The twentieth version of the International Falls Bass Championship took place this past weekend on Rainy Lake. The two-day tournament had a full field of 60 teams, competing on both the lake and the Rainy River.
In the early years of this tournament, teams would fish one day on the American side of Rainy Lake and one day on the Rainy River. It was a unique format that challenged teams to catch fish on two different bodies of water. In the early years, the biggest catches would come from the river, but as anglers learned the lake and some water on the Canadian side of the lake was opened up, the lake started to produce the biggest catches.
Today, anglers get the choice to fish either the lake or the river. Since that rule came into effect, nearly ten years ago, the winners have come from the lake each time. There are daily big catch and big bass awards for both the river and the lake for anglers to win. Personally, I enjoyed fishing the river and would love to see them go back to the original format for this event.
Minnesota anglers Dave Skallet and Jim Merthan were the big winners on the weekend, taking home the $10,000 first place prize with a two-day total of 39.54 pounds. They edged out Ian Waterer and Tony Jackson by a narrow .14 margin. Third place went another Minnesota team, Jon Balaski and Eric Olson, who were not too far behind with 39.05 pounds.
Skallet and Merthan have fished the tournaments on Rainy Lake, both the FFCBC and IFBC for over twenty years so it was good to see them take the win. They are great guys who I think many in the crowd were happy to see hoist the big trophy.
Scott Dingwall and I have fished this tournament together since it started back in 2005 and we’ve had some good luck over the years, winning it several times. It was my first time getting to compete since 2018 and it was great to be back and see many old friends. International Falls is one of my favourite communities so it was a fun weekend.
We didn’t have a great tournament but we jumped up to 9th after sitting in 22nd after a tough day one, so we squeaked into the prizes. We focused on trying to catch the deep water smallmouths on Rainy Lake, which are typically the biggest fish but our areas just didn’t seem to have as many of the big ones as they have in the past. We caught a bunch of fish but never found the four pounders you need to win this one.
After being on the road for the most part since February, I’m happy to be sticking around home now for the next while. There aren’t any tournaments this coming weekend so I’m doing some guiding this week and hoping to catch whatever wants to bite out on Lake of the Woods. It’s a great time of year to be on the water.
