08/21/2023
Minnesota Aim Pro Walleye Series Championship recap!
The final event of then Minnesota Division on Lake Winnibigoshish was this weekend.
Day 1:
Chris Messerschmidt and I arrived Tuesday morning for our first day of prefish and immediately went into Hunt mode….. with only finding very few fish… 3 to be exact we weren’t very pleased after 7 hours of fishing trying some of my partners previous tournament spots and battling heavy winds all day.
Day 2:
We headed out to find very windy conditions and battled the waves all day to try some areas we thought would hold fish and tried multiple areas to only find 2 small fish with a couple other short bites and nothing looking promising on Garmin Livescope…… with only one day left of prefish Panic Mode sets in!!!!! Back to the drawing board that evening on the map on the cabin.
Day 3:
We woke up to 30 mph gusts and very brutal conditions but we knew we had to go….. headed out all the way across the lake and Chris put the PowerTran trim tabs to work keeping us somewhat comfortable and safe getting to where we needed to go. Again we struggled but ended up catching a few more fish 4 to be exact but nothing be happy about with only one of them being over 20 inches…. Now panic mode has really set in for me and the anxiety of not having a really great prefish gets the best of me at times!!! After the rules meeting we put everything we found and everything our teammates found on the graph and tried to develop some sort of a game plan… Thanks to Evan Rosemore, Steven Rosemore, Kody Seibert and Scott Seibert without all of that knowledge I don’t think I would of been able to sleep the night before day 1!!!
Tournament Day 1:
Chris and I Had a game plan setup for that we knew the wind was gonna Blow Harder and harder as the day progressed so we went to are further spots and made a loop that would keep bring us into calmer and calmer conditions so hopefully with as best boat control we could stay on those fish as easy as possible. All of the spots produced fish with only 2 of them being the right ones and at 2:15 I looked at Chris and said we need one more good fish and I picked a spot back towards the take off area and called it the “Hail Mary Spot” and said let’s go fish there knowing we would be able to fish there a little longer knowing we had to be in @3:15 that day and at 2:55 Chris called out a really nice Mark on the livescope and said we need this fish don’t “f@ck it up!” I dropped my slip Bobber right in its face and the fish bit immediately and half way to the boat if came in buttoned!!!! Heart break and I said Chris hang on let me put a leech and throw at it again!! Needless to say at 2:59 that fish bit immediately again and it was a 25.5” fish to push our 5 fish Bag to 23.5 lbs for a respectable Day 1 to leave us somewhere of striking distance to hopefully a cash a check….. After the result we’re posted we were in 24th place, the last pay out spot!! With that spot we were pretty happy after riding the struggle bus all week on prefish.
Tournament Day 2:
We woke up to calm winds and know the wind was going to subside down to nothing at about 10am. So we developed pretty much the same game plan as day one with eliminating 2 spots that had a lot of traffic on it and mixed in the “HailMary” spot a little earlier in the program. Spot one immediately starting producing fish and I believe we had 23lbs on the card by 8:30-9:00a.m. Knowing we needed to get alot more I said let’s run to “HailMary” spot and we immediately upgraded an 18.5” fish to a 23.75” fish putting us somewhere around 26.5 pounds and didn’t find much else then we opened the map and I picked a spot somewhere back across the lake close to where we caught most of our fish and immediately when we got there Chris set us up on a beautiful suspended mark and I dropped the bobber on it and we upgraded a 22” fish to a 25.5” fish that put us around 29 ish pounds and were extactic!!!! The grind mode set in running from spot to spot and we we’re only a able to upgrade one more time at about 11 and dropped another 22” fish off the card to a 24” fish that bumped us up to 30.5 lbs and knew we would be somewhere in check cashing range! We found out the rest of the day in the heat throwing at multiple fish and we just couldn’t seem to upgrade.
At 2:40 we took a nice gradual ride into check in happy with what we put together knowing we did the best we could and Smiles from ear to ear!! We ended ip jumping 12 spots in the end to put us in 12th place and extremely happy to end the year cashing another check!!
It was a great season being able to fish with my good buddy Chris and I am extremely happy I talked you out of retiring from fishing tournaments!!! DROPSHOT KING!!!!
Rosemore Outdoor Gear
Amped Outdoors LLC
Garmin
