New Hampshire B.A.S.S. Nation held its second annual smallmouth only open team tournament on May 6 at Lake Winnipesaukee with launching out of Lee’s Mills and States landing. The STA-BIL Start Boat sent the 41 teams out on the water after making sure everyone’s safety equipment including livewells were functioning properly. This was a smallmouth only event that served as a fundraiser for our youth programs. This one event raised $1,600 to support an annual scholarship to Barry Conservation’s 4-H Fish Camp as well as support our Junior Bassmasters that will be fishing the B.A.S.S. National Championship later this summer.
The anglers were greeted with mostly cloudy conditions with light wind and water temperatures near 60 degrees. There were really not any surprises when the ever tough “big smallmouth” specialists Bryan Dexter and Rob Morin found themselves atop the leaderboard at the end of the day. They brought in a limit of four smallmouth for 12.93 pounds with their big fish weighing 4.50 pounds. Bryan and Rob targeted prespawn smallmouth all day by throwing blade baits in the morning and tubes/spider jigs in the afternoon. Their target water depth was 10-20 feet. The reigning Hummingbird Team of the year of John Wright and Pete Weeks brought in the Dobyns Rods Lunker Smallmouth with a beautiful 4.75 pounder. Full results can be found on our Facebook page.
This was the first of six events in our Humminbird Team of the Year competition where two drops will be allowed. Our next open team trail event is on Lake Winnipesaukee on July 8th. The top three teams from our trail will qualify to fish the Toyota Bonus Bucks Bassmaster Team Championship on the Harris Chain in Florida on December 5-8.
Thank you to all our sponsors for their support: Dobyns Rods, EGO S2 Slider, Lew’s, Maui Jim, 7 Lakes Marine Service, Humminbird, West Alton Marina, Thayer’s Marine, Tackle Supply Depot, Portland Yacht Services, Fulton, 303 Boat Care Products, Granite State Rod & Reel, STA-BIL, Toyota of Nashua, Ninja Grass Blade, Triton, Mercury, Lowrance, Motorguide, Academy Sports and Outdoors, Megellan Outdoors, HUK, Minn Kota, Nitro, Skeeter, Yamaha, Carhartt, Toyota, Power Pole, Berkley, Abu Garcia, Livingston Lures, Nationwide, Phoenix Boats, and TH Marine. The NH BASS Nation events are sanctioned Skeeter Real Money, Triton Gold, Phoenix First Flight and Portland Yacht Services Top Finisher contingency programs. We could not conduct these successful events without all of you!
