July 2024 Bartlett Lake

EDITORS NOTE: Thanks to Gary Martlage for taking photos this month.

For the most part, the photos are not included in the body of the newsletter because it is almost impossible for me to know for sure which photo goes to which boat. Check out the “photos” page to see all of Gary’s photos.

Laron Porter

Infamous Bartlett baby bass were out and about feeding for the midweek tournament.

Bartlett Lake is one of the toughest lakes to catch a large mouth over 4 pounds. Steve and I got lucky and bumped into one of these Bartlett bigs. We started off throwing small crank baits and top water. After a few short minutes we had a limit of very small bass. Finally I hooked into a good one on a small crank bait but it was a carp. We fished some flats and river rock banks toward the river and when it transferred into to some steep bluffs I picked up a jig and on my first cast it never hit the bottom. I stuck a 4.35 Bartlett behemoth. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good! I never got another jig bite the rest of the day. Shortly afterwards, Steve, the amazing Vietnam vet, stuck a 3 pound beauty on a free rig. That was the end of our big bites. I thought for sure we’d get another good one, but it never happened. Thanks to all the Midweek staff for all you do! Congratulations to Nick the stick with a nice bag , Joe Michels who has been exceptionally consistent and to all the other top placers.

2nd Place

Nick Teschler and Carlo Giunta

Big Fish: 3.36#

Total Bag: 8.06#

Nick Teschler

We went into the day with high hopes! I had found a good bite on Sunday morning and had 13lbs before 10am. I thought that bite would still be there but it was not. I was planning on having two rods on my deck and that turned into about 6-7 real quick. We caught fish on dropshots, jigs, crank baits, top water, and strolling . Best quality of fish came on the jig but our biggest fish was on a drop shot at the end of the day. It was a fun morning and happy to come away with 2nd place.

Carlo Giunta

I had the pleasure of pairing up with Nick once again as he was my boater for my first ever tournament and fishing at AZ lakes. Unfortunately none of my catches made it in the tank so I will let Nick provide the details. We basically had around 6 lbs. most of the day until near the end time when Nick culled the entire tank. Thanks Nick!

Congrats to all the winners and another great job by the tournament crew!

Joe Michaels

After a tough tournament at Lake Pleasant, I knew I needed a new approach for Bartlett Lake. My plan was to fish in the river, where I believed the bass were larger, and focus on power fishing—leaving the spinning rod and reel behind. With Bartlett's water level rising significantly about a month before, I anticipated that the fish would be shallow, following the rising water. I decided to rely on topwater baits and eventually chose a 1/4oz white buzzbait as my weapon of choice. During practice, I managed to catch a good fish over 3 lbs on two separate occasions, which convinced me to stick with the buzzbait.

On tournament day, I cast the buzzbait relentlessly, making 4-5 casts every minute for the first two hours, constantly moving to cover as much water as possible. This strategy paid off, as I caught about six fish, with the largest weighing 2.8 lbs, bringing my total to 7.59 lbs for the day. Although I had more misses than hookups, I didn't see the misses as failures—sometimes the fish just don't commit fully. Even with a trailer hook, some fish got away, but the bigger ones hit hard and solid. Overall, I fished perfectly, which was a bonus.

I'll be making a video on the buzzbait bite at Bartlett that will be both entertaining and educational, especially for those who love topwater fishing. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to FishPoint with Joe Michels for more exciting content!

Here is the video of our third place efforts.

Otto Gal

I was fortunate to pair up with Joe Michels for the tournament. Joe had confidence in his buzzbait strategy and it paid off. While Joe focused on the buzzbait, I tried a variety of other baits and managed to catch a couple of bass on Senkos. We were just one 4-pound bite away from winning, but it wasn't meant to be this time.

FOURTH PLACE

Loway Shammas and Joe Denson

Big Fish: 2.54#

Total Bag: 7.02#

Loway Shammas

I had the great pleasure of drawing Joe Denson as my partner for Bartlett 2024 - 2.0.

Joe and I both were able to get on the water and practice prior to the tournament albeit separately. We worked out a game plan prior to the tournament and come Wednesday morning, by golly, we were going to give it our best! However, after a meeting of the minds Wednesday morning we threw caution to the wind and gambled on a “possible” top water bite back in the river. We decided to run back to the river and try for some bigger fish in the orchards and the surrounding stick ups. As we made our way into the river, we started with our first small keeper on a frog along the cliff face directly across Shiprock. As we made our way back to the orchards, we had a couple more bites throwing a spook and frog alongside the Southern cliff face, one broke off my frog, wasn’t big, just something nicked the knot. Joe had a nice blowup but didn’t connect. We crossed over to the south side of the orchards and worked a frog and spook all along until I finally got a good blow up on the frog, swing and a miss. Joe said it looked like a 3 pounder, oh, the humanity!

Ok, it’s around 7:30am and we’ve worked the entire stretch of target rich cover with nothing to show for it, so we started making our way out of the river to go and drag some jigs and craws mid-lake and to the dam. As we were crawling our way through the no wake zone leaving the river, our hearts stopped as we saw schools of shad getting blasted out of the water. We both agreed to stop and see if there were any decent ones in the bunch. We started off with top water and we caught a decent 2lber on a spook and made the decision to see this through to see where it would take us. Note, the night before, in addition to setting up 7-8 rods including top water, mid-and bottom baits, I got the feeling that I should tie on a Nichol’s 5” flutter spoon. I had not thrown that in practice, but I had a hunch that the flutter spoon could be a player if they were bigger fish and active on the bait. As fate would have it, they were both of those things. After a few casts with the spook, I reached into the rod locker and extracted the flutter spoon rod, throwing the spoon on a Dobyn’s Fury 7’9” swimbait/A-rig rod matched with a 200 size Kast King swimbait reel and 16lb Floro, I proceeded to make casts directly into schools of shad that I was eyeballing on my Garmin Live Scope. Bait balls were up in the water column and on the bottom in 20’ of water. I don’t believe I had made more than a few casts and as I worked the flutter spoon with swift jerks up and down off the bottom I was met with swift resistance, “BAM” fish on, I actually thought I had a flathead on because of how good the fight was and partly because I was in disbelief that I actually was able to get one on a flutter spoon, remember it was just a hunch the night before and today was the proof of concept. Well, over the next 1 ½ hours, we were able to boat around 10 bass most of them on the flutter spoon and 1 or 2 of our keepers on a spook dropped on the heads of the boilers. Eventually, the bite slowed at around 9am so we made an executive decision to go looking for even bigger fish, at this point our best 3 were at a little over 7lbs anchored with a 2.66lber on our scale.

They say, don’t leave fish to find fish, well we left the no wake zone and stopped at the flats across from the campers just before the yellow cliffs and found some more breaking fish, we caught a few more but couldn't find anything over 2lbs. we left those fish biting and headed to some mid-lake deeper humps looking for a better fish, we threw jigs and bottom baits, but in the end we weren’t able to find a better kicker in the last hour prior to weigh-in, we made our way back to the launch and were happy to have finished in 4th. I’d like to tip my hat to Laron and company for another fantastic finish and of course Nick Teschler and Joe Michaels for finding the good ones that we missed! Thanks again to one of my favorite partners ever, Joe Denson, you made it a lot of fun and kept the positive attitude going. And as always, thanks to President Vaughan and all the support team for making this happen. And most importantly, thank you to my Lord and Savior Jesus, for the many blessings and privilege of enjoying your great creation in nature with a great bunch of brothers!

FIFTH PLACE

Alan Wacker and Joe Schramer

Big Fish: 2.60#

Total Bag: 6.90#

Alan Wacker

First a big thanks to the weigh in team for a great job. Congratulations to Laron and Steve for a good job on a tough day.

I pre-fished Saturday and got on a good top water bite with several fish over 2 lbs. I caught several more 2lb. fish on worms and jigs.

Wednesday the bite changed. It was a lot tougher. I caught my first fish on top and I missed one big fish on my Rico. John Schramer( who is a great guy to fish with caught the second fish throwing a swim bait into a shad boil. Our last and best fish came on a Carolina rigged brush hog. We caught several other fish all too small. Just c

SIXTH PLACE

Larry White and Rusty Murdock

Big Fish: 2.79#

Total Bag: 6.85#

Larry White

Thanks to the weigh in crew.
After having to use 4 wheel drive to get there. I met my partner Rusty Murdock. What a great draw as he caught first 3 fish. After a slow start we moved to spot 2 and lived there the rest of the tournament. I then started catching and we culled a large number of times. We caught a few fish on drop-shot. The majority came on T-RIGS and C-RIGS with creature baits.

SEVENTH PLACE

Michael Edgar and Robert Cooley

Big Fish: 2.34#

Total Bag: 6.63#

Michael Edgar

Always a pleasure to fish with Bob. We practiced a week before the tournament. Found a nice Texas rig bite. Not my favorite jig bite.

We started our day at one of Bobs spots using Texas rIgged worms in 15-25 ft. Caught a few. Bob is never happy with a few, he is always tweaking his bait. Adding color, changing length, what kind of tail. This works! It helped us to find the bigger fish. We stayed green pumpkin worms, 8-10 inch, fished mid lake points in 15-25ft. The jig bite also picked up, same color pattern, same depth. Caught fish all morning.

Rober Cooley

Congrats to Laron and Steve on their win. Next, I would like to give thanks to the fish that passed on to allow us to collect a check. Sorry, Joe and Mitch.

We caught our fish in 15-22 ft on worms, jigs and chatterbaits off points. No topwater fish.

August 2024 Saguaro

June 2024 Lake Pleasant