North Arm Bay Produces Record Catches

This past Saturday, Team You Betcha! Outdoors competed in the second UPL tournament of the year. The tournament was held on North Arm Bay of Lake Minnetonka.

Pre-fishing results were very good and had the team feeling confident as the event started. The first attack spot was an inside-turn of and underwater point. This is very common structure to work for panfish. The tournament bite proved slower and smaller than the pre-fishing experience, but the team was still able to get their 8 crappies before the first hour had expired. After upsizing a few crappies, the team moved to a shallow water flat for their sunfish.

The team had found this spot to hold hybrid sunfish. Hybrids will run heavier than blue gills of the same size which is helpful in a total weight tournament. It took a little bit of hole hopping, but the team was able to locate 7 sunfish and complete their tournament limit all before 10 a.m.

The fish they had were not large, so the team set to work on upsizing. This means moving a lot and trying multiple presentations to trigger the slab panfish. The team was able to improve 4 gills and 2 crappies by 1:30.

As they drove to weigh-in, they were feeling successful but not confident in their overall chances. The fishing seemed easy, and the team assumed most other groups were able to find their limits as well. Their suspicions proved right! At the weigh-in, 27 of the 29 teams filled their 15 fish limit. This was a new UPL record. The previous record was 15 limits set the year before. This also lead to the breaking of the most fish caught for a tournament with 428 fish! Due to these epic numbers, Team You Betcha! Outdoors finished in 14th place with a bag weight of 5.46 pounds.

There is one tournament left in the season. Chris and Mike will be headed to Big Marine Lake on March 6th to wrap up the season. The team is currently 1 point out of the top 10 race. Stay tuned for results and pictures.