This past weekend, I got to experience competitive bass fishing from both ends of the boat. I had the FLW Outdoors Bass Fishing League event on my home water of pool 10 on the Mississippi River on Saturday and then the BASS Weekend Series on pool 4.

The BFL event on my home water was something I was looking forward to all summer, since I was going to be fishing it as a boater. This meant, my destiny was in my hands, so I went to work and started pre-fishing on Wednesday. With all the recent rainfall across the Midwest, the river is about four feet above the normal summer levels. This made fishing very tough for me, as the majority of my areas had too much current and water on them.

By keeping the trolling motor in the water and spending long days on the water, i was able to finally get around some fish and put together a game plan for Saturday. I couldn't have spent as much time on the water pre-fishing, if it wasn't for my Onyx rain gear. Two of the practice days, it rained very hard, but my rain gear allowed me to stay dry and focused on the goal of finding bass.

My plan for Saturday was to start on an area where I found some bass in the slop and also on a bank with wood on it. Upon arrival at my starting spot and after a few casts, I realized that the bass weren't coming up and hitting frogs, so I started out on the bank throwing an RC Tackle Swim Jig to the flooded wood and grass. Within a few casts, I boated my first keeper of the day, a good 3 lb. fish!

I boated one more 14 inch keeper out of this spot and fished it until I felt it was burnt up and then it was on to spot number two. This spot was a flooded tree line with vegetation mixed in and deep water near by. This is where I spent the remainder of my day, flipping a 5/16 oz. Tru-Tungsten weight in front of a 4/0 TROKAR TK130 Flipping hook. I used a green pumpkin RC Beaver and tube to coax the bass into biting.

When all was said and done, I weighed in a limit for 11 lb. 8 oz., which put me in 47th place. This isn't the finish I was hoping for, but to put things in perspective I had a horrible practice and I executed perfectly. I also didn't stray from my game plan and stay focused right up until the last minute, which is when i caught my second biggest bass of the day.

Key to Success: Using my TROKAR flipping hook, 50 lb. braided line and my 7'2" Wright & McGill Tessera Jig/worm rod to get a solid hook up on these bass in the heavy cover and get them into the boat.

On Sunday, I was fishing the BASS Weekend Series as a co-angler out of Wabasha, MN on pool 4 of the Mississippi River. Going into this tournament i was sitting 25th in the standings and the top 40 make the regional tournament, so I knew that I needed to get at least one fish.

My boater for this tournament was a perennial good river fisherman, so I was very optimistic about the day! With high sky's and changing water level's, the area where we were fishing proved to be very tough bite. Even though I didn't get many bites, i stay focused and continued looking for my one keeper bass. Finally, I boated a 2 lb. keeper on an RC Tackle Swim Jig.

That one bass, earned me valuable points and actually moved up to 19th in the standings! I won't be able to fish the next event, so my regional hopes will come down to my having a good 2 day tournament in September.

Stay tuned to www.fishglenn.com for more information on my upcoming tournaments and results.