We are living in an unprecedented time that has changed our lives currently. Fishing tournaments nation wide have been postponed or cancelled, this was no exception for us in North Dakota, where all tournament permits were revoked for the months of April and May. Rightly so, because of COVID-19 looming, and traditional tournaments having gatherings for launches/weigh-ins, NDGF made this difficult decision with much consideration to keep anglers safe.
But the collective of anglers that make up the Badlands Bass Bandits wanted to find a way to remain competitive while fishing, to keep the 14-year legacy of this club alive. And in today’s technological era, a solution was found! Today, mobile apps exist for tournament angling that allow a group to compete on any body of water without ever seeing each other, in a catch-record-picture-release format. This created the birth of the Badlands Bass Bandits Social Distancing Fishing Challenge!
We all showed up and launched boats when we wanted to show up and where we wanted to launch from just like a regular day of fishing. We utilized the @fishdonkey app and used a catch-measure-release format to track results, and we were more than thrilled how things worked. This format is different from what we were use to but it kept our season on track and even though we fished with no entry fee anglers still competed for AOY points and the top 3 teams will receive their plaques when we can resume our season as normal! Technology is great thanks to @fishdonkey !
Although the forecast looked promising, calm winds with moderate temperatures, mother nature always knows when the bandits are competing and after the sun rose the wind came with it. But this did not stop the bandits as many fish were caught!
Coming in with the biggest stringer and biggest fish of the day was Team Bullinger with a whopping 96” stringer of 5 fish and a 21.25” behemoth big bass! This was a new PB for Scott, congrats on your new PB!! Coming in 2nd was team Blomberg (Colton Blomberg, Tanner Mallams, & John Lancaster) with a 93” stringer and close behind in 3rd was team Arth with 91” of bass.
The top three teams said it was all in the finesse; jigs, tubes, and wacky rigs were what got the job done for today’s winners. It was a new way of competing for the club, but a viable way to keep our tradition of competitive club angling alive, and the competitive spirit of our club remains alive!
Please join us for our next event on May 23rd at Wood Lake!
