Angler's Reflection of Maple Lake
Here you will find excerpts of how the day went in the angler's own words.
Enjoy!
Leif Nereson
MN Made Outdoors event 1 run down:
Game plan was to hit an isolated crappie spot we didn’t see anyone prefish, then head south for gills. Shortly after takeoff, something broke on Nicks ATV which left him limping along and he had the pin! I got close to the spot first and once he arrived, we dinged a couple nice crappies off the bat, then slowed as we franticly started searching the whole area getting a couple more to fill the crappie bag and some gills. Then we headed over to an area where we knew there was some crappies and gills mixed in to hopefully upgrade a few. Culled some, then was debating heading to our gill spot until we stumbled across a nice hybrid school. Caught 3 dandies out of only 1 hole in short order and eventually found some more for a solid bag of gills. Finished 1st with 9.14 lbs and big gill at 0.64 lbs! We used the
pinhead minnow throughout the day for both crappies and gills. It was so efficient plopping it through the slush in every hole for both species. What a grind and the body if feeling it today. The competition this year is going to be fierce.. Just takes a few lucky holes to shuffle within the top 10! Looking forward to Waconia in 2 weeks!
Dan Rollings
Well tourney #1 is in the books for MN Made! So so close but we will take a top 3 finish to start the year. We had two REALLY big fish up the hole and they just didn't seem like they wanted to play ball with us, back down they went, their lucky day I guess. Congrats to Nick Mueller
& Leif Nereson
and taking it down again! Some amazing competition this year throughout the league.
Lake Waconia in two weeks!
Brett Wilson
Michael Byrne and I had the goal for our sophomore season to move our overall team score to top 15, and to get a top 10 finish. One goal achieved yesterday and we're still smiling about it today. When your efforts pay off its super rewarding. A 7th place finish might not seem great but to us its AMAZING and we hope to ride some of this high into tourney #2 Waconia in two weeks!!! Tune to MN Made Outdoors to follow this amazing group of fishermen and women.
Congrats to all yesterday on a great league bag, breaking records is always fun.
Shawn Lankki
This past Sunday Hunter and I started our tournament series. As a father this is huge. I’ve been fishing tournaments for the last 20 years be it Bass tournaments with
( Hunters god father) and a man I look up to. To fishing the UPL with Jack Conrad, Austin Schorn, and
. Team Extreme with
and MN Made with
Paul Thomas Ghizoni
.I stepped back from fishing tourneys for a couple years cause Hunter said he missed fishing with me. Those words hit hard but made the decision to quit fishing tourneys easy. Hunter always wanted to fish tourneys with his dad. I told him if he still wants to fish when he turns 15 that I would love to be his partner. So the excitement was building up going into our first derby together.
Morning of the day of the tourney Hunter gave me the biggest most sincere bear hug in the garage while we where packing the trailer. Totally unexpected. Our goal was to have fun and catch a limit. Our first spot Hunter put a crappie and gill in our bucket. I wasn’t able to catch anything. So I made the decision to move to another spot. And yes Hunter started putting more crappies in the bucket. At one point he looked at me and said “ Are you glad you have me as your partner.” LOL. Yes I am. Rest of the day was struggle to fill our bluegills for a full bag. Then Thanks to Joel Kottke and
for sharing their bluegill spot we where able to fill out our limit. The feeling I got at 1:15 when I put our limit fill in the bucket is something I will never forget. I had a tear roll down my check and high five Hunter. Then at 1:30 Hunter caught an upgrade. It was awesome. It’s going to be an exciting year. During weigh in Paul asked me if this was my favorite tournament I’ve fished in. That's a easy YES. We finished 16th out of 30. Thank you
for supporting us. Please watch the weigh ins @ MN Made Outdoors on YouTube or Facebook. Next tourney is January 24th on Lake Waconia.
Chris Ball
Great day on the ice with a solid 6th place and just fractions away from 3rd! Next tournament is on Lake Waconia so here we come.
Mario Perzichilli
Had a blast today with
in the first mn made tournament of the year. Al caught most of the fish but I managed to get lucky and get a good one for big crappie at 1.3lbs and we even scraped out a 5th place finish! Next stop waconia
Kristina Ringold
What an amazing day with my friend
Ashlee Just
. We fished our first tourney with MN made! 3.29 pounds not a full bag but dang it was fun!! Two weeks see ya in waconia!
Dale Luginbill
MN Made Outdoors event #1 is in the books. It was a really tough pill for team FullScale to swallow as we weighed a bag that put us in 17th place. Times like these its easy to look for excuses, maybe lay blame on someone or something out of your control. What makes this one really tough is, it is all on us. I ignored my instincts, even though at times it was screaming at me. Even before the actual event, during our pre fishing and scouting. We simply did not work hard enough, thorough enough. We left a lot of water untouched, unchecked. In hind sight in talking to the top teams, those spots mattered. Big time. Then there were game time decisions that we didn't make, instead just did the same thing that wasn't working. This isn't meant to be a pity party...I had that last night, but I will be honest with myself and all of you.
The lesson to learn is to work harder and we will. Leave no stone unturned out there, to do the due diligence. Team of the Year is pretty much already out of reach at this point mathematically. However, the pre season goal was to finish in the top 5 again. That's going to be tough but not impossible. Top 10, in this league is still a feat to be proud of and at this point I'd be thrilled if we can pull that off. It's not going to be given to us and so we will need to work as hard from this point as we have ever done.
Of course it's not all about winning but I hold myself to a high standard. While the outcome still stings, it was awesome to spend time with my fellow anglers and friends in the league. I've missed this a lot.
So I turn my attention to the next event, Waconia. I'll use this opportunity to apply the tough lessons I learned from event #1. More than that, I'm looking forward to offering to help some new members of the league.
Congratulations to Nick and Leif, continuing their domination from last season with yet another 1st place finish!
New friendships are being made, old friendships are getting stronger and there are still a lot of good times and laughs to be had on the ice. Wounds are a still a little fresh and tender but I think a wooden plaque that says Lake Waconia champion...would make me feel a lot better......
Bubba Bussen
Not the way we wanted to start the season but anytime we can make it in the top 10 in a league of great fisherman we'll take it, just means we need to work harder!!
Congrats to
and
on another stellar bag, next stop in two weeks is Waconia!!
Kyle Rick
Well... tourney number 1 has come and gone
Tony Dahlberg and I were able to manage 14th place. It wasn’t where we had hoped to be, but man did we catch a lot of fish! We had a couple quality crappies and gills, but overall we could have used a few more upgrades..
Tony Dahlberg
Started off the year with a 14th place finish, not mad, but not happy. We accomplished the goal of a full bag by 9:30am and quickly shifted to upgrading. This meant bigger baits and specifically targeting the right size fish. If one of us wasn’t marking or catching, we would quickly move. Many times I found myself drilling several holes, just to drop a camera down and see if the fish we needed lurked below. It was a grind as always but we found fish, they just weren’t the right ones. Lesson learned we will attack harder from the start, and not let off until we fill the bag with the right fish.