Grand River HOTD -2023
This one is a bit delayed but I’ve got to get some of the Grand River HOTD details out there. It’s beenbetween work, a few weekday tournaments, some kid sicknesses, and a salmon trip or 2. But we are finally working on getting caught up with this kind of stuff. I don’t have a practice report for this one because Trevor did all the practicing. The most recent trip out there for me was the Monday before where Trevor and I finished 6th out of 30 with almost 14 pounds. So it was obvious they were going to be biting for everyone that weekend.
Practice was good for Trevor and it looked like we’d be spending the day in the River fishing the nasty stuff. The big wildcard was the 180 degree wind switch and how it was going to affect some of our stuff. We didn’t get into the early draw so we had a late boat number. The first 2 places we wanted had boats so we kept on going. There were no plans to fish where we did so early in the day but that is how it worked out. I caught an ok fish on my 3rd flip and I’m thinking to myself this could be good especially when Trevor said we were going to catch a bunch like that today. Not long after and a fish came off that was probably a little bigger than the first. They just weren’t big enough to handle the power of the flipping stick, if you haven’t checked out the Hex Series from FaZvorite the MDJ flipping stick is the real deal. We had bluegills popping and a lot of activity around but fish either missed the bait or ended up being small. We did flip one more keeper up and it was time to run some water. We certainly didn’t expect to be sitting at 2 keepers a couple hours into the day. However Trevor had some stuff he was hoping would get right in the afternoon and that the clouds were going to fade away.
If we could catch a big one before then it would be a huge bonus. We did hit one stretch where we caught 3 keepers on a frog to fill out our limit and lost another fish that broke a spinnerbait. Unlikely that fish was one that would have mattered anyway. We just kept bouncing around mostly fishing the thick stuff but mixing a few sneaky places in as well. We culled once with an OK fish and then Trevor bowed up on something big. It was a magnum dogfish in a strange spot for a dogfish to be. It was turning into one of those days. Other boats in areas, pleasure boaters doing weird things in areas, and it just felt like we were in one of those bad rotations and couldn’t get out of it.
To both of our surprises the area we had really high hopes for was full of boats. It was big enough for a lot of boats but all the high probability places were covered up. We started fishing around, frogging and flipping once again. It took a little bit but we made a small cull. We still didn’t have anything worth weighing in but on the Grand River things can change quickly. We hit a 5 minute span where Trevor caught a nice one on a flipping stick and I picked up a good one on a frog. We had new life and a few hours left. One big bite and we were probably in check range if the weather, practice pressure, and tournament pressure shrunk weights down like we anticipated. After our flurry we caught a few more and made some more small culls. We had to decide weather to re run some of the high confidence stuff or grind it out in there. We kept it moving and never got another confirmed opportunity at the cull we needed. I did have one good thump while flipping pads at the very end of the day that I wish I knew what it was. Instead I just came back with an empty flipping hook and could never get that fish to bite again.
I made a change with my flipping set up out there after having a rough day flipping pads on a weeknighter. I’ve been using the Mustad Grip pin flipping hooks for years and they’ve got a giant gap. They also come poorly made anymore and almost always have a gap on the resin coated portion. That is a no go when you are tying a snell knot. Most of them end up in the trash but I was still working on the few I had left. I kept hanging up in the pads with that hook and losing fish. I decided to switch a Googan Gold Series Bandito flippin hook which has a narrower gap. It has made a huge difference in getting fish out of the pads as I don’t snag up in as many roots. Also those Gold Series hooks are premium and made by Hayabusa and I’ve been really happy with them.
We ended up with 13.54 and in 22nd place out of 72 boats. One more good fish would have put us up in that 14lb range where we needed to be to get paid. Either way it was fun to spend some time on the river catching them with braid, heavy weights, and frogs. That’s going to be my last HOTD action for the year as I can’t fish the last Muskegon one or the Classic on the St. Mary’s. I was really hopeful to get to fish that classic this year but it just isn’t going to work out. We’ve got just a few events left and in the next blog I’ll have some reflection on the year so far and also looking ahead to the next few events.