day, so I had no idea how I'd done, but I was happy no matter what. I heard one guy smashed them, so I didn't think I had probably won, but with my track record on the pits, I didn't expect to even place. So I was really surprised to hear my name called for the 3rd place plaque with my 86.75" total. I was not so surprised to find out I had won big bass.
First place was an amazing 94". He said he didn't have a keeper until 10, then for an hour, he caught a fish every 10 minutes, and they were all big, then it stopped and he didn't catch anything else.
It was an exhausting weekend, physically and mentally. I was very satisfied to have it come to the conclusion that it did. Last tournament of the season is the last weekend of this month.
