Written By - Dan Kimmel - 05/14/2007
Link to Original Article here

My good friends and regular fishing partners Derek Baetz and Larry Dekker talked me into giving the Top Bass circuit a try this year. Top Bass has an interesting format in that you fish by yourself  so everyone is a guaranteed boater. Makes it a personal challenge too along with the normal tournament challenges.

I don't fish Houghton Lake a lot anymore, maybe once a year usually opening weekend for a day to catch some easy canal largemouths. I like to sight-fish quite a bit, so I took the risk (besides Larry has a      Houghton L Top Bass Jun 05 Top Places
Top 3 Places and Big Bass Winner - I'm 2nd from the left. W.C. Paetz won (L) with 13.29 pounds.
cabin near there so it was a cheap tournament that fit my tight 2005 tournament budget).

Parts of Houghton Lake are still suffering from the massive weed kill the association performed a couple years ago  unfortunately, many of the parts I normally like to fish. That was my first major adjustment.

There were still some bass in canals, but an opening weekend tournament was putting pressure on them, and surprisingly, many non-tournament anglers were specifically targeting the beds better than I'm used to seeing, and catching quite a few. Some were keeping them. They can legally do that and although I didn't see any one angler catching and keeping a bunch, there were enough keeping 1 or 2 that it put the remaining bass beds sparsely populated with shy bass.

Most I saw were small and I didn't feel like putting my eggs in that basket. Besides, I thought all along that main lake smallies would win