Continuing the busy month of September for bass anglers, the Shoal Lake Last Chance tournament took place over the weekend. Although it is not one of the bigger events, this tournament is one of the longest running in the region and one that I look forward to every year. I started fishing it back in the 90’s, while I was still in high school.
For a long time, Shoal Lake was the gem of our region for bass fishing. Over the past several years, the bass fishing has gotten a little bit tougher out there but it’s still a great place to fish with good numbers of fish. I’m not sure what the reasons are for the tougher fishing, when many waterbodies have gotten better, because it doesn’t get a lot of fishing pressure. The size of the fish just doesn’t seem to be as good as other lakes.
The walleye fishery has been closed on Shoal Lake since the 80’s and they have come back from being nearly wiped out to where you almost have to catch about five walleyes to get a bass, especially if you fish a little bit deeper water. I think there could be a little bit of shortage of food because the walleyes are everywhere but I’m not sure. The size of the pike has really declined a lot over the past couple of decades as well.
The fun thing about Shoal Lake is that it is fairly remote so you don’t see a lot of boats or have to deal with any boat traffic. You can catch fish shallow and deep, using many different techniques. There is also a good population of largemouth bass, but they were almost non-existent over the weekend. Sometimes when you get to this point in the season, cold weather is actually better for fishing. Maybe it’s just been too nice over the past couple of weeks.
My pal Dennis Favreau and I have fished this tournament together since 2001. There have been a lot of fun weekends and good memories over the years. Most of the tournaments that I fish around home are with friends who I have fished with since we were kids, so it’s always fun to get those weekends together in the boat with your buddies.
We had a decent weekend, finishing up in fourth place with a pair of 17 pound plus limits, totaling 34.62 pounds. We spent about half our time fishing for largemouth bass and half for smallmouths but only ended up weighing one largemouth each day. The largemouths will get bigger but they are much fewer in numbers so it’s always a gamble. This time it just didn’t work out that well for us.
Taking the win this weekend was the young team from Winnipeg of Jack Brennenstuhl and Micheal Charach with a total of 35.52. They had two great days of fishing. Second place went to Derek Stannard and Chris Tholl with 34.86, while third place belonged to Elliot Panciera and Dylan Normandeau with 34.64, making it a clean sweep of the top three spots by Manitoba teams. Big bass of the weekend was a largemouth caught by Logan Zimmerman and Amanda Keszler weighing 4.36 pounds. Big thank you to Vern, Randy, Christine and the rest of the volunteers out at Shoal Lake for putting on the tournament.
This week I’m back on the road, competing in the Pan-Am Black Bass Championship out on the Saint John River in New Brunswick. Twelve countries are competing in the two-day tournament taking place this coming weekend. I was invited to be part of Team Canada, so I jumped on it and I’m bass fishing this week on the East Coast! Look for the full report on this event in next week’s column. Go Canada go!
