Portage Lakes Jr. Tournament

[Jason Short]

I had a jr. tournament on portage Saturday and ended up winning with 7.35lbs in a 4 hour tournament. Water temp was 56, air temp 55 through 65, and it was sunny with a little bit of a breeze. There were only 5 kids this time so there wasn't to much competition. When we launched we headed to a good looking area. There was a steep bank with docks along it, then farther back there was a secondary point with lily pads on it. I was throwing a jig to the docks then when we got to the pads I started throwing a blue and white Terminator Spinnerbait with a willow leaf/colorado blade combination. I was burning it through the pads then killing it at the end and I got my first keeper, about a 1 3/4 pounder. I kept fishing the same area with a combination of baits but couldn't get another bite. On the graph the fish were suspended at about 5-7 ft. over 10ft of water. We backed off a little bit and my boater started catching dinks on a floating jerkbait. I put on a suspending jerkbait (which was from Tom Wolverton) and started fishing it. We worked the steeper bank with docks on it again and I caught a non-keeper pretty quickly. I jerked it down then paused it and the fish hit after about 4 seconds. It hit pretty hard so I kept fishing it the same way. After about 10 more minutes I hooked another fish which was a keeper. This one was a little smaller and about 1 1/2 pounds. We kept fishing jerkbaits and each caught another dink. Then in the last 45 minutes of the tournament we went the other way down the same stretch we had been fishing. I was throwing the jerkbait in the deeper water on the point and hooked into a good fish. We got her netted and fished a little longer, then it was time for weigh in. Nobody else was catching fish and there was only one other tiny keeper weighed in. Here's my two biggest fish.