Dan Falloon
The weather has been prime for fishing in recent days but the consensus among anglers preparing for the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship is that the bass haven’t been overly co-operative on Rainy Lake so far.
Some anglers admitted Monday night that they still were needing to hammer out a game plan before the first day of competitive action kicks off tomorrow morning.
“It’s getting better every day as the weather’s getting [more stable],” reported Paul Jewiss of Devlin, who has been out on the lake all but one day since July 12.
“We’ve been out for quite a few days, and we’ve had some good days, and some windy days, and some not-so-good days, but that comes with it when you’re trying to figure out what’s going on,” he reasoned.
Jewiss said he and partner Mike Graham have been able to haul in a few good bass, but it actually was a guest in their boat who caught the most notable fish they’ve seen in recent days.
The pair teamed up with Kassidy Fryer for the annual Safeway KidPro tournament on Sunday—and the youngster responded by reeling in the second-biggest fish of the day.
“We had the one 4.29 [pounder] that the young lady, Kassidy Fryer, caught, so that was pretty exciting for her,” enthused Jewiss, whose team finished in the middle of the pack on Sunday, ending up in 14th place with 8.53 pounds overall.
“We tried some different spots that we don’t normally fish, but they’re a similar pattern to where we normally like to fish and they worked out good,” he noted.
Jewiss predicted that if the weather continues to stabilize, and more anglers start to hit on some decent trends, some decent weights could emerge over the course of the three-day tournament.
“I’ve heard from some of the other anglers that they’re doing pretty well, that they’ve had great fish,” he remarked.
“As long as it stays like this, things could work out real well.”
Kenora’s Jeff Gustafson, looking to move up in the standings this year after he and partner John Peterson of Bemidji, Mn. finished third last July, said some good fish are out there—they’re just playing hard to get.
“It’s been a bit of a struggle, but we’ve been getting a few good ones each day,” he said Monday night while at the Bayview Motel.
“We catch one here, one there, no big schools or groups,” he recalled. “You get one and you may as well go to your next spot.
“Hopefully by Thursday, we can get five good ones.”
Gustafson, who has fished the FFCBC for 11 years, noted this is the first year in his memory that the fish have tended to be loners.
“Even my first couple years, you’d catch one and see six or eight bites with them all the time, following fish, but we haven’t been finding that at all,” he remarked.
Jewiss, meanwhile, felt the bass are sticking to quite specific spots. He said hot holes only may shift about 100 yards from one day to the next as the bass don’t tend to be moving all that much.
“It’s much farther along,” he explained. “The fish are setting up where they’re spending a lot of time. They’re not migrating after spawning.
“Generally, if you can find some fish, they’ll usually be there the next day, or in the area,” Jewiss stressed. “They may not necessarily be where you got them before, but they should be around.
“They’re not making big migrations anywhere.”
Gustafson and Peterson are among the teams still plotting a course of attack. They have tried to divide and conquer Rainy Lake in recent days in hopes of happening upon some ideal patterns.
“We’ve been fishing on two boats the last couple of days, and John had 15 rods on the deck of his boat [Monday] afternoon with a different lure on each one, indicating that we don’t really have a system or a pattern set in stone yet,” Gustafson admitted.
“We’re playing with all types of baits and techniques, and you hope by the tournament morning that you’ve only got two or three rods up on the deck.”
Peterson agreed, saying he is casting out numerous options in hopes that one will start to produce some prize-winning catches.
“We pretty much have a menu on the end of our rods,” he described. “Do they want minnows? Do they want crayfish? Do they want bugs?
“Are the big ones hanging shallow? Are they in the intermediate depths, or are they over 60 feet of water foraging on smelt?
“That’s the big question.”
Peterson estimated that about half of the boats had hit on a successful plan as of Monday night while the other half was running out of time to lay one down.
However, he did offer a few observations that he’s figured out so far.
“We’re anticipating that there might be a deep-water smelt bite this year, which hasn’t happened in the last three years,” Peterson noted.
“The deeper water is cooler water, and the fish are moving off shoreline and moving to deeper water and foraging on smelt instead of shoreline prey,” he remarked.
Bill Godin of Devlin, who is fishing the FFCBC with Ralph Galusha, is another angler who’s cautiously optimistic about the trends he’s seen on Rainy Lake over the last few days.
“It’s getting better, I think,” said this year’s Emo Walleye Classic champ. “The fish seem to be turning on better with the weather, I think, [being] more stable.
“We’ve been starting to see some nicer fish.”
Godin added he caught his best fish of the pre-fish on Monday—a 4.5-pounder—and thinks that some good weights could come during the weigh-ins.
“I think you’re going to see some really good weights,” he said. “We’ve caught some nice ones, so we’re optimistic.
“I still think the numbers are down, but the quality seems to be getting better now.”
Godin and Galusha have been keeping their eyes peeled for points and boulders, and noted their success seems to be coming in weedy areas.
“We’re just fishing a lot of our old spots, and it seems to be the weeds, just stick close to the weeds,” Godin noted.
“The first few days out pre-fishing, it wasn’t happening very good, but things are straightening out,” he said.
“I was talking to some of the other fishermen in town, too, and things are looking better for them, too.
“It could turn out to be good,” Godin concluded.
Darren Marcine of Kenora, who recorded an eighth-place finish last July with Sarah McDougall, also reported having a tough time with Rainy Lake since he began pre-fishing on Friday with new partner Mike Salvador.
“It’s been tough,” he lamented. “It’s been really slow.
“Terrible, [but] slowly things are starting to get a little better.
“We haven’t caught anything over four pounds,” Marcine noted.
And some anglers actually have seen conditions worsen over the course of their pre-fish. John Craig of Prior Lake, Mn. and Larry Hullett of Burnsville, Mn., for instance, reported having a dreadful day Monday.
“It was windy, and pre-fishing was terrible for us,” Craig sighed outside the Bayview.
“[Sunday], we had two different boats going for us and pre-fishing was fair.”
Anglers are hoping for calm, warm weather with light winds, like have been seen during the better part of the pre-fish. But an unstable weather system could scuttle some of the hard work leading up to the tournament.
Weather forecasts for the first two days of the FFCBC aren’t promising.
Yesterday, the U.S. National Weather Service forecast for International Falls predicted a chance of thunderstorms for both tomorrow and Friday before clearing off to mostly sunny conditions for Saturday.
Environment Canada, meanwhile, foresees showers tomorrow and Friday before sunny conditions return Saturday.
For his part, Hullett felt that, in the end, what happens before the tournament doesn’t matter so much if the fish start biting once it starts.
“We’re going for a new theory: lousy practice, good tournament,” he joked.
