Read what the Metro Hawg Hunters league champs the last three years had to say regarding the first tournament of 2015 on Gull Lake in Brianerd, MN. Feel free to leave a comment or ask the a question!

Heading into the weekend at Gull Lake Brady and I really didn't know what to expect.  We had never been on Gull before and we really werent sure what we would find.  As we looked at the weather forecast the week leading up to the event, I could tell it was going to be stable.  A good sign for a traditional bite and a chance for the fish to setup in predictable spots.  

Our one practice day included hitting docks, finding grass, and looking for back pockets that held fish.    The last spot of the day we stumbled on the mother load . 4 pound fish everywhere and they were hungry.  We quickly left hoping that they would stay because we knew what a 4 pounder meant on this lake...lights out.

After a warm night, we went back to our honey hole only to find that they moved out. we only caught one keeper in what we thought was our "best spot".  Luckily, we had a solid back up plan we found the day before.  Frogs and flipping. 

We were able to put together a solid limit of fish over 13 pounds but lost a heartbreaker 3.5 pounder on a frog mid morning.  Overall good enough for 2nd place.

Day 2 brought more change. The only thing consistent about the bite was the frog.  The flip bite had died.  Had to switch up presentations early in the day.  It was a grind but we figured out how to put some solid fish in the boat.  About an hour before weigh in, we pulled up on a big weed flat and went to work.  We boated about 30 fish over the next hour.  It was almost every other cast!  Problem was they only helped us by ounces not pounds.  Day 2 heartbreak set in when we lost a 3.5 pounder at the boat just before weigh in time. 

All-in-all a good weekend.  Ended day 2 with a little under 13 pounds which landed is in 3rd for the day and 1st for the cumulative two day total.  

Our key this event was just trying something different and not being afraid to switch it up.  Nothing can replace time on the water when trying to learn this skill.

 -Colby Bolin.

Metro Hawg Hunters, Kenny Weyandt, gives a great review after their 1st tournament of 2015 on Gull Lake in Northern Minnesota

So Adam Baumgartner and myself had mixed feelings entering day 1 on Gull Lake. We felt as though we had areas that held above avg fish but didn't catch a lot. We primarily targeted lakes with less traffic on the north side and with some stain to them. With the fish being post spawn we targeted the 8'-14' range or areas with very heavy cover adjacent to deep water. 

Day 1 was what you fear when targeting larger fish. While many other teams boated over 40 fish we were struggling to put 5 in the boat. We finally put our first fish in around the 10am mark and was able to get a nice 2.5lber right after that.  We decided to abandon flipping edges for heavy pad covered areas due to the sun and lack of cloud cover.   We hit 2 more fish almost back to back on frogs that also weighed over 2lbs that got us to our 10.6lb weight that we weighed in (5 fish) which I know doesn't sound great but for post spawn and on Gull we new we would be middle of the pack which we were.  

Day 2 we decided to stick with our same areas as we still felt like 1.5lb fish were not going to do anything for us. So while running 40 min back to the furthest lake we made a quick pit stop and hit a section where we knew was a popular release point for other tournaments. Adam was skipping docks and I was pitching but it was Adam who came up with our first 3.5lb fish which was caught on a Senko. On the way out we picked up rocks on the side imaging and stopped to fish the edge where the pads and rocks met. I quickly picked up another 2lb fish on a Texas rigged bio spawn worm.  From there we went back to punching mats and flipping cabbage. We went to an area that we had little success on the previous day but given the slight cloud cover we thought they may push more to the outside edge and luckily we were right.  I was flipping a 1/2 ounce black/blue jig with a craw trailer and Adam (aka Baumy) a 1/2 ounce black/blue craw tube.  We added another 5 fish with 2 of them going over 3lbs so we felt as though we had around 13lbs at 10am vs the previous day of zero! 

Unfortunately we were not able to have the afternoon we did the previous day (even though we ran the same spots at the same times) and added zero fish the last few hours. Luckily we snuck out with the win without culling our 1.5lb fish. We ended 13.2lbs which snuck by Jeff and Lee who weighed in 13.16lbs! That gives us 15pts for the first day and 20pts for the second which you can see at metrohawghunters.com. One other thing I would like to mention is our club contest vs Crow River BASS Casters which was where each club weighs their top 7 boats. The final weight came in at 160lbs for Crow River and 159.4lbs for Metro Hawg Hunters!!!! Can you even believe how close that was!!! So in Ike's words "Never Give Up".

Overall it was a great start to the year, great weather and some fun times spent with the other anglers and their families.

Kenny Weyandt

Metro Hawg Hunters, Cody Thompson, gives his review of their 1st Tournament of 2015 on Gull Lake in Northern Minnesota

Our 1st tournament of 2015 brought my partner/brother, Mike Thompson and I to the Baxter,MN area to fish the beautiful Gull Lake chain.

We had only one day to pre-fish the lake to try and come up with a game plan. Due to the water temps, time of year (June 12-14) and what we were seeing or a lack of, it was obvious we were in the post-spawn phase.

We scouted mostly Round Lake and a little of Gull Lake. We were after smallies and Round is the only place on the chain to catch them. We located a hand full of nice smallies (3-4lb range) and 20-30 largies on deep breaks and buried in the reeds. The sun was high, the sky's were clear and the lake was like glass so the fish were easy to see. We left most of the fish alone so we could target them on day 1.

Day 1 we headed to Round lake, the clouds were up and we had a 3-5 mph wind making it impossible to see in the water compared to the previous day. We fished the areas where we located the smallies, not getting a bite. The smallies never even showed themselves on the surface, another sign of post spawn. We fished some small flats that lead to reed beds and a few sharp breaks in Round catching our 5 fish limit by 750am. We had nothing huge in the live well but we had all day to cull. We fished a few small cabbage spots (8-12ft in depth) where we were able to upgrade. We left Round around 1100am and headed into Gull. Again we targeted a few areas that had green tall cabbage, there was not a lot of heavy or green weed growth at this time but if you found tall green cabbage you would catch at least 1 fish. We were able to upgrade a few more times (a few ounces each time). We ended up finishing 4th out of 10 with a 5 fish limit of 11.14lbs.

Day 2 was a little clearer and started out with a slight breeze. We opted to start in Gull where we had our 5 fish limit by 730am, we targeted new cabbage and break lines on water we never had a chance to pre-fish. Sometimes "just going fishing" can lead you to gold.....well it lead us to the same size fish as day 1 (1-2lbers).  We hit a few of day 1 spots in Gull catching fish again, but once again nothing of size. At approx. 940am we headed back into Round in pursuit of the smallies, we again were disappointed as we never caught any, although we did see two "footballs" cruising, neither were interested in biting. We fished several of the same spots as day 1 and a few new ones, most produced fish. Day 2 resulted in a 5 fish limit of 10.80lbs, only good enough for a 7th place finish out of 10.

Overall locating fish was not a problem it was locating the females, it was quite clear they were recovering from the spawn in deeper water.

How did we catch our fish? We used several different tactics, they are listed below.

•Flipping/Pitching a 4 inch black and blue crazy legs chigger craw and a 4 inch green pumpkin tube craw with a 3/8oz tungsten weight.

•  Arashi #3 square bill crank bait, shad color

•5 inch black senko, wacky style

• Small shad color top water  popper

Team Thompson (Cody & Mike)

metrohawghunters.com