MIbassyaker

Feider has proven he can compete anywhere. Picking him every time couldn't be worse than most other strategies people come up with. Honestly, I'm not so sure picking randomly would be worse than most strategies... I tend to think the only "bad" picks are where you choose somebody whose ownership for an event is way too high because they won there once (and that is not always guaranteed to be bad either...). I used to think of this as the "Chris Lane Effect" when he was fishing in BASS. A bunch of prior wins and a Classic champ, but if you looked closely at his record, you'd see he was really inconsistent event-to-event, boom or bust. If you wanted a Lane brother, Bobby was much more reliable and better ranked on average. But Chris' ownership would often be higher than Bobby's, even when they were in the same bucket.

While it's probably not directly the fault of the musky, the musky could be an indicator of something else that's also affecting the smallies. In my area, runoff from agriculture and lake home development (especially lawn fertilizer) has, over the last few decades, made many small natural lakes much more fertile than they used to be. According to scattered records and testimony of old-timers, some of these lakes used to have smallmouth populations that don't seem to exist anymore (largemouth typically have taken over instead) In Michigan, smallies are doing great in our rivers and many of the bigger lakes, especially where gobies can get in from the great lakes. Actually, that's an understatement -- the MI smallmouth state record has fallen twice in the last 6 years! But there are also many places --chiefly smaller lakes-- where smallmouth have likely been casualties of human development.

I grew up in the Grand Forks area and fished the Red up there all the time as a kid. Mostly channel cats, bullheads, goldeye, sheepshead, & suckers. An occasional pike, walleye or sauger....and, once, a smallmouth -- my first. We hadn't known there were any bass in there. I haven't fished it since I left for college, and I've only been back a few times. My wife is from Fergus Falls, and I fished a few times with her family in the Fergus-DL-Alexandria area, but not specifically for bass. I never really fished for bass specifically until years later when I was living in NJ. And then when I moved to MI, I stuck with it. We used to spend time in the Bemidji/Park Rapids/Itasca area every summer. Both of my brothers went to college in Bemidji. I was in Park Rapids 2 summers ago for a family reunion, but didn't have time to fish. I go to MN almost every year, but always have family obligations that don't leave any time to fish. One of these days I'm going to get back some of these old places and do it, though.

I'm guessing it means you have a point total that is the 4th best, along with several other people with the same number of points, but applying the tiebreakers puts you at 9th. EDIT: actually, now that I look at it, it does give you a different ranking for the event vs. overall, but they should be identical given there is only one event so far. So I'm not sure anymore. But you should still be eligible for one of the prizes. For both the Tournament and Season prizes, the tiebreakers will be: Tiebreaker #1: Closest to total weight of submitted fish for the official weigh-in by the winning angler, in pounds and ounces. Tiebreaker #2: Highest total number of fish submitted for the official weigh-in by the anglers selected in the entrant’s roster. Tiebreaker #3: Highest total weight of submitted fish for the official weigh-in by the anglers selected in the entrant’s roster. Tiebreaker #4: The entrant whose date of entry creation was recorded in the system the earliest https://bassmasterfantasy.com/OfficialRules.aspx

Final points are in -- assuming the rankings on BASS already have tiebreakers figured in, @Williep99 should be getting a 3rd prize $100 Rapala package for a 9th place, 1424 point finish! Congrats!

Hackney should have moved on late morning today, like he had planned. He said he had a canal spot he'd go back to, but he didn't do it. Probably cost him.

You can stream it directly until 3pm https://www.bassmaster.com/video/bassmaster-live

Holy smokes, Bryan New! Just culled up with a 5-4...over 8lb ahead now

Wabasis gets hammered all summer. There are good fish there, but they're all beaten up. To be fair, I'm counting two connected places as different if they have distinct names, and each have their own access points. For instance I consider the various lower Grand River bayous as distinct from each other, and from the river itself-- they all fish a little differently and have somewhat different habitats, even though they're connected. I don't have anything as large as Minnetonka near me (other than Lake michigan, which I didn't count), but counting some of the various bays and arms separately might be similar to how I'm counting a few places, like the Lower Grand. Mostly, though, it's a bunch of little lakes, a few dozen to a few hundred acres in size, and stretches of river between launch points that I like to float.

There are over 150 distinct fishable "spots" (publicly-accessible natural lakes, impoundments, gravel pits, bayous, and free-flowing river stretches between launches), within an hour's drive of my house that I know of (and surely more I don't know of). I have fished 40 of them at least once, and each year I fish around 15-20 different ones, rarely visiting the same one more than 3 times a year. The closest four are all about 8-10 min away, but the ones I visit the most are 20-50 min away.

Whatever strategy you thought you were using when you made your picks, it seems to have worked! At the moment you're the top scorer in our group by almost 150 points, and sitting at the rank of 10th overall. Things will change tomorrow of course, but looks like you have a good shot at winning a prize package, which are given for the top 20 in each event... First prize = top score Second Prize = 2nd-5th place Third Prize = 6th=10th place Fourth Prize = 11th-20th place https://bassmasterfantasy.com/OfficialRules.aspx

Free afternoon stream for B.A.S.S Live comes back at noon EST: https://www.bassmaster.com/video/bassmaster-live

Don't be a Clunn.

Yup, Clunn did that to me too a couple years ago. Never again. Meanwhile, Hackney roars into 3rd, giving me 3 in the top 10 and 4 over the cut.

My understanding is that in waterbodies where musky and bass are both native, as long as development, pollution, invasives and such haven't rapidly and drastically changed the conditions, they co-exist healthily and typically both populations do very well. I can't think of any musky waters around me that aren't also very good for bass.

In these Florida events anybody can stick an 8+ at any time and rocket up the leaderboard. I try not to get too excited or depressed about day 1 outcomes, but now we get to see what the weather does. After day 1, my guys are at 5th, 8th, 19th, 43rd, 63rd

Nice!!

I'd use that for moving baits -- spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, buzzbaits, especially. I'd prefer a shorter rod for topwater walkers and poppers, but it would do nicely for whopper ploppers, as well as crankbaits that fall in the lure wt. range -- probably 2.5 squarebills, some medium divers, maybe deeper.

I keep changing my mind between about 5 different guys in Bucket B. Landed on Morgenthaler as of now, but may switch again before I crash tonight.

The mister twister 3" meeny and 4" curly-tail were the first artificial lures I ever learned to use, and when I fish with first-timers and novices, a curly-tail grub in that size is what I tie on for them to try first. These days I still pull out the grub for river smallies, and have been using Kalin's and Yamamoto grubs in addition to the old MT's.

I think anything with green flake is good. In fact, my very favorite color is "pumpkin green" (Pumpkin with green flakes), which I prefer most of the time over green pumpkin. Some other colors with green flake: -"Junebug" (grape with green flake) -anything "Candy" (green and purple flake) -"Sprayed Grass" (usually one side green flake, one side purple flake) -"Black Emerald" (black with green flake)

No, but I've hopped out in the shallows more than once to get baits out of trees.

Impossible to know what bass in your pond think of them until you try.

If you're in MN, you probably have some lakes that qualify much closer than this, but we rented a house over the 4th of July last summer on Little Green Lake in WI, which probably fits the bill..... A few hundred acres, and reputation for good multi-species fishing. I caught a few largemouth and pike. It was busy over the 4th, lots of people swimming, fishing, tubing, skiing, but we didn't encounter anything that wasn't family-friendly (no massive drunken sandbar parties, for instance). I personally have a preference for quieter, less-trafficked places, but everybody in our group, age 10 to 70 had fun. I'm not sure what the full variety of rental options are... I know there are a number of cottage rentals, and I remember there was at least one campground.