Tournament Fishing a New Lake

It's always better to be lucky than good! - January 2015 So how do you break down a lake you've never fished before and locate the areas which hold fish? This was the same question these two Minnesota boys asked ourselves when we arrived late Friday night at Lake Metigoshe. We've never stepped foot on a North Dakota lake, but after looking at the topo lake map we picked out a few spots that we felt would hold fish in the morning and the areas the fish may be traveling as winter progresses. In addition, a quick view of the satellite image from last summer showed us where we could find some weed beds that were now hidden under 2 feet of ice and snow. The game plan: pre-fish all day Saturday drilling as many holes as we could fish and locate the schools of bluegills for the tournament on Sunday. After drilling our first dozen holes, we found out very quickly that the topo map was much less accurate than anticipated. We'd decide to keep drilling holes until we found the structure we wanted. After 3 hours on the ice, we had managed to find 2 walleyes and many more pike with a small tungsten jig and wax worm. It was frustrating and the -16F temperature accompanied with gusty winds didn't help matters. The bluegills just weren't located in proximity of the weed beds as we'd anticipated. It didn't make sense to keep doing the same thing so we moved across the lake in search of some deeper structure. With fresh holes and a new-found hope the initial drop brought a fish in immediately on the flasher. 1 minute later I had a small northern on the ice. Still not ready to move yet, I kept fishing and not long thereafter came the familiar sight of several marks on the flasher. Yes, we had finally found our gills. We had found our spot, but were still curious about other areas of the lake. Using the lake map, we scouted for areas with similar structure and depth. There too, we found many nice bluegills. However, on these new spots we set up the shelter and closed the windows. This allowed us to see how fish were reacting to our presentation. The movement on the flasher was indicating an aggressive bite, yet once we were sight fishing down the hole we learned that before each bite the fish would hesitate. When this occurred, we would hesitate and lift the jig slightly. If there was any line twist, the jig would spin immediately and the fish would spook away. This un-natural presentation was fixed when my buddy grabbed his 6061 and I took out the Black Betty. This subtle change instantly increased our catch rate. Over the course of that afternoon we caught and released nearly 40 blue gills from this immediate area all ranging from 8-1/2 to 9-3/4 in length. Tournament day: There was no question about which equipment we'd use. With 2lb test spooled on the 6061 and Black Betty, we were confident in the presentation for getting a bite. However, in order to compete, we'd have to do better than just catch fish. We needed to get our limit and also pick off the bigger fish in each school. Should we concentrate on catching fewer big fish or lots of smaller fish? My buddy rigged his tungsten jig with two wax worms while I chose to use a more aggressive plastic presentation. As the sun came up and the 8am start time arrived, our presentation brought in schools almost immediately. My buddy was able to hold the school nearby with his live bait while I could jig up the more dominant fish with the plastic presentation. This nearly always resulted in a double. While my buddy and I have used some pretty creative(and questionable) logic in the past, today we felt our strategy was the best. His presentation nearly guaranteed we would get a fish out of each school while mine increased the odds of luring the bigger fish out of the school. I would do this by raising my jig 6-12inches above the school. Once one fish follows it up, I could trigger a bite by jigging and raising another 3-4 inches. At the end of the day we earned a 3rd place position out of the 27 teams in the tournament. Overall we were pleased with our strategy on this new lake and the difference that a change of equipment and strategy had on our fishing.