Balsam Lake tournament

Saturday morning started out cool & breezy with northwest winds dropping water temps five degrees overnight. We decided to start in a popular small sheltered bay that we know holds fish and we shook off bites in there during prefishing. Since we drew boat number 14 we figured we had a good shot at being one of the first few boats in there. We arrived at the spot to find we were the second boat there, but the other guys were fishing fast probably just looking for spawners. I started fishing Mister Twister Comidas with my new Kistler Helium 2 LTX 6"9"mh and 4" lizards on my 7' medium Helium LTA. Starting just inside the mouth of the bay we continued all the way around without a bite, we then fished the starting area one more time and decided to leave and come back later in the day after the water warmed up. Next we ran to East Balsam to fish an inside weedline we knew of. By this time the wind was much stronger and after about a half hour of being pounded and only a few small dinks it was time to move. We then fished a couple of other shallow areas that we have done well in the past and continued the small dink trend with no keepers, we saw 14 and 15 inch fish but they were very skittish and would just disappear. At this point, thinking the water may have warmed up some, we went back to the bay we started in, again no bites but this time we at least saw some activity. By now it was getting down to crunch time, so after some thought we went to an area we already fished, but figured it had the best potential since we did see lots of keepers cruising. We were going to live or die on this spot in the final hour, the water was warming and our hope was we could wade through enough dinks to catch some keepers. Weigh in was at 2:30 and at 2:00 it started to rain, with no fish in the box and what we had going we gave in and headed to the boat ramp. I later found out a little over 11 pounds won the tournament, which is low compared to past tournaments - usually its 15 - 16 pounds. The team that won were fishing from a jon boat and at the end of the day when we were at the boat ramp we saw him coming out of the mill pond. This is the second time the winner has come from there. Looking back, I think we fished memories and hopes too much and didn't recognize what the fish were really doing!