First Year Success - by Chris Ball

First off, Timmy and I would to thank Jake and Paul, plus everybody else at Minnesota Made Outdoors for putting in the time and effort to make these tournaments happen!

Timmy and I did not have high expectations for our first year heading into the season. Timmy (who happens to be my nephew if you didn’t know) and I both have a great passion for fishing along with my family. We just wanted to have fun, learn new lakes - that's something we both enjoy doing especially living in the land of 10,000!  So taking a top 5 and biggest fish on our first tournament gave us great confidence. Then the beast of Clearwater showed up and let’s just say our confidence was in the toilet after that. Green was fun, caught a ton of crappies and a top 10 finish. Our confidence going up again just in time for the Panfish Championship and we came in with a 12th place finish. Masaska is great, but a challenging lake. We were the most relaxed we have ever been going into a competition knowing the bite was going to be tough. We had confidence in what we were using and stuck to our plan and came in 4th!

It was great season, met a great group of people and we can’t wait for next year to start!  First though, Timmy and I will be busy chasing that open water bite, learning new lakes, and hopefully knocking that 50 inch Muskie off our bucket list!

Thanks for what you guys do!

Chris Ball