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Lake Okeechobee FLW Tour

2012-02-13T00:56:39Z

I fished my first FLW Tour bass tournament this past weekend at Lake Okeechobee in Florida and had the time of my life! Things went pretty good - I was able to make the top 20 cut after day two and I walked away with a 20th place finish, good for $12,000! Here are a few photos I got from the event.

My biggest fish from the tournament - a 6-13 on day two.

Part of the top 20 after day two lining up to go for a meeting - notice fellow Canadian angler Bob Izumi who made the cut as well.

Waiting to blast off on day three - that is FAMOUS angler Roland Martin beside me! Pretty cool!

Like I said, I had a great time this week, it was an all-around great experience! I had a tough day three but I stuck with my big fish program and the weather just messed things up. The pressure was off because the worst I could do was 20th so it was still fun.

Throughout the tournament I caught my fish on a variety of baits. I was catching my schooling fish on Rapala Rippin' Rap rattle baits. I caught most of my keepers on prototypes of the a new swimbait coming out later this year from Trigger-X called the Slop Hopper. Also caught a few fish flipping an Impulse Brush Beaver. I cast the swimbait and flipped with 80 lb. Power Pro Super Slick.

Huge THANK YOU to all of my sponsors for helping me to achieve my dream of fishing these top-level tournaments - Krugerfarms.com, Mountain Dew, Comfortmaker, Lund Boats, Mercury, Humminbird, Minn Kota, Optima Batteries, Northland Fishing Tackle, Rapala, Shimano, Power Pro, Frabill, LakeMaster and StrikeMaster

BIG BASS in Florida!!!

2012-02-08T20:48:49Z

The practice is over and tomorrow morning I am fishing my first day on the FLW Tour. I have been fishing down in Florida for about a week and a half and have spent the past three days at Lake Okeechobee where the tournament will take place this weekend. It's been a fun trip and I've been able to catch some big bass. Hopefully I can catch the biggest fish of the trip during the tournament this weekend!

A nice bass that smashed a Rapala X-Rap Prop just before dark on Lake Rosseau

A nice largemouth from Lake Istokpoga

Brian Mcnanney with a nice one from Istokpoga

A seven pounder from Istokpoga...biggest bass of the trip so far

Here is the biggest bass that I've caught this week on Okeechobee...hopefully I can find a few more like this over the next few days! I will do my best! -Gussy

More action from Florida

2012-02-02T03:51:51Z

Fishing has been fun the past few days down in central Florida. I have spent a few days on the water with my friends Bill Godin and Brian Mcnanney from back home. The weather has been pretty nice to...

Some of the hot baits in Florida - Rapala Rippin' Rap, Trigger-X Flappin' Grub and Northland Impulse Brush Beavers. The new Shimano Crucial rods are fishing awesome as well!

Brian Mcnanney with a nice largemouth from Lake Toho

Biggest fish of the trip so far, around 6 poiunds - Lake Toho

The new Lund 2010 Predator on the water

Florida FLW Tour

2012-01-29T02:07:16Z

Those of you that know me know that I live for fishing bass tournaments. Thanks to the help of all my great sponsors I'm able to make the leap to the next level. I'm fishing the 4 FLW Tour Opens this year and the first one is at Lake Okeechobee starting on February 9. I have arrived in Florida and should have a few fish pictures soon hopefully! These are a few photos from my trips down.

Leaving the house and the SNOW!!!

Beauty road conditions as I drive south in Ontario around Lake of the Woods.

I spent a few days in St. Paul while my boat got the cool wrap on it. It turned out great! Also, the awesome Mountain Dew truck that I'm rolling in.

This would not be possible with all the great sponsors that are helping me do this! It is a dream come true! -Gussy

2012 Wolf hunting

2012-01-13T13:37:15Z

Today is my last day of guiding my friends on their wolf hunts. We have had really good success this year at almost 100%. Here are a couple more pictures from the past week.

This is probably my "new" favourite trail cam picture - of a beautiful white wolf. My buddy Dan Fuller did catch a glimpse of this animal and said it was like a ghost. Just a cool picture with the way the sun is shining and it's looking at the camera.

Dan Fuller with his wolf.

Dan Hicks with his COLD weather wolf. Conditions started out really warm this week with above freezing temperatures but the past couple of days have been COLD, it's was -10 *F (-25*C) this morning.

Brad with his wolf.

Wolf hunting in 2012

2012-01-04T14:10:20Z

I'm spending the first couple of weeks of 2012 guiding wolf hunters in the Sunset Country Region. Things have gotten off to a great start - my first group of guys arrived on Monday.

Cory Hiller from Minnesota was the first lucky hunter to tag on Monday afternoon with a nice male wolf.

On Tuesday morning Chris Eklund connected with a big beautiful male when a pack of 8 wolves hit the ice in front of him.

Big buck of 2011

2011-11-21T01:11:09Z

My good friend John Peterson was fortunate last week to connect with a beautiful, big buck that we have been chasing for the past three years. It is the dream "Canada" deer - heavy, tall, dark antlers. This buck lived in a remote area and had very minimal encounters with humans, but he was very tricky to catch up with. We probably have over 250 trail cam pictures of this deer and up until this November only 2 were during daylight hours. I have attached some pictures of him from last year and you can see he was a little bit taller last year. I'm not sure if he was just getting old and started to decline this year or if he just didn't get as good of a growing season because it was so dry. Last year we had an early spring and a wet summer. Congratulations JP!

It came out to check out a fresh scrape at 1:30 in the afternoon.

2011 Trail cam photo

2010 trail cam photo

You can find more trail cam photos from 2011 and some of the deer that we've been lucky to connect with in the trail cam and hunting galleries. -Gussy

Deer season is here!!!

2011-11-08T16:23:53Z

It's been a while since my last update I know...I've been busy in the woods chasing whitetails around for my friends that have been up hunting with me. So far, it's been kind of a tough season. There are still some good bucks out there, but movement hasn't been great and numbers simply just aren't where they were 3 or 4 years ago...But there is plenty of reason for optimism because there are a lot fawns and quite a few young bucks so hopefully we get a nice easy winter for the deer (and for us) and things should shape up. I do have trail cam photos of a couple of monsters that I will post, so check back soon!

Dave Hartig got season rolling with a nice 11 pointer

Adam Kuntz with a healthy 9 pointer

Jake Kuntz with a horse of a deer!

Dusty Minke with a good 9 pointer

There will be more pictures to follow as well as some good trail cam photos.

-Gussy

Whitefish Bay Bass tournament

2011-10-18T18:38:07Z

The last Sunset Country bass tournament of the year took place October 1-2 out of Whitefish Bay on Lake of the Woods. 20 boats participated and the tournament was won by Sioux Narrows anglers Brian McNanney and Matt Rydberg with 40 pounds, 1 ounce, mostly smallmouths. Mike Reid and I ended up 7th with 33 pounds. I never did find a print off of the results for this tournament. Murphy Paypompee and Thomas White ended up 2nd, while Ted Stewner and Scotia Stewner finished 3rd. The weather was really nice both days and that seemed to have a bit of a negative impact on the fishing...the weights were not as large overall as other years.

Big largemouth in pre-fish

Kevin and Alex Tom with the biggest catch of the tournament, caught on day two - 21-8.

Tournament winners Matt Rydberg and Brian McNanney with their day catch of big smallmouths.

Josh Peacock with some tanker largemouths on day two.

Jay Samsal and Scott Dingwall hold up their big catch on day two.

Shoal Lake Last Chance tournament

2011-09-26T20:06:26Z

The annual Shoal Lake Last Chance bass tournament this past weekend. 46 teams showed up and got to experience an AWESOME weekend of weather...the fishing was pretty good too! The weights were down quite a bit from what they usually are for this event but that was likely caused by the nice weather. Most of the anglers I talked to felt like there would have been a bunch more big fish caught if it had been a little bit cooler out.

I fished with my buddy Dennis Favreau this weekend - we have fished this tournament together for about 10 years now and we had a blast. We caught a bunch of largemouths and smallmouths this weekend en route to a 4th place finish. Caught our largmouths on Northland Jungle Jigs and Rapala DT3 FAT crankbaits. We caught our smallmouths on Northland Impulse Smelt Minnows rigged on a Mimic Minnow jighead.

This was our biggest fish of the weekend - a 4.17 pound largemouth.

1	Ted & Louise Stewner	17.42		19.60		37.02
2	Brian McNanny & Matt Ryberg	18.10	4.35	18.26		36.36
3	Dave Bennet & Dean Howard	18.49		17.19		35.68
4	Jeff Gustafson & Dennis Favreau	17.86	4.03	17.64	4.17	35.50
5	Peter Adams & Daryl Galusha	16.17		18.92	5.08	35.09
6	Darrell Keszler & Wayne Wagner	18.22		16.20		34.42
7	Randy Paishk & Vern Fair	17.67	4.11	16.44	3.19	34.11
8	Trevor Guderyn and Dean Tacknyk	17.94	4.16	16.08		34.02
9	Chad Adrians & Caleb Colwell	18.52	4.07	15.23		33.75
10	Dean & Tanner McDonald	16.64		16.80		33.44

Thanks to the crew at Shoal Lake 39 for hosting another great event for all the anglers - it is our favorite body of water for fish in Sunset Country!