Art Simms Bass Fishing

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I started bass fishing after watching all of the fishing shows on tv. A few years later I thought I was pretty good, until I entered a few tournaments. I quickly realized that I wasn't as good as I thought and was only donating my money. In 1997 I joined the Viking Bassmasters of the Minnesota Bass Federation to hone my skills with some guys more experienced than me. Since that time I have learned a lot and had some major success. I have been Viking Bassmasters Club Champion three times and won sixteen club tournaments. I was the Fishers of Men Minnesota East division champion in 2006, along with a few money tournament wins and numerous top tens.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Full Throttle - Forest Lake

My Brother Scott and I arrived at Forest Lake Saturday to a beautiful sunny, calm morning. The forecast called for sun and light winds but strong storms for the afternoon.
We had put together a pattern pre-fishing Friday and were confident in our plan for the day.
Our first spot was a reed bed that normally produced better quality fish. Armed with our Kistler Helium Flipping rods we went to work. Scott was pitching a 1/2 oz Black/blue FlaMinn Lures jig while I started with A Mister Twister B-A-Hawg in black neon. By the time we left the spot we had four fish in the well that were all 14-15 inches. Not the size we hoped for but a pretty good start.
Our next spot was another reed bed that we shook off numerous bites in on Friday, but after working them thoroughly we had nothing for our efforts.
We decided to run to some docks that produced bigger fish in the past, which turned out to be a good choice, the first dock produced a 16 1/2 incher which filled our limit. On the next set of docks a 15 1/2 incher culled one of the 14's. We ran some other docks but never had another bite on any of them.
With about two hours left we decided to kill the remainder of the tournament on the reeds we started on in hopes of culling the last two 14 inchers. After pitching for about 10 minutes I stuck a 17 incher that replaced one of the 14's.
With about 45 minutes remaining, the storms started rolling in with lots of lightning all around, so we headed in to fish around the weigh in site but did not get another bite.
At the weigh in we ended up with 11.42 lbs with our big fish being 3.11 - which was good for 4th place and a check. 1st place weighed a little over 14 lbs.

2 comments:

Coloradocasters said...

Sweet! 4th place is not too shabby at all. Way to go, man. I love fishing the docks!

Carl Spande said...

Nice work Art. We were fishing our deep rock spots all day with the hopes we could find our schools again. I thought with everyone going shallow, we would have a shot at catching the fish others weren't fishing for. Poor decision making on our part I guess. I think though that I learn more from these results...but become poorer as well. Great job!
Carl