White Lake D&R 2023 - Tournament

Game day brought similar conditions to our practice day and a solid turnout of 64 boats. We launched and I had to re set up a couple things on my graphs. I had restored defaults the night before to clear up some slow networking I experienced. I’ve found whenever there is something that is kind of glitchy or slow going on that restoring defaults will clean it up. White Lake is one place that I never want to burn up a good takeoff number on. I was surprised that Trevor was one of the first people with a boat number and now we had some decisions to make.

There were several different places I wished we could be all at the same time. But not driving by anything I want to fish on White Lake has served me well in the past so it made sense in this event too. It usually helps me get in a good rotation and doesn’t allow my expectations to get to high about an individual spot. It wouldn’t take long to get the party started there. I think I caught a short on my first cast which was actually kind of strange. I don’t think we’d caught hardly any shorts on Thursday. About the time I got that one unhooked Trevor had what seemed like a good fish on a worm. We were both a little disappointed in the size but it was a good fish and possibly could have been one of the ones we weighed in. That was it for that spot, we were kind of boxed in between the shore and other boats. I wasn’t going to waste much time there without being able to move around. We put the trolling motor down and fished our way to another area. We were able to fish the fringes of that but never got bit. Off it was to an area we really had high hopes for.

I can’t say it was a huge surprise to see 3 boats on it so off we went to another flat. There were a ton of fish on here and also a ton of boats. It wasn’t really an area that we thought a big bag could get caught. However, the idea was to snatch 13 pounds up there pretty quickly and get out. We never really got to fish the “hot” zones up there either but we got a couple. 1 on a senko and another on the jerkbait. They were actually both decent fish and it’s possible that one or both got weighed in (we caught quite a few that were similar sized throughout the day). We didn’t feel that working around on the flat to catch a couple more was going to do us much good. We had a start and it was time to try and get back in that area with the 3 boats. No surprise that they were still there so we pulled into to a place there is usually some grass nearby and quite a bit of open space to fish around. A couple shorts was all that produced and it was really quite amazing we didn’t even have a limit yet or any fish we really wanted. We did pick another 2 pound fish up on a deep break to at least give us 4. We were done with the circus and it was time to try and get some bigger bites. We took a gamble on an area that had the right stuff and no pressure. The fish just weren’t there, we caught one nice one in practice there but despite fishing it twice during the day just never got bit.

 I had high hopes of getting a big bite slow rolling a big spinnerbait out deep. That was our next area and we knew it was going to be all or nothing on that. There were more alewives around this time and that was looking promising. Right away we hooked up and it was either a magnum or not a bass. Unfortunately for us it was the first time I’d seen a drum caught a spinnerbait (1 of 2 throughout the day), we needed some cheap spoons to really load up with the drum! We kept at it for awhile just hoping to get 1 or 2 big bites. We did finally get bit and it was a nice fish, one that we weighed in for sure. Now we had 5 and all of our fish were actually ok, I didn’t give any of our fish enough credit until they hit the scales. We were a couple hours in at this point and nothing had really gone according to plan but there was no need to go fishing to fill a limit or try and get 2.5 pounders. Fish for big ones, catch as many as we could, and keep the trolling motor down and baits in the water was pretty simple plan for the next few hours.

It got pretty slow for awhile and we were in the White Lake lull. We needed some wind to get things turned around. The White Lake lull when it is calm is not a pleasant experience. Maybe it doesn’t happen to everyone out there but I firmly believe there is a period that just sucks out there. Eventually we started making some culls, just switching it up between plastics, jerkbaits, spinnerbaits, and chatterbaits at times. The chatterbait never fired on tournament day for us and that is usually a good bait for me this time of year. We had one good bite on a swimjig that didn’t hook up. I’d have liked to have seen that one and another senko bite. Those are the only 2 fish I feel like we really missed during the tournament. We got rid of that 2 pounder on a jerkbait and then right at 11:00 hooked up again. One of those bites that just had different headshakes and is unmistakably one of the right ones. Of course, this big old mouth comes out of the water trying to throw the jerkbait but he had it good and made it to the net. Now we were getting somewhere, one nice one and the rest a solid baseline. I was just happy to at least feel like we had 12 pounds in the boat. If we could pick up another nice one in the next hour I had high hopes we could get a couple good bites on some specific stuff in the afternoon. Nothing too exciting happened in that next hour. A dogfish got us really excited for a minute and a pike got us equally bad a little while later. It’s not often I have a regret from tournament day but I really think I screwed this one up. We’d been getting more bites working a certain direction and were slow to pick up on that and take it seriously. It was mostly just covering water and it seems like it shouldn’t have mattered but I really think it did. Valuable lesson learned and something to think about for the future.

Our next stop produced a solid keeper that didn’t help and then a follow from one that would have certainly helped. Not by a ton and wouldn’t have made a difference. Those 2 spots had more fish we just couldn’t get them to really fire no matter what we did. An old trusty spot gave us our next cull on a dropshot and we desperately needed a 4 pounder. We worked hard up until the last minute and made 1 more cull with a jerkbait. I hadn’t really looked at our fish or given them any credit, I just knew we had one over 3 pounds and overall not what we wanted. Trevor does an awesome job owning the culling on tournament day. It is always tough when a bunch of them are the same size but it keeps one of us focused on fishing.

I was really interested in how the weights were going to be. I’ve had days like this on White where it was a struggle but then half the field was catching 3 pounders at will. Or other days where the weights were just not that great and the big ones just didn’t turn on. I can think back to a couple years ago when Trevor and I won with 16 and change or when Shaun and I finished 4th with a weight in the high 14s and it only took 16 pounds to win that day. I thought maybe there was an outside chance we could sneak a check if our fish were in the 13-14 pound range. The chatter at the weigh in was that numbers were good and size was not. I hadn’t given any thought to what we had, I just knew it wasn’t what we wanted and Trevor never gave me an estimate. We were both thrilled to have 15.11 and the best part about sandbagging yourself is that the higher weight is such a pleasant surprise. I certainly didn’t expect it to put us in 3rd place at the time either but we were first flight and a lot would change. 2 18-pound bags did come in which bumped us to 5th but we were happy to be there. Congrats to the winners and everyone who got paid! We ended up making out alright at the weigh in with a 5th place check, contingency money for an atlas jackplate, and highest finisher money with a Minn Kota Talon or Raptor and Ultrex. Unfortunately, my boat is too old to qualify for the Nitro bonus anymore but maybe one day when daycare doesn’t have all our money we can fix that. Anyway, it was a great day and a good start on the points which is always one of our big goals for the year. On to the next one!