Gull Lake Champions Tour Recap
Vocelka Continues Hot Streak on Champions Tour with a Top-Five Finish, and top-ten finish for Schultz
The summer humidity and temperatures were being cut by a comfortable, yet chilly NW wind as the anglers and boat officials sat at Ernie’s on Gull, looking at the beautiful Gull Lake awaiting the morning blast off for the second stop of the 2024 Champions Tour.
The buzz the night before at the pre-tournament meeting was that Gull Lake was fishing extremely well, and that there would be plenty of fish catches, and this held true, as one hour into fishing on Gull Lake, the 64 Champions Tour anglers had caught 442 bass for a total of 660 lb’s.
Northland Tackle Pro, Dane Vocelka, was locked into a fierce battle with Minnesota tournament fishing legend, Dean Capra for the lead throughout the first half of the fishing day, while two-time 2024 Champions Tour event winner, Hunter Wendt took the first half lead.
Following the thirty-minute midday break at Ernie’s, the anglers returned to the lake, where Capra and Vocelka both blitzed back out to battle for the lead to begin the second half of fishing. Both anglers quickly bumped up their weights to over the 70 lb mark shortly after noon.
Vocelka ended up catching a total of 54 bass for a total weight of 103 lb 3 oz to finish in fourth place and utilized the new Northland Fishing Tackle Elite Series Pro Sunny B Deep crankbait to locate several schools of Gull Lake bass during practice holding on the main lake grass flats. “That Pro Sunny B Deep crankbait has an awesome action to it, and you can cast super far, which allowed me to cover a lot of water,” explained Dane.
During the tournament day, Dane fished the Elite Series Nedster (1/4 oz), when it was calm to catch most of his bass. When the wind picked up, he switched up to flipping a 3/8 oz jig, or an Elite Series Finesse Football Jig (3/8 oz).
Noah Schutlz built off his top-finish at the Mille Lacs Pro-Am event to finish the Gull Lake event in seventh place with 53 bass for a total weight of 98 lb 8 oz. Schultz, like Vocelka, used the Nedster jig to catch most of his Gull Lake bass.
“I used the 1/8 oz Nedster as the bass were high in the water column, and sitting above the grass,” said Noah. “The slow fall of the Nedster drove the bass wild, and they would hit it on the fall.
During the second half of the day, as the sun got higher in the sky, Schultz caught most of his bass flipping the grass, but still rotated in the Nedster to get some bites.
Rounding out the top twenty for Northland Tackle Pro’s was Matt Hollweg who finished in 14th place with 35 bass, for a total weight of 76 lb 8 oz. Matt stuck with a tried-and-true Gull Lake technique of flipping a heavy Texas-rig (1 ½ oz) to the deep milfoil clumps. Hollweg did catch a few Gull Lake smallmouth on the ¼ oz Chartreuse Nedster head as well.
The Champions Tour will hold their final regular season event of the 2024, on Tuesday, August 6th, on the St. Croix River, going out of Hudson, Wisconsin. This will be the first time that the Champions Tour, and many of its anglers have been on this body of water, so it will for sure be an exciting event.
Following this event, the top 32 anglers in the Angler of the Year standings, will be given the opportunity to fish for a brand-new Skeeter Boat/Yamaha Outboard at the 2024 Champions Tour Championship.
Currently Northland Fishing Tackle Pro, Dane Vocelka is in third place, trailing leader Huner Wendt by five points. Other Northland Tackle pro’s that are currently in the Championship cut include, Aaron Teal is in 13th place, Matt Hollweg (21st), Joel Willert (24th), and Noah Schultz (26th).
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