Wixom Day #1

1 Scott Rice 11.71
2 Mike Pritchard 11.25
3 Jim Rice 11.17
4 Bill Maurer 10.81
5 Brian Masters 9.66
6 Mark Dereadt 9.64
7 Paul Spooner 8.06
8 Terry Johnson 6.39
9 Tim Chapman 6.11
10 Art Honsinger 5.71
11 Connie Honsinger 3.03
12 Steve Hartley 2.95
13 Trish Rice 1.95
14 Roy Albert 1.75
15 Matt Morgan 1.72
16 Tom Curry 1.33
17 Charles Morgan 0

Wixom Preview

It's been two years since the club has visited Wixom but it has long been a favorite out-of-town destination for the SCMBCers and for good reason. The lake where the Tobacco and Tittabawassee rivers meet offers some terrific fishing at times and is a great stage for determining the AOY and Classic qualifiers as the season winds to a close.

Wixom is approx 1980 acres and is a river system located near in Gladwin county near Edenville. It has both largemouth and smallmouth swimming in it's waters and the water has a slight copper tint to it. There is every possible type of water available to fish from points and weedlines to rock and wood. The upper reaches of the rivers has quite a bit more color to it and contains much more wood and slop as opposed to the clearer water down by the dams.

As with most river systems, Wixom fish rely heavily on current and when water is moving the fishing can be downright awsome. "You can go anywhere when the current is moving and smoke em' but most of the time they stop pulling water on the weekends", says club member Scott Rice. "As the weekend progresses, the water slows down and rises, scattering the fish and making them much harder to pinpoint".

Patterns range widely from throwing tubes to some of the rocky areas for smallies, finessing the weed flats with senkos or targeting the murkier upriver wood for bigger fish. Most of these tactics will work earlier in the weekend but as the water slows, adjustments will have to be made. Add to the equation the colder temps with rain also in the forecast and the club anglers will have a lot to digest. Most of the bigger weights will come on Saturday and it will probably take from 11-13 pounds to win usually with 9 or 10 pounds winning on Sunday.

Most of the club members will be camping near Edenville and there will be a club cookout following Saturdays weigh-in. It is always an intriguing event and and one we hope will have a big turnout. And with all the variables this weekend the folks who make the biggest adjustments will do well. I will not be attending the event myself due to family obligations (aren't there always obligations?) but will hopefully have all the results posted by Monday.

Wixom up next

It seems like it has been a while since the club last fished a tournament but finally we will tee it up again at Wixom this weekend. The format will consist of two seperate one day tournaments, one Saturday and one Sunday. I will detail this body of water more extensively later in the week but I just wanted to break down this river system a little bit before everyone starts pre-fishing.

This lake has been an out of town favorite ever since I've been in the club and for various reasons. First it has numerous campgrounds and sets up well in that aspect since most of the club will stay overnight. Secondly, the fishing is always pretty good and it is one of the few places around where you can catch a double digit limit during the middle of summer. It is a good fishery for panfish and walleye as well and it is also unique in that parts of the system will fish like a river and larger portions still fish like a natural lake.

One more characteristic that makes this lake very intruguing is the pre-fishing stories that undoubtably will be shared this week. I'm not sure if it's the current that is present during the week or what but the practice rounds are usually legendary. I myself found this to be true two years back when on a weekday I caught a limit of largemouth that probably pushed 16 pounds and I left them biting. Of course I struggled and never caught my five on tournament day but that is very common up there. It should be fun and I'll talk more about the fishing later on in the week. Hope we have a good turnout.

August Meeting

The club had our August meeting the other day and to say the least it was a small turnout. The President and Treasurer were both on vacations and the VP and Federation Contact were busy with work related items so I was the only board member present. So with one board member and two regular members we had a total of 3 people at the meeting. So we sat there for 25 minutes and talked fishing and as I drove home it dawned on me that It was not a waste of time and that I really had a pretty good time just sitting there talking about the thing I like talking about the most, catching fish.

Mike Pritchard is a longtime member and one of the 3 at the meeting the other night and he mentioned that this is what the meetings used to be like years ago and it would be nice to incorporate some "fishing talk" back into our meetings instead of business and money all the time. I thought it was a great idea and as the tournament director I should take the lead and try and get helpful fishing info discussed at these monthly get togethers and I will make it a point from now on to do so.

I can still remember about 12 years ago when I went to my first club meeting and hardly knew anyone. It was in the dead of winter and I was very excited to go and discuss how to catch more fish from some of the best fishermen in Jackson. I walked into the meeting and took a seat and prepared myself for all of the knowledge that I knew was about to gain and to my dissapointment listened to folks argue about money for the next 45 minutes. What a downer that was. So all we can do is try and hopefully at the September meeting the anglers who did well at Wixom will pass along a few tidbits and possibly a few GPS coordinates.

It's frog time

Well it's official, the dog days of summer are here and usually the tournament weights plummet accordingly. Our last event on Belleville saw only 10 fish being brought to the scales and it reminded me of the 2008 event on Coldwaters Randall chain when only 7 fish were weighed in.

Warm weather usually drives the fish deep or makes

them look for heavy cover such as pads or matted

vegetation. The club will visit Wixom lake in a few

weeks and these are likely where a lot of the fish will be located. Patterns that work this time of year include dock fishing, finessing deep weedlines with senkos or fishing deeper structure. Since most of Michigans natural lakes are devoid of this type of deep cover, most folks fish weightless senkos around deeper weedbeds which can make for a long day. Yeah this pattern will catch fish but I've discovered something that is much more exciting, frog fishing. Many pros have begun to win tournaments on these topwater tactics, enough so that I decided to take only my frog rod to the lake last week and see what all the talk is about.

I launched my boat around 3pm on a hot weeknight and checked the water temps to be close to 80 degrees, about as hot as it will get all year. The wind was blowing good but as I ventured into a "slop bay" the waves didn't seem to exist. I threw a Spro Bronzeye Frog in natural green and began just pulling it through the pads until I hit an opening and then let it set for a few seconds. I was suprised when after only about 1o minutes did I get my first hit, just a slight sucking strike but I set the hook on a 2.5 pounder and I was hooked as a frog fisherman.

I proceded to get about 14 bites for the 3 hours I fished and only caught 5 but 3 were keepers and one was a giant that went 5.4 pounds on my digital scales, my second biggest fish ever. You havn't lived until a five pounder blows up on a frog in deep slop. But for all the success I had that first frog night, there is a lot of frustration involved in this type of fishing. First off, bites do not come frequently and your mind starts to wander. That's why I missed several fish that night, not being ready. Secondly as I demonstrated, you will miss the majority of the hits no matter how cool your nerves are.

But on the positive side, most of the fish that bite will be decent ones and you never have to worry about a lot of boat traffic back in the jungle. I have also discovered a few tricks in this type of fishing in my short frog career. The farther into the slop you go, the better. I believe these fish see very few lures during the season and they may stay there year round. You will also be amazed at how many fish will give away their locations. You can usually hear panfish sucking flies off the pads but bass will make this sound as well. I also actually saw disturbances in the water and threw to it to catch fish so pay attention. And most of your strikes will not be the toilet bowl flushing variety, rather a subtle sucking bite, just as my five pounder did.

My gear is very important when getting back in the weeds as you might expect. I use a 6 1/2 foot heavy action rod with a soft tip and I use the Spro Bronzeye Frog jr. with 30 lb power pro braided line. This is a must and you can probably go heavier. Finally, throw to everything, pads, floating mats, and get ready to go in and get the fish once it's hooked because it is hard to pull a 3 pounder wrapped with 5 pounds of weeds to the boat. By the way, I decided to try my frog fishing on a busy weekend this past Saturday and even though two tournaments were being held on an already busy lake, I managed two good keepers in about 3 hours fishing along with about 10 swing and misses. My new hobby still needs some work but I'm looking forward to trying it for a whole day in a club tourney. More froggin' reports to follow.

My Day on Belleville

I like reporting how everyone did during each individual tournament but I havn't really discussed how I approached each event. Probably because I havn't finished very high but I love reading how the pros prepare for tournaments and I thought I could pass along how I prepared for Belleville. Not that I'm a pro by any stretch of the imagination, but it's interesting how guys fish differently and maybe I did something that worked that may help someone else later in the year.

Practice: I only had one day to practice on Belleville but what I wanted to do was to target largemouth mainly because I thought they would be more predictable. But I also thought I could hit a quick smallmouth early in the day tournament morning before I honkered down with the largies. I decided since Belleville was a river system, I would concentrate on the areas where the main river channel swung close to shore and where there was also rip rap present. I found several of these areas and caught fish on topwaters and crankbaits. Nothing big but I did get 3 keeper bites so I thought I had my early morning spots dialed in. I then went to the far west end of the lake where there is more weeds and flats and after getting a couple bites on a frog, I figured I would fish the west end slop for largemouth. Great plan.

Tourney Day: I had a boating partner, Craig Deck, fish with me on tournament day and I let him know we'd run and gun a few spots early for smallies and then lethargically fish the pads for largemouth for the remainder of the day. My plan was off and running as spot one was a point that contained rock and had the main river channel sweeping close to it. I caught two 13 3/4" smallies on a topwater and lost three that all may have kept. I also caught several smaller fish, mostly on the cranks but failed to boat a keeper. As luck would have it, Craig was also getting bites but he was able to land a small keeper on a crankbait so at least he was on the board.

I ran to several more of my early morning spots and kept getting bites but still wasn't able to land my first keeper. As the bite slowed I decided to fish a small piece of structure I found in practice down by one of the bridges in about 15 fow but never got bit. Time for the largemouth stuff. Unfortunately, there was another tournament fishing Belleville this day so as I went to the west end to fish the few pad fields that there were I encountered lots of boats that had the same idea. I then decided to change gears a little and flip some of the wood and laydowns located at the backs of the bays but only landed one small fish after about an hour.

With the pad fields crowded I fished the weediest, gangliest slop I could find and got in there real deep but only Craig had a hit on a frog and I was still fishless. At 12:30 now it was time to scramble. I decided to head up river as far as we could and try and find some matted vegetation to fish our frogs but could find nothing of the sort. Only one thing to do, go back and crank our smallmouth stuff but we only had a few bites and our boat brought one whole fish to the weigh-in. This was the first tournament I had zero'd in in five years and I was very frustrated. Craigs fish weighed in at 1.29 pounds, good for 6th place and one of only 6 guys to weigh in anything.

Summary: I liked my gameplan and the smallmouth were biting but I just couldn't land a keeper. My biggest mistake I believe was not targeting the largemouth but the way I approached them. There are not many weeds on Belleville and even fewer pad fields. But the wood is plentiful and even though I could not get many bites on it in practice, I believe the laydowns were the primary cover and I should have tried to develop some sort of wood strategy. I didn't think Senkos would be a good bait in the dirty water but all the top finishers were throwing it so I guess not throwing it was another big blunder. If we were to go there again I think I would try and expand on my early morning smallmouth crankbait bite and then flip jigs and senkos around all the wood until my arms fell off. But I learned a few things and that's what the club is all about so I'll be ready next time.

VanAken wins Belleville

When Belleville Lake was put on the schedule it was determined that a river fishery such as this would fish a little easier in the dog days of summer than some of the lakes that were on this years lineup. But the August 2nd event was anything but easy, maybe one of the toughest bites the club has ever encountered in which only 6 anglers weighed in fish. But the brutal conditions didn't phase Jim VanAnken as he pulled out his first club victory after coming close several times in the past.

Jim had never been on Belleville before but he is highly confident in throwing a texas rigged weightless senko. His home lake is Michigan Center and he has perfected the senko technique there and it can be deadly when the bite is tough. "I threw the senko to anything I could, rafts, laydowns weeds, anything" commented VanAken when describing his fishing day. "I probably only caught 7 to 10 fish during the day but got the bigger bites". Jim caught the big bass of the tournament at 3.33 pounds under a willow tree on the purple senko and added a 1.73 lb smallie under a dock to accumulate his winning 5.06 pound weight. Jim had also caught the second big bass a few weeks earlier at St. Clair and brought a 3 1/2 pounder to the scales at Goguac so he definitely has the bigger fish dialed in. "My partner couldn't believe there was a fish under the willow tree and it was tough getting him out but that ended up being my big fish of the day."

With the win, VanAken climbed into the top ten in the AOY race and has him looking good for his first classic appearance. Also making a move up the leaderboard was Jim Rice Jr. who came in second by also throwing a senko to the few visible weeds at Belleville. Jim Jr. brought in a tournament best 3 fish to the scales for 4.72 lbs and set him atop the Angler of the Year list by 6 pounds over Mark Dereadt. It was the first time Rice had not weighed in a limit all year.

VanAkens gear: Jim throws his senko on spinning gear spooled with 10 pound Cajun Red monofiliment and a 3/0 Gamakatsu off-set worm hook. He throws Yamamoto senko at times but also pours his own. The best bait at Belleville was a purple 6 inch senko.

Belleville Results

1) Jim VanAken 5.06
2) Jim Rice 4.72
3) Art Honsinger 3.20
4) Patty Rice 3.03
5) Connie Honsinger 2.19
6) Craig Deck 1.26
7) Jerry Smith 0
7) Tom Curry 0
7) Mark Dereadt 0
7) Brian Masters 0
7) Scott Rice 0
7) Rich Rice 0
7) Bill Maurer 0
7) Tim Chapman 0

First Big Bass: Jim VanAken 3.33 lbs
Second Big Bass: Connie Honsinger 2.19 lbs