Shoe’sTop Bass Tournament Trail, held its second tournament of their 29th season, on Houghton Lake Michigan. The tournament went out of the West End DNR Launch, on Saturday, May 31st, 2025  The event was named, “The D & R Sport Center Open”, after one of our very great sponsors.

The weather for the tournament started off cloudy, cold, and very strong winds coming out of the North.  The wind built up as the day went on, and was gusting over 20mph at weigh-in.

Even with such bad weather, the fishing turned out to be decent, as we still had 28 limits come to the scales, and also had 6 bass over 4 pounds weighed in.  We only had 7 anglers who was unable to weigh-in any fish.  Also, this was the 2nd  straight tournament that we had a 100% live release.

Congratulations to Nathan Troyanek, from New Boston, who had a 5 bass limit that hit the scales at 19.24#, to take the win.  Nathan’s limit also contained Big Bass for the event at 4.37#.  Second Place went to John Franko, from Clare with 18.77#.  John had a 4.34# bass which was just .03# behind Big Bass.  Billy Booth, from Midland, slid into Third Place with a limit at 17.87#.  Fourth Place was held down by, Brendan Gyulveszi, from Clare with 17.52#.  We had Randy Rogers, from Harrison, weigh-in 17.15# for Fifth Place.

A Special “Thank You”, to D & R Sport Center, for being the title sponsor of this event.  If you have not been to D & R, you should make the trip, as they have everything for fishing.  If you see Randy VanDam, say “Hi”, and tell him you fish Top Bass!