Fished a couple tournaments since my last post, figured I'd do an update.  
The smallie season is winding down, almost time to get ready for ice.

About 3 weeks ago we did an open tournament and had a good bite going.  The 7 1/4 I posted before was caught during part of our prefish.  The bite died on tourney day, but we stuck to our zones throwing smaller swimbaits and dropshots to scrape up a 22 pound limit for 3rd place.

 

A couple days later, I had some time to scoot out and check some new zones and was able to land about 15 fish, the biggest 5 going around 24-25 lbs.  The most fun that day was finding a school of herring surfacing over 80 feet of water and getting 3 smallies feeding on that mess.

 

Had my final tourney of the season yesterday and our prefish went well.  Morning bite was garbage, but the afternoon was on fire so we knew we would have to capitalize on every bite.  We didnt land a fish for the first 2 hours but figured out a deal in 40-50 feet of water and put over 20 fish in the boat, the best 5 going 27.3 lbs.  Good enough for 1st place, by an ounce.  
Tight tourney with several 24+ pound stringers.  Good way to end the season!

 

Congrats on the closing win!,...good job, and nice fish in them pics. Thats what Im looking for before the winter comes. Again congrats to you.

Nice work ~

The freak bass in that last pic are so stout that they actually look deformed ~ but in the best way possible.

Congrats

A-Jay

Great fish, good work.

Congrats on the win and nice chunks.

Great fish...Great pics!

 

Congrats on those monster smallies, and the good tourney finishes. That's awesome!

Congrats! 27lb limit?!!

Congrats.  Mind if I ask what you were doing in 80 FOW while fishing for smallies?  Did you see birds?  Were you cruising with your big engine on, looking for bait/marks?  

Sweet!

6 hours ago, portiabrat said:

Congrats.  Mind if I ask what you were doing in 80 FOW while fishing for smallies?  Did you see birds?  Were you cruising with your big engine on, looking for bait/marks?  

Fishing a deep ledge. 80 feet of water was within 100 yards of where we were and they started busting. 

Must be rough scraping together a 22lb bag of smallies...

On 10/11/2016 at 9:54 AM, Mosster47 said:

Must be rough scraping together a 22lb bag of smallies...

Lol. I don't deny that I'm very lucky to live on the lake that I do.

You're a heckuva fisher! 

Wow.................................

What a Hand full of Fat Bellied Smallies!!  

Congrats on a great day.