Nothing like a vague title to suck you into reading a blog post….. This post is about our fishing tournament, a very good time had by all. My son and I finally stopped talking and signed up for a bass tournament on our chain of lakes. We kept saying our expectations were to not just get shut out, but in all actuality, I think both of us kind of hoped that we would fish well enough to at least get our money back.
For folks who watch bass tournaments on TV, most of us realize that these guys just don’t pull up to a lake, drop the boat in and start catching fish. There is the travel from lake to lake, hours of pre-fishing and then fishing for a few day, spending time with sponsors and lastly marketing yourself so that you can earn a few dollars to support your family. My son and I didn’t have to do all of these things, but we did get to experience a few of them.
The night before our tournament we headed off to the pre-tournament meeting. This meeting was to ensure our registration paperwork was in order, select the lake we were going to fish and get our start order to leaving the dock area. After checking in, we stood around and sized up some of the competition. I think it is safe to say that we were surprised at the crowd around us, but at the same time intrigued by our fellow fisherman and how they would stack up against our skills. The coordinator of the event went over the rules and then it was time for the main event, selecting the lake and getting your start order.
Now for this tournament, you had the choice of selecting two lakes to start from. We weren’t sure how this was going to work, but were crossing our fingers that we would get the chance to fish out home lakes. The process began and we soon learned that we would be able to fish the water we wanted, however so were about 30 other boats. The coordinator of the event began calling out numbers and when our number was called at the 8th spot, my son and I both breathed a sigh of relief. We figured by being the 8th boat out of the launch area, we would be able to get to one of the spots we had targeted.
After the meeting, we headed back to the cabin, for the final preparation of rods, the trolling motor, life jackets, tackle boxes and oh yea a couple of game so euchre. We headed off to bed knowing that tomorrow we were getting up early and potentially, just potentially we had the chance to win some money.
The alarm went off at 5:50am and we both popped up, (OK, maybe I am exaggerating a bit here), anticipation of some big fish driving us to get moving as quick as possible. We were both pretty happy that we had prepped our stuff the night before as the clock moved rather quickly and before we knew it we were heading over to the launch area. We pulled into the area and began the wait, along with the 30 other boats. As the clock approached 7, all of a sudden the boats began to explode out of the launch area. My son and I counted them and when #7 took off we knew the time had come. As the flag waved for us to take off, my son gunned the boat and……we were off. Whew, one of my biggest fears was that my motor would fail us and we would have to sit there putzing along with our trolling motor.
We flew across the lake and saw that one of the boats had taken the spot we had hoped to fish first. We made a quick adjustment and moved up the shore a ways and before you knew it we were into a groove of casting and trolling. Another boat cut in front of us but they were fishing deeper than us so we continued along the same line hoping that we would be able to at least put a fish or two in the boat.
About 45 minutes into the tournament, my son said fish on both of us held our breath as we guided the fish to the boat. We put it in the net and both of us knew that our fish was not going to win us any big fish awards but it did put us in line for the smallest fish. My son cranked up the livewell and in it went. So far the morning was going well, the motor’s were working well and we were not going to get shut out. Now the same couldn’t be said for another boat that we glided past. Their trolling motor had crapped out on them and were hoping we had some duct tape along to that they could McGyver it back together. No such luck for them and so they continued to struggle with their motor.
An hour or so later, we came upon the area we had wanted to start with, but knew it had been fished by a couple of boats already, so we weren’t expecting anything out of this hole. There was also another distraction on the dock, a guy training his dog. We continued to pitch and reel in hopes that the guy would leave with his dog and low and behold, away they walked. My son tossed his worm near the dock and down went his pole. Unfortunately for us, the species he pulled out of the lake was not one we were looking for on this Saturday morning. My son scored a very nice 25 inch northern pike but for what we were looking for, this fish was worthless.
We continued down to the shoreline and decided the spot that we would turn around at and also have something to eat. One thing that you seem to forget to do when fishing is to eat and drink plenty of fluids. We floated past our ending spot and out came the bagels and peanut butter. We discussed our next options and decided to float back through the area we had just fished just in the hopes that we had missed something. As we began our final jaunt through the area, my son’s line tightened and our hearts started beating a bit faster. After a bit of a struggle he landed the fish and we now had two in the boat. Something else happened as my son was reeling in, my pole bent down and again we had that hope that we finally had landed something decent.
As my fish got closer to the boat, I knew it was bigger than what we had previously caught. As my son extended the net, I saw that it was good size and well both of us were hoping that this was the fish to change our luck. The fish weighed in at a big over 3 pounds, which for us was a nice fish. Now the odd thing about a tournament is that you really don’t know how the other boats are doing so it is important to remain focused on what you are doing and not worry about them.
So with 3 fish in the boat, we decided to head off to our next destination. We began to fish the area and cross behind another boat who was fishing the area. As soon as we had passed them, I landed another fish and in the well it went, 4 in the boat. We had already exceeded our expectations and had met our goal for the day of not getting shut out. Now our minds began to wander to start thinking about actually placing. My son’s mind was calculating weight and was thinking out loud that we had a legitimate chance of placing. That is a funny thing when you are spending that many hours on the water, your mind had time to think and play through various scenarios. All of a sudden we went from a goal of not getting shut out to thinking about bringing home some serious cash.
Over the next couple of hours, we did land more fish, however all of them were similar in size. In fact, my son landed a ton of fish, the problem is that all of them were in the 10 inch range which were not legal fish. There was one major decision we had to make, do we sacrifice weight and take a run at smallest fish. We had one in the livewell that was just a tad over 12 inches. In my eyes, we didn’t have enough weight to win, but this fish might be a nice $200 that would help us break even for the day.
As the end of the day drew near, both of us agreed, we would keep the little fella and take a stab at smallest fish as long as we didn’t land a lunker that would we both felt would move us up the chart.
At about 1:40pm, we decided, 6.5 hours was enough and we headed back to weigh in our bag. What happens next, will have to be continued in next week’s posting…….
Outdoors in Minnesota 