D&R Grand River - Practice
Oh the Grand River, you just never know what you are going to get here. It seemed like weights had been dipping pretty hard. Probably from the typical late summer slowdown and also the immense amount of pressure the Grand gets. That place just gets attacked by tournaments all summer long. Trevor spends a lot of time there but had to be responsible and take care of some stuff on campus. We were going to be relying on his knowledge a bunch in this event and my hope was just to find something weird.
After the practice day I had on Muskegon (the day before, details in a later blog) and the time of year. Looking for a couple places with schooling fish were top priority. Just like Muskegon, my day started with a magnum pike on the same topwater. After yesterday it sure seemed like that could be a good sign. Everywhere I went things just seemed dead, dead, and deader. I wasn’t picking anything apart, I wanted active fish where we could get a good start. A good start on the Grand this time of year is so important because the fishing can just be so brutal if you aren’t around them. It can be hard to recover if you spend the first 4 hours without a keeper.
I was going to devote the rest of my time to Spring Lake after bouncing around the river with not much to show for it. It was a lot different than a normal practice as I wasn’t really looking for stuff that looked good. I was more just looking for stuff that didn’t look like anything but was good. This meant a lot of time with just the trolling motor down fishing around. If I could find just a couple things that weren’t already on Trevor’s radar or were unlikely to get any pressure it would be a win. Getting to some stuff first was going to be critical on tournament day. It was a brutal way to practice but I did uncover a few things and catch an even bigger pike. I actually thought it was a muskie when I first saw it but instead it was one oft he biggest gators I’ve caught recently. Even had to get the net out for this one!
By the end of the day I wasn’t any more confident than if I hadn’t practiced at all. I wasn’t feeling any pressure either. We were leading team of the year by 1 point and we were either going to catch them or we weren’t. Not much to think about there, just catch what you can and you are either going to win or your not. There were a few things ruled out and we were both comfortable with starting in Spring Lake and seeing how the day went from there.