I got back from 4 days at Preque Isle bay last night. We prefished for two days and then had our tournament saturday and sunday. Everyone caught a ton of fish, but keepers were hard to come by. I caught about 30 bass saturday on a spinnerbait and a senko but only two were keepers (3 fish limit). Everybody struggled the first day though so I ended up as the day one leader with only 4.34lbs. The second day I got tired of weeding through dinks to find a few decent fish so I dropped everything else and threw a 5.5" paddletail swimbait over a grass flat in 4-8 feet of water (thanks for the advise about the cleaner grass Bassnleo, it helped). The water was gin clear and there was a strong wind so I figured I should be able to get a "swimbait" bite and I was right. I only caught 4 bass but they were all keepers and I ended up winning the tournament with 10lbs for two days. I've been very close numerous times but this was my first win. I probably paid more in gas and hotel bills to get there than I actually won in cash but I moved up from 9th to 4th in my clubs points race, so as long as I can stay in the top 6 I'll be able to fish the state classic.

As far as big smallmouth go...

We did hit the main lake/deeper water a little bit thursday but we couldn't find any keeper smallmouth, I did catch a bunch of drum though (see below).

good job on the win man!

and i bet that drum was at least a good battle, eh.

Congrats on your first win!

Awesome! Glad some of my advice helped! You did good by thinking outside the box.....those fish see alot of topwaters, spinnerbaits, but not many swimbaits, and by your account conditions were right for it.

Good job for using your melon and fishing the conditions!

Feels good to win, doesn't it?

Yep, clean grass equals bass 8-)

Sheephead, LOL! I must have caught 40 of them in my 5 days there. They do fight good but get really annoying when your hoping it's a giant Erie smallmouth.

Too bad you didn't have any main lake luck, maybe next time!

Congrats!

Thanks guys, and Bassnleo your advise was critical! The sheephead really do put up a good fight though, you're right!