Final Official Pool 11 Results.

[BigAl]

It was a tough bite on Pool 11. High water and extreme current made it hard to find fish.

Special thanks to seven teams fishing with us for the first time.

Congratulations to Jordan and Kendall, winners of the Scheels gift cards.

[jordan.tagtow]

Tough bite for sure... some takeaways from the AIM group that helped me understand where I could improve:

(Original AIM Facebook post)

The upstart team of Govert and Thostenson won with 13.62 pounds...They may be new to tournament fishing, but they bring with them some old-school river fishing techniques – specifically handlining, which turned out to be the difference maker in the tournament. “Handlining was ideal for slow trolling our orange, jointed floating J7 Rapalas”, said Govert, adding “We tried three-way rigs but kept getting ‘drive bys’ – fish that would hook up for a second and then not be there. Handlining enabled us to feel those light hitting fish”. The high, debris-filled water pouring out of the Wisconsin River made it an easy decision for them to wait out the barge and lock through to pool 10, but the lower-than-expected weights caught them a bit by surprise. “We did really good on Dubuque rigs near Lynxville the week before but that didn’t work on tournament day, so we went downstream and started handlining”, said Govert, adding “We caught our fifth fish around 1:00pm and spent the next 30 minutes casting jigs and plastics to a few places we’d marked the day before, but when that didn’t pan out, we decided to lock back through.”

Second place finishers Jordan Fluekiger and Maddy Berg also waited out the barge before arriving at the same pool 10 location as Govert and Thostenson...They started out casting jigs and plastics but after a couple hours, hadn’t caught a single fish. “We went to our plan B, pulling stick baits, and caught four fish on our first pass, two more on our second pass, and then we were out of time”, said Fluekiger. Fluekiger acknowledged the tough bite and theorized that the fish were in mid-spawn, a theory supported by the veteran team of Jeremy Geisler and Mike Goltz. “I think they were actively spawning and that kind of shut them down”, said Geisler.

Geisler and Goltz did get one big prespawn female to bite – a fish that almost certainly would have improved their 12.68-pound weight - but unfortunately it got off when the line got tangled in the kicker motor...Proof that they made the right decision was provided on their first trolling pass. “We didn’t get to our spot until 9:30am but we had our five on the card by 11:00am”, said Geisler. Unlike Fluekiger and Berg, they started pulling stickbaits – orange and gold floating Rapala’s – from the start and never changed. Speed proved to be a critical factor. “The slower you went, the better your chances - between .2 and .4 mph was the best”, said Geisler.