March 2024 Lake Pleasant

Tournament Summary

The March tournament at Lake Pleasant showcased impressive angling skills and diverse strategies among the participants. Raymond Bates and Patrick O’Malley secured the top spot with a weight of 18.66 lbs, with O'Malley showcasing adaptability and learning throughout the day despite initial navigational challenges.

Laron Porter and Steve Tinsley demonstrated efficient teamwork to secure 2nd place, utilizing crankbaits and drop shots to reel in a commendable 16.21 lbs, even landing a notable carp.

Meanwhile, Joe Michaels and Rick Harang's collaboration earned them 3rd place, with Michaels showcasing his pre-tournament prowess and bed fishing expertise, ultimately leading to a successful day on the water.

Similarly, Robert Bereiter and Mitch Vitkovich's partnership resulted in a strong showing, highlighting the importance of effective communication and flexibility in adapting to changing conditions.

Finally, Rick Torres and Keith Weidert's debut in the club yielded an impressive 8th place finish, with Torres acknowledging the learning opportunities and camaraderie fostered within the club. Overall, the tournament underscored the Midweek Bass Club's commitment to excellence and camaraderie in the pursuit of bass fishing success.

The tournament at Lake Pleasant showcased a variety of tactics and techniques employed by the anglers to tackle the challenging conditions. Participants utilized a range of baits including Ned rigs, swirly tail worms, crankbaits, drop shots, jigs, spinnerbaits, Senkos, and Texas rigs.

Bed fishing emerged as a successful strategy for several teams, capitalizing on the spawning behavior of bass. Additionally, anglers targeted pre-spawn areas, rocky banks, points, coves, and shallow waters to locate and entice bass.

Effective communication and adaptability were crucial, allowing anglers to adjust their approaches based on weather fluctuations and water conditions throughout the day. Overall, the tournament highlighted the importance of versatility and strategic decision-making in achieving success on the water.

President’s Message

“Lake Pleasant was a fun tournament”..... Some anglers say....Some don’t! Some anglers ask “when is it a good time to fish Pleasant”.... Some anglers don’t ask! Lake pleasant has always been good to some anglers.... and not so good for others.

Each of the 32 teams attempted presenting a limit of fish for weighing... some angles did... and some had a bit of a challenge, and the majority of the fish were healthy 2 to 3 lb. chunks. Congratulations to the team of Raymond Bates and Patrick O’Malley, whose 5 fish bag of 18.66 pounds secured the victory. Robert Bereiter and Mitch Vitovich decided to bring in a 4.68 pounder to secure 1st place in the bag bass category, great job boys! Showing that Lake Pleasant can produce great fish.....Some anglers say....Some don’t! I guess this is why it’s called fishing. One thing is for certain, I believe that we all learned more about bass fishing and the challenges it presents.

Looking forward to next month’s tournament at Mohave, and of course seeing everyone who shows up! Welcome to all the new members who fished with us, hope you guys enjoyed yourselves. Let us know if you have any questions about how we do things.

Patrick O’Malley

What an incredible day! I can’t say enough about my fishing partner, Bates is a great fisherman. I was a little nervous first thing in the morning when we had to jump start the boat, but even that didn’t affect our day. It was clear to me that Bates knew the lake like the back of his hand. Me? Most of the time I thought we were south, we were north. I was totally lost most of the day, but Bates kept looking for fish.

My Ned rig was my go to bait that was pumpkin or watermelon in color. I then wanted to get bigger fish so I went with a 10” swirly tail, also pumpkin that I added chartreuse to its tail. I was fishing about 20 ft deep when I caught what I swore was a 7 pounder. Unfortunately it was just 4.6 lb. But it was an amazing day of fishing and I learned so much. Thanks to all those in service making these happen.

Laron Porter

Pleasant can sometimes be very unPleasant! Fortunately, this week it fished Pleasantly! I drew Steve Tinsley, who has recently started bass fishing, and you wouldn’t be able to tell. This guy can fish! We caught a limit by 9:13 on medium diving crank baits and square bills in the back of Humbug.

After that we went a long while without catching any fish. Around noon Steve wacked a 4lb female on a drop shot. This culled out a very small bass we had in the box. We made one last small cull with another square bill fish. We only caught 7 bass. We did manage to hook a 9.87 lb carp.

Once again, I loved making a new friend Steve and seeing all my Midweek friends this week. Thanks for a great tournament!

Joe Michels

Before I dive into our fishing adventure, a big shout-out to Steve Grier and his Tuesday co-angler, plus Floyd and his buddy, for cleaning up the Laughing Boat ramp before the tourney. On Tuesday, it was piled up with driftwood - 18 inches high and 3 feet wide. Without their help, launching boats would’ve been a tough job!

I had an amazing fishing day at Lake Pleasant the Tuesday the week prior the tournament. I caught a whopping 16.86lbs of fish during practice. You can catch that action on my YouTube channel, Fish Point Media with Joe Michels. That day, I found a spot in the lake swarming with 2.5lb to 4lb fish. Spinnerbaits, Senkos, and bed fishing were my winning strategies, and they totally paid off in the tournament.

The tournament day kicked off great! I nabbed a deep bed fish, chilling in 12 feet of water, and it bit in just 5 minutes! Just as I lifted the fish, Rick Harang slipped the net underneath the fish and saved the day! Starting the day on a lucky note definitely boosted my spirits.

We spent the early part of the day bed fishing and caught a small one. Later, we shifted to the Castle Creek area where spinnerbaits worked magic for me the previous week. My partner, Rick, skillfully cast a Senko into a deep pocket and bagged our biggest catch – a 3.5-pounder. Not long after, I caught a 3-pounder on the spinnerbait. We even added a ten-inch bass to our count. Having three out of the first five fish over three pounds? That’s rare and exciting in my boat!

The sunny, calm weather, coupled with cooler water from the weekend's storm, made the spinnerbait a bit less effective. But I still managed to catch a few more, including an upgrade. Turns out, our bed fishing tactic was on point, allowing us to swap out two smaller catches with nearly 3-pounders each.

I’m working on a video of our fishing day and will definitely give a shout-out to Midweek Bass Angers in it.

Finally, a huge thanks to the board members and everyone involved in organizing our tournaments. Your efforts make these events fantastic!

Rick Harang

I have to start out by saying congrats to the first and second place teams, those were a couple great bags of fish. Coming in with over 15 1/2 pounds ourselves, Joe and I both felt pretty confident, but we knew without a fish over 4 pounds for a kicker, that we might not have enough.

This was my first time fishing with Joe and what a great draw for me. Joe had put in several days pre fishing at Pleasant and had a very solid plan. He caught our first fish within the first five minutes on a jig in a cove on the western shoreline. After a few minutes there , we went to his area in a cove on the north end of the lake. Joe caught a few spinnerbait fish and a few sight fish in that area. I only caught one of the fish in our final bag, but it was a good one. It came on a 5" T rigged senko. We caught fish and culled here and there all the way till about 2:45.

All in all I had a great time fishing with Joe and he really opened my eyes to a couple areas of the lake that I almost never go to. Also, thanks to the club officials for another well run tournament.

Robert Bereiter

Two practice days at Lake (Un)Pleasant were frustrating. After the monthly meeting and random draw, I received an introductory phone call from Mitch Vitkovich. He advised that he was very familiar with the lake and was looking forward to the event. Over several calls we compared notes and thoughts.

On Wednesday we took off and headed to Coles Wash...the only place where I had any success during practice, which I attributed to the water color and to the presence of stick-ups. We pulled into a cut and started casting...three casts into the morning and Mitch had a swimbait fish on. This fish eventually proved to take big fish for the event. I managed a dink on a drop shot.

Without much more to show for efforts, we decided to move and try looking for bed fish. We moved into the Castle Creek area checking cuts and coves for beds and seeing a few, most were empty, but a couple had fish. We started to pitch drop shot rigs to the beds alternating between Mitch's white worm and my purple. The tag team seemed to irritate the bass into eventually biting and we pulled another three fish into the boat.

With a limit we again moved...checking Cottonwood and then going across to Jackass Cove, again deciding to fish visible beds. We saw several with fish and irritated several more into the boat. Thanks to Mitch and his familiarity with the lake and his skill with several techniques, we managed a nice bag, and I learned that Lake Pleasant...can be...pleasant!

Mitch Vitkovich

First, I would like to say congratulations not only to the winners, Raymond Bates and Patrick O'Malley but all the competitors who participated in the tournament. Also, I would like to say thanks to all the board members who take care of the weigh ins. One thing I like about the format of Midweek bass is the opportunity to meet new people who have the same interest and to learn something new.

This tournament I drew Bob Bereiter from Tucson Az. Although Bob and I did not have a chance to pre-fish together, Bob was able to get on the water a couple times and I was able to fish Monday before the tournament. This was very valuable for us. On Monday I found three areas that was holding a large number of bass. Most of the bass where singles but they were in the area where they could start the spawning process. Bob found and area up in Coles Bay also and that's where we started.

I started with a LTS6 and Bob started with a jerk bait. Now the LTS6 is what I call a 1 in 50 bait. What that means is I hope to get one bite per fifty cast. We were lucky and we got bit on the third cast with a nice 4 1/2 pound beauty. Then Bob with a drop-shot put a couple in the well. By this time the area became overwhelmed with vacuum cleaners who were sucking up all the fish, so we decided to get out of there and start bed fishing. That is pretty much what we did the rest of the day.

The first area the fish were shallow, 5 to 10 feet deep. We filled out our limit and started culling pretty fast. The good thing is there was nobody else in this area but us. Then we left and headed to the main lake and started bed fishing in 15 to 20 feet. A lot of guys were up on the shore doing the same thing, but nobody came out where we were. This is where we found our big fish. We were able to catch the male right away which caused the female to scatter. We left her and decided to come back. I think we caught two out there before we went back to check to see if she came back and she did. We missed her on the first drop but thankfully she stayed put and we caught her a couple cast later. Bob and I did a couple hi fives, two or three chest bumps, a couple that a boys and then continued on our way.

Thanks, Bob, for a great day and a great memory.

**5th Place**

Bill Briggs and Ron Pikul
13.91#

NO REPORT PROVIDED

Charles Mackintosh

Congratulations to the winning team for their big bag! I had the pleasure of fishing with Gary Volpe who I had only met briefly before a previous tournament when I was admiring his Skeeter boat.

I spent some time on the water during the week ahead of the tournament and found fish fairly reliably locked on beds and fairly easy to catch. But over the weekend an unstable weather pattern emerged and the rain and cooler weather disrupted the pattern. I pre-fished on Monday and noticed the water temperature had dropped. Prior to the sun rising high enough to see beds I had an unproductive morning. Once the sun was up sufficiently, I cruised around looking for and marking beds and found plenty. Unstable weather continued prior to the tournament, so tournament day we focused our early morning on a pre-spawn area starting at the main lake and working into a large bay fishing rocky banks and points.

We picked up two fish on a jig. Eventually we turned into a long cut. The water was dirty and higher than on my previous visit to the area. There were a lot of gulls diving and other birds and clouds of bait were visible on sonar. Gary threw the spinner bait and caught 3 off species fish. I kept throwing the jig and as we worked our way out, I threw it on a secondary point and set the hook on our biggest fish.

Next, we moved to another bay which I hoped would be our primary area, but I noticed the water was colder there by a couple of degrees than where we just came from. We saw a couple of fish that weren’t locked on and caught a small one on the jig, but soon decided to leave the area.

We moved to a cut in a third bay and found some more fish, but again not locked on beds. We decided to move to some main lake bays that might be less sensitive to the weather changes and found a couple of beds with fish locked on and were able to catch both, filling out our limit and culling the smallest.

Thanks to the Midweek officers and tournament crew for another smooth and enjoyable event!

7th Place

John Hilland and Mike Seibly

13.86#

NO REPORT SUBMITTED

Rick Torres

This is my first year fishing in this well organized bass club. Congrats to all the winners. Also thank you all who helped at the boat ramp.

I had Keith Weidert as my back seater. We pre fished on Tuesday and started at Humbug cove. We spent about two hours without a single bite. We moved to the north side bank of the river and caught a few. Then we moved to the east side of north Barker island and started catching fish.

On tournament morning, we started at north Barker island. I was throwing top water popper and had a couple of bites. I switched to drop shot and we had three fish by 7:30am with one I caught with a weight 3.3. Next we moved to the north river bank and caught our limit by 12:30. We tried different spots but no luck. Then we went back to Barker island and caught one more, another 3.0 lbs that Keith caught. I had one break my line which it could had been maybe a 4 pounder.

We moved to the south side of the entrance to the river and we caught one more. We ended up culling 3 bass. Thanks to Keith with 6 bass and I caught two. All of our bass were over 2 lbs. I learned a few things from Keith and he showed me some spots to fish.

April 2024 Lake Mohave

February 2024 Bartlett