I know this is a very lengthy report but if you are going to fish this river i believe this report may help you a lot if you are going to fish bass and even pike! I hope this will help you catch fish.

Had another bass tournament, this time at Pond Oreille River on May 17 and 18. It was the best tournament the club has had in a long time. We ended bringing in about 930 LBS of fish. All the fish caught averaged at more than 4 LBS each and total weight per day averaged at about 18 LBS per bag. The top wait for the tournament was 41.02 LB.

Our tournaments are for fishing for bass but everyone caught more pike than bass, and i mean everyone. Just about everyone fish at a sloe (i hope i spelled that right) called "Hankie" (it is the 2nd sloe to the right if you go east out of the resort.) We fished the mouth of the sloe (and I caught all my fish there) but some people went to the end of it as well.

On the first day (from 6:00am to 4:00pm) I caught 1 bass and 3 pike on shad colored crank baits from about 6:00 to 6:45 at "Hankie". Then we went to some other sloe's and found nothing. When we came back to "Hankie" i threw a perch colored rattletrap and caught a 4 -4.5 LB bass on it at about 12:00pm. About 20 minutes later i was using my rattletrap and a pike got hooked on it and then broke off with my rattletrap. Then i decided to thrown a 7" muskie looking perch colored jerk bait and i caught a huge 5.44 LB bass (the biggest i have ever caught.) Then I moved to the right side of the sloe and fished a 6"-7" green "ZOOM" worm with a jig head on it. The interesting way i caught the fish on the right side of the sloe is by being about 5 yards (maybe even a little closer) and threw the worm all the way down the bank and let it sit and twitch it all the way back to me. Using this technique i caught another 3 bass. So at the end of day one i caught about 6 or more pike and 5 bass (a total weight of 16.42 LBS) with one of them being almost the largest of the day (the 5.44 pounder) just behind a 5.45 pounder "yea that's right one 0.01 ounce larger."

On the second day (from 6:00am to 2:00pm) I decided to throw a top water so i thought " well if I'm going to throw a top water then why not just throw the jerk bait i caught the 5.44 pounder" and sure enough i caught my first 3 bass from 6:00 to 6: 45. But no monsters like the day before. The guy i was with caught to 3-3.5 pounders off a Watermelon colored sanko with no weight by just letting it sit and twitching it. Then we did the same thing as the day before and fished the bank by having the boat close to shore and throwing the worms up the bank in the mouth of "Hankie"and i caught 2 more to max out with 5 fish (nothing large though.)

So i ended up with the 2nd largest total weight in juniors, the largest bass of the tournament for juniors, the 3rd largest bass in the whole tournament (counting juniors and adults) the final standings of the biggest fish were 3rd-5.44 (mine) 2nd-5.45 and 3rd-5.74

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