Green Lake, Fishers of Men East

I had been looking forward to fishing the Fishers of Men Green lake (Chisago Co.) tournament since we had made the money the last two years with almost 18 pounds each time. Unfortunatly, the fishing was not quite the same this year due to the cold spring. We managed to catch fish but they were very scattered, unlike years past where we found good fish bunched up. Since the take off was very close to our best spot we decided to start on a spot on Lindbergs point where we found some good fish holding during pre-fishing, then head to our good spot after take off had settled down. Almost immediatly we connected with a small keeper and then another of about 14 inches. After about a half hour with no more bites it was time to move to our best spot. We arrived to find another team sitting near the spot, not on it but close enough to keep us off, so we just put the trolling motor down and started fishing the weed line in the same area. This area always holds good post spawners, you just have to move around until you find them. We were throwing worms and jigs into the weeds and within 10 minutes we connected. My partner Shawn caught a 3 lber and I almost at the same time caught one about 4 lbs, then on the next cast Shawn caught another 14 incher. We had a limit but knew we had a lot of culling to do, fortunatly it was only 7am and there was plenty of time left. We continued to work the weedline when Shawn connected with another good fish close to 4 lbs, we threw out a buoy and fished the spot and I caught another about 2.5lbs, along with a few that did not help. By now we realized we would catch a couple of good fish then they would get smaller, we would pick up the buoy and move on until we caught another fish. We repeated this pattern until about 11 oclock and ultimately culled up to about 14 lbs, but the bites had all but stopped. We ran back to Lindbergs point and fished about a half hour with no bites, then went to a row of docks where we went fishless again. At this time we had about 2 hours left and with not much confidence in any other spots, we decided to go back to our best area and kill the day there. The wind was pounding on the spot now and it was hard to hold, but we thought it would keep the bass active. We managed to catch more fish and upgrade to about 15 lbs but that was all. We weighed in with 15.15 lbs, a respectable bag but not enough for the money. There were two bags over 18lbs, a few in the 17 lb range, and several in the 16lb range. We ended up in 12th place out of 49 teams for the day and just missed the money which ended at 9th place.