Q&A with Rich Lindgren on the BFL 5-18-13

Today, I bring you a Q&A session I had with sixth place finisher Rich Lindgren.  Rich is a tournament bass angler living in Lakeville, MN chasing bass all over Minnesota and its adjoining states. Bass blogger, podcaster and fishing promoter. You’ll see him fishing the Minnesota bass tournament scene representing krugerfarms.com and Dobyns Rods among others. You can follow him on Twitter (@HellaBass) and like him on Facebook (facebook.com/bassinblog).

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 Q:  Talk about your previous experience fishing Pools 7, 8, and 9 and did that experience help in preparing for this tournament?

Rich:  My previous experience on these pools goes back to over 10 years where I fished a few small club tournaments, but there was a gap of close to 10 years from then until just last year,  when I came down for the Sunday of the Elite event (outside of a Weekend Series out of PDC, where I locked up to Pool 9). I also fished the Everstart as a co-Angler and fished the TBF northern divisional last September. Last year's tournament experience gave me the familiarity with Pool 8 so I could get around and gave me confidence in areas where I felt quality fish lived and I felt I just had to refine those areas for spring.

Q: What were the river conditions like?

Rich:  For the tournament, I believe the stage was around 8.7', water temps were 62-65F, and water clarity was around a foot in most areas that I fished.

Q:  How did your practice period go?

Rich:  Practice was limited and I really only found 1 decent area with about 3 spots. I spent about 5 hours on the top of Pool 7 the Saturday prior because of a small window I had.  I fished 7 again from 4-8pm on Thursday night on my way down and after that I had one small area where I found a few decent largemouth. Friday morning, I fished from 6am - Noon out of the Stoddard ramp. It was hit & miss, but I found an area where I got 2 good largemouth bites, a bank with some bedding smallies and then finally a staging spot that seemed pretty loaded with fish. From 1pm until the meeting I fished back up by Clinton street looking for backup water, that only eliminated more water for me.

Q:  Based on your assessment, what stage do you believe the majority of fish are in right now?

Rich:  Great question on what stage the fish are in.  Well, I can say that I found a few smallmouth and largemouth on beds in the tournament & caught some of each on Saturday. The weird thing for me, is that I fished a closing dam near my spawning bank, which I thought would be loaded with pre-spawn fish, but while a few fish were chunky, about 80% of them were long and thin, and looked worn out, which would suggest a bunch of post-spawn fish. So I guess, there are fish in all 3 stages, but my guess going in, it would've been mostly pre-spawn with the spawn just starting. For the next few weeks, I think you can fish for both bedding fish as well as spawners, but I think the safer bet would be to target the schools coming and going.

Q:  What pattern(s) did you establish in practice?

Rich:  Not sure I really ended up with a pattern, as much as I found a really good spot and two areas with some better single fish on beds.


Q:  On tournament day, did you catch what you expected to?

Rich:  I think I did expect to catch what I did in practice, but thought I would have got more fish off the beds, but ended up getting most of my quality fish off the staging spot. I caught a few quick fish off the spot in practice and left to find more, but when I fished it hard the morning of the tournament it quickly became apparent this spot was loaded. In hindsight, I wish I would have spent a little less time on the first spawing bank with smallies, many had left overnight, also spent time catching two bedders that were too small. Maybe I could have caught a bigger largemouth that I ran of time on.

Q:  Any closing thoughts you have about this event?

Rich:  Overall, pretty pleased with a 6th place finish in a May BFL. Outside of a dead fish that cost me 5th, I think I could have gained a few ounces to a pound by sticking with my primary spot, but I left to fish for a big upgrade looking for largemouth. It didn't work, but that is what I needed to do to have a chance at a win.
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I'd like to say thanks to both Kyle and Rich for sharing their BFL experiences with us and hopefully we'll hear from them again in the future.  Friday, I'll be making a trip to one of my favorite spring smallmouth lakes and hopefully I'll have some pictures and stories of giants to share with you.

Great Lakes Division BFL La Crosse, WI 5-18-13

Saturday brought the first BFL Great Lakes Division tournament of the 2013 season to La Crosse.  While I didn't fish it, I was able to get reports from a couple different anglers.  I will be posting these reports over the next couple days.  Today, I'll bring you the first of these updates with a guest blog post written by Kyle Schauf.

In His Words

Fish to win.  Fish to win.  Fish to win.  It’s pretty easy to say, rolls right off your tongue, but when it comes to tournament day it is a lot harder to do than you think.   I haven’t always done it; it’s something that in the last couple years I’ve really tried to focus on learning.  Prior to that, I’d be happy if I got a check.  Aim small, miss small, right.  Don’t get me wrong, the W’s aren’t flying my way, but it’s a lot easier to swallow when I miss first by ounces and land in the top 5, than it is to miss a check and land in 60^th.  Fish to win!  You have to practice the same way, eliminate areas and patterns that aren’t holding the winning fish.  So I’ve learned…sometimes you just don’t find the winning fish.

The BFL Great Lakes Division made its first stop of the season this past weekend here in La Crosse.  For me, practice started last Tuesday evening.  Prior to practice, I had yet to catch a bass on pools 7, 8, 9…so it was basically a fresh start from scratch.  I started my search on pool 7, Lake Onalaska.  Grass where I could find it was sparse and submergent. The rest of what I found was dirty, cold water and a few short bass.   A far cry of where I thought it would be, and at least a month behind last year.  So I abandoned the lake for the day and head out to the river in search of some brown ones.  Umm, not a bite.   When you get a bite you can start to piece things together, when you get nothing…as expected not much to go on. 

Wednesday night was much of the same, a night on the lake in all new areas with a few smaller fish.  I was definitely eliminating water but still really hadn’t gotten any clues to what was actually going on.  Thursday, finally a full day on the water; surely I could piece it together, after all, I had a full 12 hours on the water ahead of me.  It started out well, first stop, one keeper, then another, and another.  Ok, well this area is holding some fish, only problem they aren’t of the winning kind.  So I leave, head to a spawning area, the water is warming and there is an approaching spawning moon.  I pull into the shallows of the bay and see lots of spawning activity.  I found a lot of smaller bucks, building, cruising and even saw a bit of bedding activity.  However, everything I could see was small, maybe keeper range or slightly bigger and certainly not what I was looking for.  So I pull off the shallow weed edges to work them over.  The females must be close, the edge, the drop, the deeper ditch.  With a forecast of warming temps, I could almost visualize the females pulling into the shallows by tournament day.  My search of the weed edges and drops, gave me nothing, not a bite.  Where are they?  It’s early afternoon…and I’m still looking!   I pull into another shallow area and find 2 big fish on beds.  The kind I’m looking for pushing five pounds each.  I backed out and left them. 

Friday brought rain and a dip in the thermostat.  I decided to go back out to the river to see if anything changed.  The water was falling, the flow was increasing, but the water was surprisingly cleaning up.  I checked the smallie spots I had looked days prior and sure enough, I shook 4-5 bites and pulled up  a decent one.  My plan was formulating, despite the dip in temps I still could see the females moving in. 

Tourney day, boat 132 of 139, not really the draw you want in any tournament.  My plan was to see if I could put together a limit of males while I waited for the females to push into the areas I had found and of course pull the two big females off the beds where I left them.  I figured if I could catch those 2 big girls plus 3 other decent ones, I would position myself for the win.  Fish to win. 

After missing the first lock, I pulled into my first area and caught a keeper or two on a Senko.  It was by no means fast and furious but by about 9:00 I had a small limit.  I left my primary shallow flats in search of the bigger fish.  Once again I probed the edges of the nearest grassline, ditches and closest deep water;  I alternated thru the spectrum of traps, vibrating jigs, spinnerbaits and flipping baits  but nothing prevailed.   By noon the sun was high and warm.  I had upgraded my limit a couple times but it was only by ounces.  It was time to make a move. I headed over to catch the big girls off their beds.  The sun was high and they should have been set up perfectly.  I approached silently. As I arrived I couldn’t tell if they were home or not because of the shadows.  After a half dozen casts I realized that they had vanished.  I am not sure why they left, by virtue of nature or at the hand of an angler, but they were GONE.  Considering this was a key part of my fish to win program, much of my hope to win vanished right along with the big females off their beds.  Put it behind me.

I still had a plan to upgrade..  I headed back to my starting area, where I upgraded about 5-6 times, again only by ounces with each cull.  By one o’clock I knew this wasn’t going to be the way to make a run at the top spot, so I decided to make a run to check out the brown ones I had found the day before.  My hope was that the 4-5 bites I shook the day before would be bigger upgrades to my largemouth.  When I arrived at my smallie area I pretty much could tell it wasn’t going to happen.  The flow had increased pretty drastically and I only managed a couple of small buck males.  It was about 2:00 when I made the lock back down and had a little time for some last minute upgrades before the 3:00 check in.  I made a couple stops on some current points and eddies, but was unable to find a keeper bite.   The day was done.

At the scales I weighed in five large mouth for 10lbs 8 oz.  The winner had a bag of 5 good smallies for a little over 16lbs.  Despite my mid pack finish I still felt that I made decisions to fish to win.  I basically caught the fish I found in practice and never got the big bite that I was hoping for.  The females are not “there” yet.  With the full moon this week, stabilizing water levels, and some sun…I fully anticipate some big waves of spawning females will make a move into the shallow flats.  If you’re going to fish the Miss pools 7,8,9 for spawners, tie up a Senko, put on your Solarbats shades, because in my opinion…This week will be THE WEEK!

First stop on the River Road tournament schedule---Pool 5A

Pool 5A of the Mississippi River was our first tournament on the River Road schedule for 2013.  Saturday brought gale force winds and high water but no worries.....the fish would bite.

Most years our first tournament of the year is either held on Pool 9 or 10.  This year we decided to mix it up and fish some waters at different times of the year.  I have had very little early spring experience on Pool 5A so I decided to spend a couple days there to practice.  The first practice day brought
a slow, steady rain all day long.  It wasn't very nice to fish in but the fish bit well and I was able to locate a couple areas that were holding fish.    The key for me was finding points that led into spawning areas protected from the main current flow.  This was no easy feat with the water as high as it was.  Most places the current was flowing through the trees.  I also caught a giant walleye pitching a pit boss to a flooded tree line.




The second day of practice brought blue skies and tough post frontal conditions.  In five hours on the water I got only two bites, one small male and a nice 4lber.  I had three primary areas to fish and planned on spending my entire tournament day in those areas.

Tournament day brought brutal conditions.  The temperatures dropped into the 40's for take-off and the winds picked up throughout the day and would gust up to 40mph.  The good news was the fish were biting.  My first stop landed myself and my co-angler two beautiful 4.5 pounders, one each.  From there I moved to a secluded cut where I had found some smallmouth on beds.  They disappeared, but a bunch of largemouth moved in.  I was able to finish out my limit in there and make a few culls as well.  My co-angler picked up three more himself.  It was shaping out to be ok.  My last stop of the day didn't yield any upgrades and I ended the day with 12.5 pounds and finished fourth.  I needed a couple more like this one and I'd have been in the hunt.

The top three had 17+, 16+, and 15+lbs respectively.  The guys at the top focused on current areas which turned out to be the smart move.  I think a lot of fish haven't made it to the back of the pockets yet, though the 4.6 that I weighed did have a beat up bloody tail and she was shallow.  I think some spawning has happened but the recent weather has them a little messed up.  The following link will give you a look at what the leaders did to catch their fish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=83reQlIvxws

The weekend of May 18th will bring the BFL to La Crosse.  I won't be fishing it but I'll try and bring updates back with results and a recap of the action.  I owe my wife a weekend home before the next flurry begins.

Drastic Changes

It's amazing the difference a week can make.  This applies anywhere in the sport of bass fishing, but even more so this week in Wisconsin.  Last Tuesday brought high's in the mid-80's and by Thursday the snow was flying.  Some areas received 15+ inches, while most areas around La Crosse got just a few inches.  With the snow came the drastic drop in air temps which in turn dropped the water temp of the Mississippi River by nearly 15 degrees in some areas.  Main channel areas dropped from the low 50's to the low 40's in the matter of just a few days.  This made for some particularly interesting conditions for the second tournament of the season.

Saturday brought the first of three MSBC tournaments to pools 7, 8, and 9 of the Mississippi River.  I was once again fishing with Torry Rhoades.  Last week had shown some good staging action for largemouths and with no time for either of us to pre-fish for this tournament, we were winging it.  We decided to return to the same areas that we fished the week prior.  We knew that the conditions had changed drastically from the week prior, but we felt that the fish would likely still be in the same areas.  While our assumptions were probably right, the fish did not want to cooperate.  We managed a nice 4 pounder early in the day, but only managed to pick up two other small keepers in the morning.  We decided to make the move north and try and pick up some smallmouth with only a few hours left in the tournament day.  Our efforts didn't pay off and we only caught one more keeper the rest of the day.  The reaction bait bite has yet to really turn on.  Typically lipless cranks and jerkbaits shine with these water temps, but it seems the only bites we can get are with slow moving plastics.  The decision to look for smallies was the right one, but with no practice we were really fishing history.  Smallies dominated this event with an awesome bag of nearly 25 lbs for six fish took top prizes.  Check out the following link to hear what the winners were up to.

http://northrhoadesoutdoors.com/


Next weekend we head to pool 5A for the opener of the River Road season.  The weather is looking promising, but with rising water from the recent snow melt,  conditions should be interesting.


Lesson Learned

Never fish history.  Even if you have lots of local knowledge, you won't be able to compete with the guys who put their time in.  Work hard or stay home.

The tournament season is underway

This past Sunday marked the kickoff of the tournament season for myself and Torry Rhoades.  It's been nearly six months since the last tournament of 2012 and it couldn't have come soon enough.  Tournament waters were pools 7, 8, and 9 of the Mississippi River and we launched out of Clinton Street on pool 8.

Fishing had been tough as of late and Saturday would be our only day of practice.  We took the divide and conquer approach with Torry checking pool 7 and myself spending the day on pool 8.  Bites were hard to come by.  Typically this time of year the water temps are in the high 50's everywhere with the shallows pushing into the 60's.  This year with the late spring, morning temps didn't hit 50 in a lot of areas.  Bigger fish usually are stacking up on ledges and the males are flooding the shallows.  Our practice didn't show that.  Torry picked up only a few small bites all day on pool 7 and I didn't fair much better on pool 8.  I did manage to pick up a handful of decent bites on the flats and that became our game plan for tournament day.

Tournament day brought mild overnight temps and I was hoping that those fish on the flats would still be fired up early in the day.  I don't typically like fishing flats this time of year, especially in the mornings.  Water temps usually drop more drastically there overnight and it usually slows the fishing down.  And, of course, that was the case for us.  We made a couple passes through the most productive area first thing in the morning and only managed a pike and a few shorts.  After an hour, we decided to pull out to a nearby ledge and let those flats warm back up a bit with hopes that the bite would turn on later in the day.  During practice I picked up a single keeper fish on this particular ledge but when there's one, there's always more.  Not long after making the move, we began picking up fish.  It wasn't fast and furious, by any means, but the bite was consistent and the quality of fish were better than I had caught the day prior on the flats.  We made the decision to spend the day camped on that ledge with the hopes that more fish would filter in throughout the day.

When it was all said and done, we pulled in about 15- 20 keepers and our best eight fish weighed 23.58 lbs.  Not bad considering how tough practice had been.  It was good enough to capture second place overall.  The winners had a massive bag totaling 28.68 lbs anchored by a 5.04 lb kicker.  The funny part about this story is that when we left that flat early in the morning there was just one other boat fishing there, and yes, it was the eventual winners.   They stayed all day and the bite obviously did turn on.  I have to be honest though.  I had no idea the quality of fish that were there.  My best five fish the day prior wouldn't have broke 12 lbs, so knowing that, I still would have made all the same decisions that I did.

The rust is off.  The season is underway and the prespawn action is just heating up.  If you're getting the itch to fish, now's the time to make a trip to the river.

First day on the water

Yesterday marked my first day fishing on open water for the 2013 fishing season.  If you're from the south you may find this ridiculous, but this year has been the coldest spring that I can remember and the ice has just recently left the river.  Ice reports from the northern part of the state are still showing numbers in excess of 20 inches.  Yikes.  (This year's statewide opener may not happen as planned.) 

I launched from Clinton Street on Pool 8 of the Mississippi River.  My goals for the day were to make sure that my motor had made it through the winter unscathed and to try and find some walleye for dinner.  With water temps around 36 degrees, I felt walleye were probably my best bet at success for the day.  Not so much.  I spent the first 3 hours of the day fighting 20mph winds only to land a few small walleyes.  I didn't catch any saugers which was surprising to me.

 I then decided to venture into some popular spring largemouth areas to throw a few baits around.  I have to be honest.  I didn't expect to get a bite.  I've never caught largemouths in water that cold, except through the ice.  My plan was to slowly drag a beaver around and hope that one would pick it up.  It didn't take long until a got what sure felt like a bite.  I set the hook only to come up with some grass on my rig.  Even though, I'd convinced myself that I'd been tricked by the grass, I threw back into the same spot.  As I S-L-O-W-L-Y dragged my lure back to the boat, I felt the telltale thunk on the end of my line.  This was definitely a fish.  I set the hook and brought a beautifully colored 3.5 pound largemouth to the boat.  Success!!!  Normally I wouldn't have gotten excited over a single fish, but this was the first largemouth of the year and I did it in ice water. (Actually saw some gulls perched on ice flows.)  I threw back to that same spot multiple times and was able to land two more nice fish.  The rest of the area didn't produce any bites.  Oh well, it was still a good day.  A day that I needed after such a long winter.

Lesson Learned:

No water is too cold to catch a bass.  They will bite.  Suck it up and figure it out.

Where we went wrong

If you read my previous post on why fish bite our lures, you might be asking yourself how it's possible that we could be wrong for so long on this basic principle of fishing.  I believe there are two main reasons for our false reasoning.  The first is the idea of anthropomorphism.  (Big word but has simple meaning)  The second is our inborn need to know why something happens.  These two combined create the perfect environment to breed misinformation.

Let's start with the term anthropomorphism.  The definition of this term is the attribution of human form or other characteristics to anything other than a human being.  In other words, we try to explain and justify what a fish does based on how we act or make decisions.  This is a big problem that we need to overcome if we're going to have any chance of understanding fish behavior.  A fish's brain is much different than ours.  We make our decisions based on the process of reasoning.  Fish don't do that.  They are purely reactionary creatures.  They don't think.  When a fish sees a potential food item it triggers an instinctive feeding response.  Some days these triggers are different than others and each fish may have a different set of triggers that set them off.  These triggers can be influenced by the weather, the time of year and the need to protect, amongst others,  that I don't believe we truly understand yet.  These reactionary responses aren't limited to the fish's feeding behavior.  They play a big part in how a fish responds to danger and how they respond to changes in their environment.  If we can understand how a fish's brain works,  it well help us to stay out of the anthropomorphism trap.

The second major player that has led us down the wrong path is our unending need to know why something happens.  This is a trait that is unique to humans and plays a huge role in the process of reasoning.  This trait is something that we are born with.  It's not a learned trait.  If you have young children you know this to be the case.  Not long after our kids learn to talk they're favorite word becomes "Why?"  "Why dad?"  If you have children you know what I mean.  They often times ask why when you've already explained why.  It's how our brains work.  How does this play with fishing?  Before the age of the internet, our information gathering mechanisms were limited.  Everything we learned came from either personal experience or from limited traditional media.  Our questions were answered by a select few experts in the field and being experts they had the answers.  When asked why fish bite our lures it was natural for them to assume and then pass on to us the idea that it must be because they're fooled into thinking it's something that they already eat.  No one would question these guys at the time because they were looked upon as gods of fishing.  And they were gods.  We all have certain figures embedded into our memories from our youth that were larger than life to us.  How could you question someone with vastly more experience and knowledge than you, even if it didn't make perfect sense?  You couldn't and it became "fact". 

We came to a fork in the road some 100 years ago, or so, and we went down the wrong path.  From then on, we've been trying to find our way out of this maze not knowing that we made a wrong turn.  The key now is to backtrack to that fork in the road and take the correct course.  When we do that I believe we'll unlock new opportunities that we don't even know exist.  It will allow us to open a new way of thinking and with the information gathering capabilities we have now, maybe we can master the sport of fishing.