Full Throttle - Balsam Lake

Well, the 2010 Full Throttle Balsam Lake tournament is in the books and I kind of have mixed feelings about the outcome. Traditionally, a limit in this tournament will put you in the money - not this time. Although a limit of 14+ inchers can be tough to get on Balsam this time of year, we managed to fill ours, but so did a lot of other teams, leaving us in 15th place.

Pre-fishing Friday we found water temps in the mid to upper sixties, so we started looking in the shallows to get a feeling for what the fish were doing. We saw lots of small bass cruising but only saw one small male protecting a bed. My feeling was they were, for the most part, done with the spawn. We checked some deep spots to try to locate some post spawn fish but caught nothing but dinks.

Tournament day started partly cloudy with air temps in the low sixties and a light SE breeze. Our plan was to do as we did last year and hit all the docks in spawning areas, confidant some of the post spawn fish moved under them.

Our first spot was a small bay that we caught 3 good keepers from last year. I started throwing a weightless Mister Twister Comida in watermelon candy, while my partner Scott was throwing various moving baits. After working all the way around the bay, fishing the docks and in between them, I finally connected with a 14 incher on the inside edge of some pads.

We then ran to a larger shallow bay where I caught another 14 incher near a dock. A few docks down the line I managed to stick a 15 incher. On the other side of the bay, my partner Scott hooked into a 14 incher, and a short while later I caught another 15. It was now about 10:30 and with a limit in the well we still had over 4 hours to upgrade.

We then ran into East Balsam and fished a few similar areas with no success. It was now raining and a front was pushing through with very strong winds and thunder. We spent about an hour in a small protected bay and again, no keepers.

The front had passed and with about two hours left we decided to fish through the same areas where we had caught our keepers earlier, but after almost 2 hours and no upgrades we headed to weigh in.

We ended up with 8.18lbs. I was thrilled to have a limit, we fished clean all day and caught the fish we were fishing for, unfortunately, we simply were fishing for the wrong size fish.