Tournament win and Team of the year for 2015

August 4th, 2015

Wow.. It's been a while! More than 2 years without an update.... Lots has happen since my last update.

Ben Woo and I started Montreal Bassmasters last year and I had the pleasure of fishing the trail as well.  It was my first year fishing with my new partner Remi Laurin and we had a blast.  We have a similiar approach when it comes to fishing tournaments and practicing.

We had tough year in 2014 but still managed to get a 3rd place finish on Lake St.Louis and a 2nd place at the classic.  I also got a 1st place at the new Ultimate Bass Tournament.  The tournament consist of pairing a conventional angler with a fly fishing angler for a tournament.  The fly fishing angler has to bring in at least 2 bass out of the 5 that we have to catch.

This year has probably been my best season since I started competitive fishing in 2009.  Remi and I were on a mission to get the Team of the year title and worked hard at every event in order to get it.

Out of the 3 regular events we placed 2nd, 2nd and 1st to clinch our first Team of the year title.  We won the last tournament of the season on Lake St.Francis with a personal best tournament weight of 22.77lbs.  This also makes it my 3rd tournament win on this lake with 3 different partners.  It was awsome to have my wife and kid at the weigh-in to witness this amazing bag of smallies.

Next up is a Pro/Am on the St.Lawrence river in Long Sault. I've had good fishing days in Long Sault this year and I am really looking forward to the event.  Unfortunatly, I will not be able to get some practice time for this event.  I'll have to figure out the smallies quickly if I want to have a chance at winning this one.

Big win on Lac St.Louis today!

July 6th, 2013

Wow!! Totally unexpected win today for the 2nd Econobass tournament of the season on Lac St.Louis out of Melocheville.  We took 1st place out of 63 teams and the 1st lunker of the tournament.

My partner Bar and I had practice a few times during our vacation and 13-15lbs was the target for the event as we were unable to find enough 4lbers to get closer to 18 ...

For once, our plan was executed to perfection.  Except for a few dropped fish that would've upped our weight a little, everything we had planned worked out really well.  We started the day for smallies and had our 13-14lbs limit by 8am.  We continued to fish for smallies and almost managed to upgrade but Bar and I both had fish that broke off before we could get them in the boat.  Around noon, we decided it was time to go look for a kicker largemouth.  The sun was out and it was a little windy but thanks to the powepole we were able to see the largies roaming in the reeds.  I was pitching a texas rigged beaver in the reeds when I saw a largie move towards my bait.  I kept my eyes on her between every flip and all of a sudden I saw her grabbed the beaver.. Thanks to my custom St.Croix Legend Xtreme I was able to lift her head in a few seconds for Bar to put the net under her.  The bigger largies were hard to find in practice and we are very happy to be able to find that one fish we were hoping for.

We weighed all the fish in the afternoon to have an idea of how much we had and we figured we had around 15lbs give or take.  Luckily, my scale seems to be a little light and I often get a surprise at the weigh in. Our bag finally tipped the scale at 16.11lbs with the biggest fish of the day, a nice 4.45lbs largemouth.

This is now my 3rd Econobass win and very happy to have done it on Lac St.Louis.  Next stop is Econobass tournament #3 on the St.Lawrence river in Long Sault.  We had a tough tournament there last season and we are going to have to do better this time around.

Updates!

June 28th, 2013

Yes this website is still alive! Without getting into details, let’s just say 2013 has been a BIG year for me.  I got engaged, had a baby boy and bought a new house.  It's no excuse though... I have been slacking off on the updates but I'll try to do more this year.

Last season was a bit disappointing but we still managed to finish in 8th place overall for the season.  Overall I had a good season and learned quite a bit.

Fishing wise, 2013 has been tough so far.  Were already 3 tournaments in and I placed 37th/63, 11th/22 and 13th/110.  Water is high on the St. Lawrence River and I find it has the bass spread out more than usual.  Spawning is ending on most body of water and post spawn fish are skinny!  

I've been spending a lot of times on Lake St. Louis with 3 tournaments early in the season on this body of water.  Practice has been steady with most fish in the 2.75-3lbs range.  Hoping to find a few 4s before next weekend's tourney.

Going back at it tomorrow with Caro and my dad!

Few pics of fish caught this year : 

Frenzy on Louis!

July 21st, 2012

I was fishing with my buddy Remi today on Lake St.Louis.  Weather conditions were perfect to look for new areas so we started somewhere we had never been and spotted smallies almost instantly.  With no wind and bright sun it was easy to spot the smallies on sand flats.  We were originally heading to this area looking for a largemouth bite but Lake St.Louis is awesome for this... You will often find smallies and largies schooling together.

Our second stop was an obvious feeding spot and we were able to catch 2 decent largies in the 3lbs range.  Some good sized smallies were seen roaming around our baits but unfortunetly none of them bit.  We spent the rest of the morning working a new sand flat quickly on the trolling motor and found tons of smallies in all sizes.  At this point we had a nice mixed bag with no fish under 3lbs and plenty of time to fish!

The afternoon was spent fishing another area with rock piles and sand and the result was very similiar with plenty of fish in the 2.5 to 4lb range.  We had a beautiful day so far but we needed a kicker fish to make it even better.  About mid-afternoon I hooked into a monster smallie that bit a 3/8oz tube..... She gave me one hell of a fight and had Remi running around with the net like a madman.  One of my biggest smallmouth on Lake St.Louis in a while that's for sure!

Great fishing, great weather, great company!  I have a feeling we'll be doing more fishing together very soon!

Ottawa River practice time!

July 16th, 2012

Bar and I were fishing the Ottawa river today.  We have a tournament in 2 weeks and seeing as this is by far our toughest event of the season we felt that starting early was a good idea.

We were on the water early and the weather was just perfect for practice.  As usual for this river, it was hard to get a good bite going but we were able to find a somewhat reliable smallie bite.  We flipped for a while and finally hooked into a decent size largemouth.  The chance that I catch her again in 2 weeks is slim to none but at least the area seemed like it could be holding more fish.

We mainly fished for smallies for the rest of the day and caught some more in different scenarios, but nothing spectacular.  We ended the day flipping a nice weedline and missed 2 bites... Let's hope we can catch 'em in 2 weeks!! The overall weights on the Ottawa river have been low for most and we are no exception.  Perhaps we can find more stuff next weekend and have a solid plan for our event on July 28th.

Fishin-Canada.Net Ripple - Lake St.Louis

July 14th, 2012

Fishin-Canada.net along with Basscat Boats and Simmz Baits were organizing a 3 bass limit fishing tournament today on Lake St.Louis and my partner "Bar" and I just couldn't miss it!

We didn't really have a chance to practice for this event but looking at past data and fishing reports I had a good idea where the fish would be holding.  We knew the smallie bite would be on all day so we decided to look for a "kicker" largemouth right away.  To my suprise, we caught a close to 4lbs smallmouth in our largemouth spot.  Unfortunatly, the largie bite didn't work for us so we headed for smallies rather quickly.  On our second stop we found both smallies and largies schooling in a feeding spot.  We were able to get 2 more fish in the livewell quickly for a limit of about 10lbs.  Our 3rd spot was fish after fish but nothing to up our bag...

Stuck at about 10.5 lbs, we knew we were missing a big fish to have a chance at winning this event so we decided to do a run for another spot across the lake.  It proved to be the right move when Bar hooked into a well over 4lbs smallmouth on a tube that decided to give him a big fight! He fought her well but ending up losing the fight on the 3rd jump.... only a few inches from the net.  Looking at the results... this was the winning fish as we had predicted but hey, it happens and we move on!  We fished the area for a while but mostly caught clones of the fish we already had in the livewell.

We went back to our largie spot for a few cast before weigh in but it was too late.  We weighed in 10.40lbs good enough for 6th out of 27 teams.

Congrats to Jacques Chopin for his win.  A nice bag of 11.30lbs of beautiful smallies!

Pics of the event can be seen here :
http://www.fishin-canada.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5628

More big smallies

July 13th, 2012

I was back on the water with my dad today.  He hadn't been on the water for a while so I asked him what he wanted to fish and his answer was no surprise.... He wanted to catch big smallies!  I headed for a new area I've been exploring lately and we spoted some good ones right away.  We were fortunate to have blue skies and low winds to be able see them cruising on sand flats.  Catching those shallow smallies was no easy task... We had to creep up on them very quietly and stay as far as possible.

We caught most of our fish on senkos and tubes both shallow and deep today.  We didn't catch a ton of fish but quality was definitely there with most of the fish in the 3.5 to 4.5lbs range.

Some of the fish we caught today

Sweet revenge on Lake St.Francis

July 8th, 2012

I was back on the water today with my good friend Gilles.  I really wanted to get my revenge from my bad tournament yesterday and boy did we catch 'em.  Our first stop was a nice sand flat with 2-3 ft of water and thankfully the smallies on it were on fire and BIG!  It was an area I had never fished before  so we started by throwing spinnerbaits and got a follower on the first cast of the day.  We quickly switched to tubes and senkos and had a 2.5lbs smallie in the boat almost instantly.  We moved around the flats and found a nice school of big smallmouths roaming.  Luckily, we stayed far enough and I managed to catch a 5.25lbs and a 4.75lbs.  Gilles missed a few fish while I was still in awe about the 2 giants I had just caught back to back.

We decided to drift an deeper channel close by and Gilles caught a 4.25 on the first pass..... We did a few more passes and managed to catch a few more fish between 2 and 3.5lbs.

Gilles is just starting to fish for bass and I wanted to show him a few tips on our to catch largemouths as well so we headed for a nearby bay and started casting frogs.  I was able to catch a nice one and Gilles missed 2 fish that blew up on his frog but for someone throwing it for the first time he was doing very good.

We finished our day on a more familiar spot were I caught a nice 4lbs but saw some big ones roaming... Lake St.Francis is such an amazing fishery and in my opinion a world class destination for some giant smallies.  I won the Econobass event back to back 2 years in a row on this lake and to win it a 3rd time would be unreal.  With Charles Sim, Jason Gramada and Nick Gendron fishing the trail this is year is not going to make it an easy task that for sure.

Giant brown fish from our day

Econobass - Long Sault 2012

July 7th, 2012

As it happenned many times in the past, practice was unfortunatly much better then tournament day.  We started with great confidence and were pumped for an awesome day of fishing on this beautiful section of the St.Lawrence river.  Overcast skies made our first area a little difficult to fish... We knew the fish were very spooky and couldn't position the boat without being seen by them.  We came back to this area several times through out the day and just couldn't convince this 4lbs + smallmouth to bite any of our baits.  Our second and third spot didn't seem to have fish on them and by 11:30, we still hadn't put a single fish in the livewell.

It's only when we decided to put plan C in action that we started catching fish.....  We fished an old road bed in a section of the river that we had never been and were able to finally put 2 fish in the boat.  An area where we had caught a few decent largemouths in practice was close by so we decided to give it a shot.  My partner Bar missed a nice one on the frog and I caught another one that didn't even make 12 inches.... Nothing to help our cause.

We decided to rotate our morning spots one last time to see if maybe the fish had moved in but only started getting bit at 2:30pm.... With 15 mins to spare I caught a 4lb and a 2lbs but weren't able to get our last fish.  We had the fish infront of us again but ran out of time and had to get back in time for the weigh in.

We are kind of dissapointed seeing as we had a good practice but these things happen and we should do much better next time were there.

Our 2 biggest of the day

A few hours of fishing after work

July 5th, 2012

Went out for a few hours after work on Lake St.Louis today with Caro and my buddy Dave.  We started flipping thick mats and found some nice fish under 'em but we had a hard time getting them out of there.... We got a few largies but the smallies seemed to be way more active.  We hit one rock pile that had quite the school on it and just kept on catching almost every cast.  Nothing huge with the biggest one around 3lbs but still a lot of fun when the bite is on.  Water temps are in steady in the 70's now and both smallies and largies are definitely in full summer pattern and eating!

Dave with a  nice chunk