The Classic Bass Champions Tour has one regular season tournament remaining in the 2018 season before the Championship qualifying anglers are finalized. Six more will qualify themselves for the Championship, making a total of 30 that will have a chance to fish for a Skeeter Bass Boat and Yamaha Outboard near the end of the summer. This final qualifying opportunity is set to take place on Lake Minnetonka on Tuesday, August 7th.
This will be the first time the Champions Tour has visited “Tonka”. It’s no secret that the lake is one of the best bass fisheries in the Midwest. The lake is loaded with bass of all sizes and the structure that these fish live on is seemingly endless. As always, the Champions Tour will use the catch-weigh-release format meaning every bass over 12” counts to their days total weight. The majority of our anglers will again have to change their strategy slightly to accommodate the format.
Lake Minnetonka is the most popular bass tournament destination in Minnesota. There seems to be some level of competition occurring on the lake three to four days each week. Several Champions Tour anglers participate in many of these events and have a great deal of experience on Minnetonka, but again the catch-weigh-release format throws a curveball at these anglers.
We expect to see most of the field move away from fishing slightly shallower where many of the lakes biggest bass live amongst the thick Milfoil and focus on deeper schools of fish. These deeper schools will often have smaller fish, but more of them. That’s not to say the shallow water/thick cover fisherman can’t do well in this event, that’s just typically a larger fish but fewer bites program.
We know one thing for sure, Lake Minnetonka has been fishing extremely well this Summer and we expect that trend to continue for the Champions Tour event in less than a week. Small fish, big fish and everything in between have been a fairly easy catch on the lake throughout July. Some record or near record weights have come to the scales during a few of the lake’s larger tournaments in the last month.
The pressure is on for anglers who haven’t punched their ticket to the 2018 Championship, ensuring that this tournament will be intense. Anglers will be pulling into Lord Fletcher’s just after 4:00 pm CST for the final results and awards ceremony.
We highly encourage anyone interested to visit Fletcher’s, enjoy the outdoor patio and take in the Classic Bass Champions Tour action! As always, follow along throughout the day at www.classicbass.com or the Classic Bass Facebook page for live standing and photos and video from the water.
Classic Bass will be announcing the location of the 2018 Champions Tour Championship at the conclusion of the event as well…
