FOM Club E&W Sylvia Bass Tounament July 9th

I couldn't resist the call of the lake that taught me to fish, so I signed up to fish the Fishers of Men Fishing Club (Twin Cities) Bass Tournament on East & West Sylvia in Wright County. My partner for the day would be Michael "Cyberfish" Thompson. I found out at the landing on tournament morning that Cyb hadn't paid his Club dues, so would be ineligible in the Club Tournament. Cyberfish didn't really care and was there to fish for fun anyway.

Tournament Rules: 3 biggest bass measured by half inches, with most total length winning. The Fishers of Men Club does "paper tournaments" so all fish are immediately released.

Conditions: Light Rain for the first 20 minutes or so with a pretty good breeze all day starting from the S SE switching to the S SW. It obviously was overcast early turning mostly cloudy around 10:30PM. It was a warm morning in the 70's and it got up to about 80 and it was pretty humid. The water on these lakes is very clear and the water was about as high as I've ever seen.

With the forecast calling for that South wind to be blowing by the time the tournament was underway I decided to start on a shallow rock reef on the back side of the island in West Sylvia. We ended up fishing West Sylvia all day. Mike caught a small bass right away, maybe on his first cast, on a slug. I think he got another small one and then I got a small one on a Herb's Dilly buzzbait. Mike caught 1 or 2 more smaller fish before we made a 2nd pass. The second pass was pretty much fruitless so we started drifting across the weed flat. Mike picked up a 15 on the slug. I was throwing a white Death Shimmer 2 spinnerbait and getting a few hits but nothing was hooking up. I know at least one of those bites was from a small pike as it came all the way to the boat. We drifted to a bullrush point and fished down the West side of that. I got a small pike on the Death Shimmer. Eventually we got into some pads and I got a 12.75" Larry on a bubblegum Berkley Havoc Lane's Grass Pig. We ended up fishing West along the shoreline where there were docks and some wood in the water. It looked awesome but all I got was a Sylvia Special (12") next to a dock. We rounded "Dink Point" and I got a 15.5" on the Grass Pig where there was trees overhanging and into the water. As you work the shoreline to the North a small point comes out before the lake opens to the main/biggest bay on West Sylvia. With the South wind this point was getting hit pretty good with the wind. I cast a black/blue Crawtube along the dropoff on the South side of the point (it drops pretty quick and I think there is a little zone of weeds there). I got hit and brought up a 15". I immediately checked the boat back into the wind to keep from blowing over the point as I thought there was a real possibility the fish might be stacked up here. Mike asked me what I was using and I showed him I was fishing a weighted Texas Rig, so he switched up to a green pumpkin jig. I think I just got done telling Mike all I needed was 1 really good fish and I would win the tournament, when Mike swung on that fish. Here it is:

It wasn't the fattest fish in the world, but it was 19" long which is an extremely good fish for Sylvia. I think I pulled a 12.75" on the Crawtube and Mike had a fish rip off the jig skirt and trailer on the hookset. That was all we would get so we headed North to the shoreline where my family's lake place used to be. Basically we worked an inside turn and then off the end of the point which was windblown. I caught a sunfish on the Death Shimmer 2 spinnerbait and had another bump or two. Eventually we worked ourselves in around the point where it was calm and there is a bunch of pads. This is an area I call the "Back Bay" as there is a man made boat channel that was on the back side of our old lake place. It was interesting to see that there is no longer an open boat lane and the Back Bay is overgrown with pads as nobody keeps a boat back there anymore. While fishing the mouth of the Back Bay I got a small bass on the Horny Toad and had another really good swirl close to the boat, but it didn't get the Toad. We worked a little ways into the Back Bay before it got too weed choked, but nothing was in there.

Next we headed to the NE corner of West Sylvia. It was interesting to see that a reedbed there had shrunk in size but cattails had grown close to shore. We fished the wind blown reeds/cattails and I missed a good hit on the Grass Pig, but it got into the reeds immediately. We got to "My Island" which used to feature an open spot behind reeds and rice. The rice is almost all gone and it's just reeds and cattails. I got a bite there from what was most likely a sunfish on a bed (I saw the sunny on the bed as we passed by). I pulled a Sylvia Special on a craw tube off the end of My Island point. We then fished into Turtle Bay. I told Mike that sometimes as you get here is "peanuts"/Sylvia Specials but sometimes there can be good fish too. We did get several peanuts, me on the Horny Toad, but I also did get a 15.5" on the Toad. It used to be that by late June Turtle Bay would be to weed choked so you couldn't fish into it very far, but now there are two docks with boats at the far back of the bay and there is a pretty good boat channel there. Combine that with the high water and I figured fish could be anywhere in the bay. The slop looked beautiful, but all we got were peanuts close to the boat channels, couldn't get anything deeper into the pads. As we worked our way back out it was dead and I got a bit frustrated as this water tends to be pretty good as you come back out of the Bay on the North side. We were almost out of the slop when I got a Sylvia Special out of the Cattails up by shore on the Grass Pig. We went out and worked a cabbage bed that was as in the wind as you can get and we didn't get a bite. We worked down "McGregor's" shore to the 2 docks. I missed a small bass in between 2 docks.

Next we moved to the "Sunkin Island" but we didn't get anything there, so we headed to "Lighthouse Point" with would be another wind blown point with a good drop off and weeds. I'm not sure I even had the trolling motor in the water yet and Mike was hooked up with a big fish and we knew it was a big bass because it jumped. He got it in and it was this nice 19.5" fish.

Needless to say we worked the point pretty good after that and we caught some fish but they were all Sylvia specials.

Next we moved into Flannery's Bay to the hump that I never knew existed until I got my Lakemaster Map. I pulled this 14.25" from there on a Crawtube, but that is all we would get.


Next we worked an inside turn and weedline in Flannery's and I picked up a few more fish on the Crawtube. I also missed several bites. There was about an hour left so we headed back to fish slop/pads in the Public Access Bay. By this time it was partly cloudy so there was quite a bit of sun. Right away I scored a 15.25" on the black Horny Toad. I caught several more Sylvia Specials including this one.

The tournament ended at 2PM. Mike's 53.5" destroyed everybody, but as that he was ineligible my 46" won the tournament. It was typical Sylvia in that everybody reported catching quite a few fish, but everything was small.

Analysis: What can I say but I love Sylvia/Twin and I know spots that have the potential to kick out better than your cookie cutter Sylvia Specials. I am a little surprised that I never made it to the channel between the lakes, but with the way the slop was going in Turtle Bay, I made the call to hit Lighthouse Point first and after that I didn't want to make the run across the big water in that wind. If you want to catch bigger than average fish in Sylvia, you might want to consider using a green/pumpkin bass jig.

Psycho Cyberfish

Cyb went fishing with Casey of Casey's Catch of the Day blog and Casey got this great shot.

BP & Cyberfish in 2008

Cyberfish and I really only fished against each other 4 times in 2008.

The 1st meeting was at the Fishers of Men Spring Outing at Big Sandy Lake where we both got skunked.

The 2nd meeting was just after the FOM Spring Outing ended when we did some shore fishing at Fransen Park on West Rush Lake. Because this was a panfish thing, naturally Cyberfish won.

The 3rd meeting was at the Fishers of Men Fall Outing where I came out on top and captured top honors on Fally Walleye. The truth however was that Cyberfish's heart really wasn't in it to win it and it wasn't much of a match with him hardly fishing on Saturday. I don't think he turned in a score sheet on Friday, and I am not sure if I would have beaten him with the scoring system being what it was. I did catch more bass then him, but he got the bigger bass on Friday.

Finally we fished against each other all year long in the Bass Pundit Minnesocold Bass Derby 2008. The results:
BP: 5 for 21.03lbs
Cyberfish: 5 for 20.30

I had the bigger 5 fish limit, but Cyberfish had the biggest fish. Had the Derby run just one day longer than Cyb would have beaten me, but rules are rules and so I beat Cyb on this one. The truth is neither of us had all that great of a season when it came to catching "Toads".

Bass Opener Sunday 5/27/07

No skunk for me. My only Larry of the day.

Solid Smallie caught on our first reef. 18"+!!!

2nd and last smallie followed quickly on the heals of the first. (I think this is the same fish as the first pic.)

The Story: I met "Shake" Michael "Cyberfish" Thompson and "Bake" Jack Halverson at the Wahkon Park access just after 10am. It was cool bright and sunny with a brisk wind out of the NW; the wind would diminsh throughout the day, thank goodness. Upon boat launch we headed a short ways West of the launch and anchored due to the wind. Shake had hammered the panfish in this spot the previous weekend. I was fishing the reeds for Largemouth Bass with a white swim jig and Chart/White Spinnerbait. Shake and Bake were fishing panfish plastics under bobbers trying for monster Crappies and Gills. Bake got on the board first with a 10" Crappie. Neither Bake nor Shake could follow that fish up with anything. For the next couple of hours we worked ourself East along the reed bed anchoring up because of the wind; During this time Mike caught a little perch and one small bass and I got the Largemouth pictured above with the swim jig. I did miss two strikes on the swim jig, one probably from a bass and the other from a dogfish right under the boat. The fishing was not happening in the shallows at all, so we tried out a little bit farther; the wind had layed down significantly by now. On the trip farther out we saw a big smallie, but that was about it.

With the wind down we decided to hit some reefs out by Half Moon and the Twin Islands. It didn't take long and I landed a big 18"+ smallie on the Chart/Wht spinnerbait (pic above). Shortly after that fish I landed another smallie that was a little smaller. Shortly after that Bake landed a nice smallie and we thought we were off to the races. We worked the reef for another hour to hour and a half without getting anything. We tried the reef running West from Upper Twin and got nothing there. We headed back in to Wahkon to see if the panfish had moved in shallow with the warm sun and less wind. Mike caught 1 crappie and a couple of perch, but that was it. We decided to pull out and give Isle Bay a try.

Isle Bay showed us some sight fish: a couple of big muskies, 1 crappie, 1 Dogfish. We didn't catch anything. We then tried the Malone Island Reef for some smallies and got nothing. We tried one reef farther out than called it quits around 8:30PM. All in all a very slow day, but I was happy due to the two nice smallies I caught.

So basically I caught more and bigger bass than Cyberfish.

Memorial Day 5/28/07 Bordon Lake

The fish that made it all worthwhile, 18"+ Smallie!!!

The Story: Once again I was to be fishing with "Shake" Michael "Cyberfish" Thompson and "Bake" Jack Halverson. The plan from the night before was to hit Bay Lake. However, we made a last minute decision at Tutt's Bait to give Bordon Lake a go. So we ended up going to Bordon flying by the seat of our pants/no lake map. As we launched the boat it started to drizzel and by our first stop it was raining with a SE wind. We hit a hump/rock pile somewhere on the western side of the lake. This spot produced a small largemouth for me on a spinnerbait and a pumkinseed for Bake on panfish plastics. After giving this spot a fair amount of effort we headed to the Western Shore line where a steep break abutted some reeds. We tried in shallow and got nothing. Along the break Bake nailed a couple of nice 12" to 14" largemouth. Shake switched to a watermelon tube and started catching 12" to 14" largemouth. We worked our way North along this reed/weed breakline with Mike catching largemouth on a steady basis. Jack struggled for panfish and I cast spinnerbaits, Flukes, Frenzy Poppers, and RattleRaps all to no avail. Finally up by the point that leads into the Western arm of the lake Jack got a single Crappie. We fished the point which had a steep break and Shake nailed several bass on the tube while Bake hit a Jack fish (Pike). We worked our way around the point along the Southern shore of the Western Arm. Mike picked up a rock bass and a couple of more larry's and that was it, I switched to a tube and started catching largemouth too. At this point the sun had come out a little bit and it was starting to warm up. Working that Southern Shore of the Western arm I got a solid tap and the fight was on with the big fish of the day; the smallmouth pictured above.
The South shore started to be more weeds than inside weedline and we weren't getting anything so we switched to the Western arms North Shore. This shore was windblown and had beautiful weeds but we could not get a spinnerbait or rattlerap to go. Jack did catch one 9" crappie, but the sunfish and schools of crappie were nowhere to be found. Eventually Jack gave up and turned over boat control to me. We started hitting points on the North shore of the Western arm. Mike and I caught largemouth on most of the points and Mike even got a 15-16" smallie. The day started to warm up significantly and the wind started to blow. Bake really wasn't into fishing and so we called it a day at about 2:30PM. The size of the Largemouth wasn't big but they provided a fair amount of action and the big smallie once again made my day.

Cyb got the numbers, I got the big bass.

Labor Day Weekend 2006 Mille Lacs

It's been a while since this trip but I'll relay what I remember. I was fishing with Cyb and Jack aka Bake of "Shake and Bake". "Shake" is an alias of the "Thompson Shake" aka Cyberfish. We hit the water mid morning and it was mostly sunny with just a bit of a NW breeze, it didn't make much of a chop though. Our intended target was Fall smallies, but we got a few other fish including some nice eater eye's.

The first fish went to neither Cyb or I, but to Bake. He caught a small Muskie which was his first muskie ever, at least I think it was. That little (3.5lb) guy cleared the water big time during the fight, so we knew it wasn't a smallie almost immediately.
The Muskie reef produced zero smallies and we tried an off shore hump with no results. We then hit some new water that I had never fished before. In this new area we finally started getting some hits and we settled on a big rock reef that had fish scattered. The fishing was pretty equal between Cyb and me at this point. None of the smallies were huge but we got some nice 3lbers. We fished this big rock reef for several hours making several passes, with both Cyb and Bake getting a walleye. Finally we got tired of this place and headed back towards Isle.

We fished a reef of of the big Isle Peninsula/Island. I caught a nice smallie that shadowed my lure. I saw him lurking right beneath my frenzy pop and I slowed it way down letting it sit for several seconds, finally I gave it a pop and I was fighting the biggest smallie of the day (2nd picture). As we went towards shore on this reef we hit into a school of smallies and the action was fast and furious for a while on medium sized fish. When that action died down we called it a day as the sun was going down. All in all we all caught fish but I bested Cyb in numbers of smallies caught and size (at least that's my recollection).

More Pics and Cyberfishes account of the day here...

Blast from the Past

From the archives of FishingMinnesota.com:

Cyberfish vs. Basspastor

Cyberfish vs. Basspastor 2004 Ice to get the full flavor you have to open the links towards the bottom of the page 1 by 1.

Note: Anonymous is FM euphimism for the Banned Pastor.

MN Bass Openner 2006

Saturday May 27

The Day started with me on Platte/Sullivan, while Cyberfish was out at Mille Lacs slaying big Crappies and Sunnies. Cyb arrived around 5:30 and the story is recounted thus at Bass Pundit.

I got back to the house by 5:30 and shortly after that Mike "Cyberfish" Thompson arrived and we had dinner. He had been out on Mille Lacs hammering crappie and sunnies. He said he saw a lot of bedding Larry's and Sally's but could not get them to bite. After Dinner Mike cleaned crappie for a fish fry tommorrow.

We decided to go out around 7:30 in the calm area just to the East of our place. I got one 12"bass and Mike had a couple of pike follows. This area is full of rice which caused the Trolling Motor to overheat and now I have no working forward speeds. NICE! Fricking Minn Kota piece of crap.

Thus even though fishing wasn't much, BP takes Cyberfish!

Sunday May 28 BP & Cyberfish: It's not BP vs. Cyberfish because we were in different worlds a fishin.

We started the day with a trip to Garrison Alliance Church. From there we headed home to watch the Indy 500 and eat the crappies that Cyb caught yesterday. Round about 4PM the adventure began. The plan was to hit Black Bass Lake in Kathio State Park in our float tubes. The DeLorme Minnesota Atlas and Gazetter makes it look like all you have to do is take a road or trail off of 169 to get there. It turned out to not be that easy and we could not find the lake but we sure tried and went down many a false trail.

The backup plan consisted of forsaking the little 20 acre mud hole which we could not find and hitting the 132,000 acre mudhole we could find. The destination was Wahkon bay were the BP would naturally fish bass and Cyberfish would fish panfish and this out of our float tubes. The bass vs. panfish dicotomy made a grudge match out of the question.

I got out on the fish first landing a 14" bass on a bit off "Merth" Zoom Trick worm. I quickly landed a pudgy 10" bass soon after that. Next thing I know Cyberfish is screaming in delight over a 10" gill. I went over and took his pic with a disposable camera Cyb brought along. I headed back to try and sight fish some more of those bass and the next thing I know Cyb is gleefully catching another 10" gill. I didn't go to take pictures of that one.

I was fishing an area where I could see lots of bass and gills, but I couldn't get any more of the one's I could see to go. Meanwhile Cyb was landing the occational gill. I started casting a Snagproof tournament frog and managed to land a 17" and then a chuncky 18" bass. Meanwhile Cyb was landing the occational gill. I headed west and Cyb headed in to where I was seeing the bass and gills.

The trip West was a dud except for some nice small talk with some shore owners who were surprized to see a float tuber happen along. They even gave me tips on fish location but it was all for not because if there were fish there they weren't agressive enough for a topwater frog. Meanwhile Cyb was landing the occational gill, crappie, and a bass. Just when I got back in talking distance Cyb lost a big bass.

Now I think is a good time to interject the fact that Cyberfish was fishing with a telescoping cane pole. How many people do you suspect have fished Mille Lacs Lake out of a float tube using a cane pole? Cyberfish just ain't normal people THAT's FOR SURE! That big old bass got off by pulling the old swim under the float tubers legs trick. Cyb kept on a catching panfish while I toiled for another blow up. I finally got a strike but could not convert even though the fish gave me a second chance. Cyb kept on a catching panfish until dark.

We got off the lake and headed to DQ and that was that.

FYI- Cyb did get out early before church and pulled a 28" Platte Pike while float tube fishing.