Regional anglers come up in fine form at KBI

    The Kenora Bass International tournament took place just hours away this weekend, and many anglers in the region made the trip—including a few winners.
    Jess Swenson and Michael Reid of Sioux Narrows were the top finishers from the amongst the regional competitors in KBI’s 20th year, coming up with a third-place finish.
    “We had a bunch of largemouth going and the weather got a little warmer and the bite got tough for us,” Swenson said. “We weren’t catching many fish each day but we were catching nice ones.”
    He added the fishing got tight late on the last day before the pair “switched up and went smallmouth fishing and caught three smallmouth. That really changed things up for us.”
    The team earned a $8,000 prize, as well as $500 for the big fish on Sunday, a 4.75 pound smallmouth bass. Both Swenson and Reid are regulars in the area and at KBI, and improved on last year’s sixth place result.
    “We were happy with our finish for sure,” Swenson said.
    Many other Sioux Narrows natives cracked the top 10, with Brian McNanney taking seventh, Jason and Oliver Gibbons in eighth, Mike and Steve Salvador in ninth and Dave Bennett placing tenth.
    Bill Godin of Devlin, last year’s winner of the tournament, placed 17th with partner Norm Lindsay of Sioux Narrows.
    “The largemouth bite was really on this year for the largemouth guys,” Godin said. “When them largemouth are biting, they’re hard to compete with, that’s for sure . . .
    “We were happy with it. Might have to learn to fish them largemouth a little more I guess,” he chuckled.
    He said the team was happy with the finish, even going in ranked first.
    “That’s the pressure on ya,” Godin said, “but we weren’t real confident going into it, ’cause our prefishing wasn’t real good.”
    Chad Hanson was the highest placing Fort Frances native in 29th, paired with Terry Gill of Morson.
    KBI chair Sue Loewan said the biggest issue with the tournament was a lack of live results and coverage due to programming decisions by Shaw Cable made last week, which she said “was a disappointment to a lot of people.”
    She insisted that other than coverage—and some intermittent storms that peppered the tournament—it was “a good tournament all around. Just a few glitches which every tournament has, which were all workable.”