Fear & Loathing on the Tournament Trail: Elephant Lake

Not only was this past week the season opener for Bass in Ontario, but it was also the first event in the BTTS series. As mentioned perviously this is my first season fishing an entire tournament series (6 events) and the season opener was on Elephant lake, a lake I have never wetted a line in.

My partner and I were excited about the event but held little hopes of winning, but that being said we wanted to make sure we left the lake with some weight to help keep us in the running for the team of year (highest total weight).

The weather conditions for the day were cloudy with some sunny breaks, the temps did not get above 20 degrees until well into the afternoon.

The day started early (4am) but on a high note, we drew #5 for blast off which put us in position to get to some spots we had scoped out using Google Earth.

we started the day fishing shallow weed flats, mats and some submerged timber. throwing spinnerbaits, top water and some worms, we were able to get 5 fish in the boat fairly quickly but each fish came in under 1.5lbs.  So with 5 fish in the boat we knew it was time for a change, and made the move to a back bay on the lake to fish a little bit deeper water.

The second spot produce fish immediately .. just the wrong kind of fish.. Pike where chasing our top water baits all over the place and wasting the precious time we had left. We switched up again, moving to some deeper weed-beds just off the shoreline.

The high and low point of the day came when my partner hooked into a smallmouth that looked to be pushing 4lbs.. the fish ran under the boat and made it impossible to net, after a few minutes he quickly ran back out and caught us short-lined and with one jump threw the hook. After we slammed our hats, rods and the net down, we regrouped and tried to find a twin for the fish we just lost... no such luck

Spot number three was another set of shallow but submerged timber. It produced one fish in the hour we where there, but the fish ended up being the largest in our bag at just over 2.5lbs.

As the afternoon wore on the bite slowed way down.. i dont think we had more then 2 bites from 1p on. When we called it a day we had just under 10lbs in the bag. We were happy with our production but could only think about the one that got away.

We ended up in 10th place (7th in Team of the Year Standings) not bad for a lake we have never set foot on prior to tournament day. The winning team had a nice bag of just over 17lbs, and of the nearly 30 teams 7 teams came in with 0's.. a tuff day on the water.

Next up is Weslemkoon on July 17th,. This is  a lake we are very familiar with and hope to make up some of the ground we lost this past weekend.