It’s been an incredible year for Joe Bricko and Dylan Maki with their 3 wins out of 4 scorable events on the AIM series tournament circuit. For Maki and Bricko, this season was all about discipline, and that’s what led them to the AIM state championship win at Lake of the Woods and solidifying their team of the year title.
We sat down with Joe Bricko to talk about their approach to the 2-day tourney Lake of the Woods and what played out to get them the win.
Prefishing and a Bumpy Day 1
Bricko says it all started with conversations within their network of anglers. The Lake had been fishing very well, but something changed the week of the tournament, and the fish got funky. Despite the funky bite, everyone knew winning it would take a BIG bag.
Late on Thursday, before the tournament, they saw a big wind that kept areas limited, but they discovered a spot along the south shore out of the wind with fish holding in 26-28 feet. Here, it was just a matter of sorting out those biggest marks in a sea of mid-20-inch class fish. Prefishing continued to yield exactly that; lots of fish in the 24-28 inch range, but Bricko and Maki knew those wouldn’t be the winning fish, and this is where the discipline comes into play. ..But more on that later. With prefishing lackluster, it was time to figure out what had changed. A subtle late summer cold front broke up the pods of fish that had been seen in the weeks before the tournament, so you really had to pay close attention to electronics to find fish as schools weren’t evident and instead replaced with individual fish sucked tight to the bottom. This was key to the team’s tournament strategy. Focusing on those odd-looking bumps on the bottom in hopes they were big, lethargic walleye riding out the cold front conditions. Couple this front with the classic late summer lull, where fishing slows down, and you have some tough fishing on your hands going into the last AIM tournament of the year.
To find fish in this giant haystack they call the Lake of the Woods, Bricko and Maki utilize 2d sonar at higher speeds to cover water over vast areas and look for signs of life. They weren’t stopping for just anything; they wanted to find areas with the most life and dissect them further from there, picking out only the biggest marks on the screen and avoiding anything else that didn’t look like a no-brainer 30-inch fish. The beauty of these Lake of the Woods fish is that they’re so well built that you can separate the giants from the nice but not good enough 20-25-inch fish. So the approach was to cover as much water as possible and cast in front of as many big marks as possible. But covering water was made difficult by a stiff south wind, which limited where to find fish. Being forced to a south shoreline, Bricko and Maki set about implementing their strategy in a smaller area, which turned out to be a real blessing. A rather middle-of-nowhere spot in 26-28 feet on this south shoreline showed signs of life, and the team set about meticulously sorting through schools and only firing on the biggest marks with a jig and worm or bobber and leech combo. The strategy worked well by providing them with 43 pounds by 9am on the first day. As the morning window closed, they decided to run to a nearby spot in hopes of culling some fish while leaving their honey hole behind. This run ended up costing them some time as the substrate was just too muddy to effectively fish and make out those bigger marks tight to the bottom, and so they went from 9am to 1pm without an upgrade. With time running out on day 1, they began power fishing with the Minn Kota Quest trolling motor chugging along at over 4mph and scanning quickly on the bow in search of the first upgrade of the day late in the game. Panning over, they revealed a big mark sitting off the bottom about six feet as a sort of “gimmie.” The problem with sharp shooting these fish on Lake of the Woods is that the water is stained, and the only way fish are going to bite is if you make a perfect cast and presentation by putting the bait right in front of their heads. This can be exceedingly difficult with waves and wind, but an impeccable cast was made to land them a hot 30-inch fish for an upgrade.
Jig Selection and Set-Up:
Bricko and Maki relied on two approaches depending on the fish observed on the screen, so it took some quick judgment calls to know which presentation to throw and what version to throw. In the simplest terms, their versatility in presentations came down to weight. When fishing a jig and crawler, Bricko and Maki alternated between bright orange 1/8 Northland Deep-Vee jigs and 1/2 ounce VMC Mooneye jigs. When those fish were sucked tight to bottom, the 1/2 jig got the nod. Meanwhile, more suspended fish got 1/8 ounce jig. The key either way was to keep the jig above the fish while managing a nice pendulum arc. If the fish are on bottom in 26-28 feet, you need a heavier jig to get down quickly and account for that arc. You could make a brilliant cast, but if the jig is too light, you will fall short of the fish’s nose while the jig takes an eternity to get down to depth. Yet a fish from 6 feet off bottom to 6 feet under the surface needs something that won’t pendulum away too fast. So it took incredible accuracy and control to deliver the jig on the fish’s nose while making a game-time decision to choose what weight jig to throw the moment a fish came on the LiveScope screen. Bobbers accounted for a few of their fish, but the main issue with bobbers was that you could be accurate distance-wise but not always depth-wise and were therefore inefficient for getting down and hitting them right on the nose.
Rod selection was equally critical and varied significantly between the two patterns. The team’s go-to rod all season long was the 7’6″ JTX light power spinning rod. This rod is ideal for fishing a 1/8-ounce jig and crawler in that it’s light enough to give the worm a subtle undulating action and also light enough to allow fish to eat the bait while the anglers remain undetected. Its long parabolic bend was also great for handling big fish and absorbing their massive head shakes. For line on this set up, its straight 8 pound monofilament.
The other rod of choice for the 1/2-ounce jigs and deeper fish was a JT Custom Prototype spinning rod soon to be on the market. The rod goes the same 7’6″ but with 15-20 percent more power, making it a medium-light blank. Here, the switch is made away from mono onto 10-pound braid with a 10-pound fluorocarbon leader. The braid helps with reduced sensitivity at greater depths and provides more solid hooksets without line stretch. They worked these 1/2-ounce jigs on the bottom by snapping the braid on a slack line to create disturbances without moving the bait too far from their nose, as most of the bottom-dwelling lunkers gently sucked the bait in rather than a heavy strike. These fish also had a habit of picking it up and dropping it, making sensitivity and timing your hook sets vital.
Again, we go back to discipline. The discipline to focus on the bigger marks and avoid “buck fever” when it comes to just wanting to throw on any fish you see, hoping it will magically turn into a 30-incher on the way up. That’s a lot of time and effort wasted on the wrong fish, especially when every cast counts when it comes to accuracy. With this tactic, the odds are lower, but the reward is higher if you’re dialed in enough to effectively find and fish those behemoth marks. Equate this to being dialed in darts hitting the bullseye all day long for two days, except you’re looking at the dart board while getting battered with waves and a strong headwind. The stroke of luck and (skill) between the two of them is that one or the other angler was hot at a given time, and their chemistry allowed them to tell who was hottest and let them man the trolling motor to rely on boat control and deadly accurate casts. So, between the two, one was always dialed and able to make critical casts while having the faith to put them in control of the game. Bricko and Maki battled it out this way and finished day 1 with 50.03 pounds.
DAY 2 and Team of The Year Odds
As mentioned, Bricko and Maki won 3 of 4 scorable tournaments over the season, but the tournament actually has 5 events. 4 qualifiers and a state championship. And the way it works is you get to drop one of your qualifiers. Bricko and Maki missed an AIM qualifier on Big Stone Lake this season due to an invite to fish at Cabela’s NTC event on Lake Erie after winning an MWC event on Cass Lake last September. Missing this tournament entirely meant losing points towards the AIM Team of The Year title, but a good finish at Lake of The Woods would surely lock it in.
Bricko and Maki, however, came into day 2 leading in Team of The Year points and held onto that lead all season. Bricko did some quick math and figured with their 30-point lead ahead of the next team and good bag on day 1, they could sit back and enjoy less pressure on day 2. Confidence was high, knowing that grinding out a big bag wasn’t needed, but it all changed with a delay in take-off. A heavy fog rolled in, which held take-off back until 9am, so their whole morning bite, where they caught most of their big fish on day 1, was lost. Once the boats were cleared for take-off, Bricko and Maki arrived at their spot around 10am, and it seemed the big fish they had found the day before in 26-28 feet had left. But the choice was made to stay and see what they could make of what was left. On the first day, they were boat flipping 25 inchers in an effort to quickly get back to scanning and making casts that count. Here, on day 2, it was live and die by the net with almost every fish. 22-24 inch fish were welcomed to fill the card with a reasonable bag, and with high spirits, the team headed out to deeper water in around 32 feet to search for mid-day giants and upgrades. Unlike day 1, this move paid off BIG TIME by them landing 31, 30 3/4, 29 1/2, 29 3/4, and 28 1/2 inch fish in 3 hours. So the stars aligned, and they decided to come in a half hour early to play it safe and not stress, knowing they had about as good of a bag as they could have dreamed. The team motto, “Don’t Stop Believing,” blasted over the boat speakers as they came to land, but with all the great teams present, they knew it wasn’t over until after weigh-in.
Day 1 solidified the tournament, and they never wavered from their plan, which is a testament to how they handled the entire season. Bricko states, “All year, we never really went for the layup. Just go for the win every time and stick to the plan while making the right game-time decisions.” Bricko and Maki finished day 2 with a total weight of 106.24, which put them over 3 pounds ahead of the second-place finishers and gave them more than enough points to take home Team of The Year.
This tournament was a major testament to having confidence and chemistry with your teammates, not being distracted by other possibilities or variables, and just sticking to the plan of focusing on the presentation while making every fish count. Big congrats to Joe Bricko and Dylan Maki on an incredible tournament season, the win at Lake of The Woods, and the title of 2024 AIM Team Of The Year.
