[PECo]

The small bass fishing club that I joined this year had a tourney at Congamond Lakes on Sunday. My regular partner couldn't make it, so JJay (aka Jason) filled in for him on the back of my boat.

We fished from 6;00 am to 2:00 pm, before the weather really turned, and couldn't have picked a nicer day. The air temperature was in the upper 50s and 60s and, after some full sun in the morning, we enjoyed mostly overcast skies. A light wind blew mostly from the south and west. The water was mostly clear. When we launched, the water temperature was around 64 degrees, but we saw it get as high as 69 degrees later in the day.

We launched at the North Launch on Middle Lake and worked our way down the eastern shore. I've only fished Congamond a couple of times and not since 2013, so I really didn't have much of a plan. My pre-tourney prep had consisted of sitting in front of a fire on my patio and drinking a nice Greek Assyrtiko:



We started by fishing docks and swim platforms along the shore. Jason caught the first two keepers that we put into the livewell with a wacky-rigged five-inch Senko. Unfortunately, the Senko also got us shorts and rock bass. As we worked our way out of the channel between North Lake and Middle Lake, and down the east shore of Middle Lake, we saw sunnies on beds in the shallows everywhere and quite a few largemouth bass on beds, too. I think that our hot then cold then hot weather might have made the sunnies spawn before the largemouth bass this year.

We finally came across a large bed of lily pads on the south shore as we worked our way west and I finally put a keeper in the livewell when a Senko tossed to the edge of the pads got picked up off of the bottom by a bass. As we continued along the shore, we rounded the bend and saw the culvert that leads from Middle Lake to South Lake. There are large beds of pads in the shallows along the east shore. As we worked our way down the edge of the beds, I tossed a Senko at the edges, while Jason threw a Zoom Horny Toad over them. We began to spot one to three pound bass cruising in the clear shallow water, through and next to the pads. They ignored our lures until I tossed my Senko in front of one. As it turned and swam away from the Senko, Jason ran his Horny Toad over it and it actually hit the frog. It was Jason's first topwater frog fish of the year. The lesson we learned was that we had to stay pretty far away from the pad beds to stay out of the sight of the fish. The bass were in and around the pads, but were easily spooked.

We fished around the area in front of the culvert, in the marina and in front of the South Launch. We spent a few minutes dragging a Senko through the bed of a pair of three pound bass that were nesting in the marina, but they ignored our lures. I'm really not into bed fishing, so that was the full extent of what we tried all day. If any of the bass we caught came off of a bed, it was totally inadvertent. Back at the pad beds, we got our fifth keeper with a Senko and finally headed through the culvert and into South Lake.

At the first bed of pads next to the culvert, Jason got a good blowup on his Horny Toad from a decent-sized bass, but missed the hookset. As we worked our way clockwise around the shore, we went a little faster between the pad beds, because the docks and swim platforms were not producing as well as the pads, When we got to the pad beds in the southeast corner, the Senko got us our sixth keeper. We're culling! Whoo hoo!

Once Jason and I were able to cull our tiniest 12-1/4 inch keeper out of the livewell, we began to relax and catch more fish. I think that the fish were more active in South Lake because the water was warmer than in Middle Lake, which I heard was warmer than in North Lake (we never made it up there). We ended up culling six fish. I learned that I need to get a culling system, because trying to figure out which fish in the livewell is the smallest is a splashy, wet, slimy mess. Our last keeper of the day came from the pad beds in the southeast corner of South Lake. We went back there because our best fish had come from that area. The stop paid off, because what ended up being our lunker came from there, too.

At the weigh-in, we found that our lunker was three pounds, four ounces, and our five fish bag was 11 pounds, nine ounces. I'm pretty sure that our smallest fish was about two pounds, so they were all within a pound and a quarter of each other. We ended up in third place. The first and second place boats each had a three pound, 15 ounce lunker.

Jason and I definitely had a lot of fun fishing the tourney, Although we didn't win, figuring out what worked and being able to cull six fish was a blast. And Jason was really excited to learn that Frogging Time is finally here!


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