Well, Larry Sullivan and I pre-fished this weekend over at Long Lake.  We fished a few hours Friday evening and did some lake familiarization mostly.  Saturday, we started around 8ish, started on some areas we got info on and struggled somewhat but did catch some keepers.  We caught a bunch of dinks and started searching areas to find the biguns.  Larry caught our favorite friends and we fed the birds with them.  Caught some keepers, mostly sm and one lm. Larry caught the most saturday and I could only manage 3 keepers.  Sunday was a different story.  Rain fell a couple of times late Sat night and early Sunday morning.  we departed to test some additional baits and quickly abandoned it after our arms were falling off.  Went back to our go to baits and followed up on our pattern testing it to make sure and picked additional areas.  Sunday, I caught my limit with some rather good size smallies (3 lbs) and one big surprise, a l.7 lb crappie.  This thing seemed a lot bigger than the weight and really fought.  No sqawfish on Sunday and our patterns held even during the constant downfall of rain. Larry caught 3 or 4 I believe also, and we were pleased so far.

The water was rather dirty, dingy, and no movement in over two weeks according to the locals.  The dam appeared at it's maximum as we drove home, so we can only hope things don't change.  Never found the LM other than the one Larry caught on Saturday.  We did learn alot about the lake, spoke to locals about the lake and really did pre fish good I think.  I and Larry will go into this final FLW qualifier tourney with alot more confidence.

Watched a local tourney going on while we pre-fished and day one leader brought in a bag of 20# LMB.  Should have followed him around, but we wanted our own patterns, but would love to have bent his ear for info, but, what the heck, we didn't go to every place, just most.  This lake has a lot of opportunities. Patience was our gold mine.

On we go to victory and hopefully we'll be bring back a new Ranger also....

Chuck P  

Good luck & hang tough guys and make sure you check your knots!!  Don't want to have happen to you as what happend to me.

Smitty

Glenn,  Larry and I are already teasing each other about the win, we are just hoping if we don't that it is someone who doesn't have a boat already..  Enough of the bigger guns winning boats who really don't need one  (No names come to mention)....

We can only hope and wait for that winning ticket number, otherwise, we'll be coming home, in preparation for Chelan.....Onward....

Chuck P