What a day...

Nick and I started the morning at 2:45am Saturday and headed southeast to Sandusky Bay. We arrived at the launch ramp at 5:30 after making a few random stops. The weather was looking grim but Nick and I still held are hopes high that we were going to catch them as well as we did last Sunday. We launched and headed to our spot and for the first hour and a half we were wondering if we made the best decision to fish at all. It was raining off and on and the wind gusts were at my guess about 25mph out of the south west. Without a fish in the boat, Nick was still very optimistic but I was turning a little envious of the other people in the distance netting fish left and right. At about 9am we began to catch them on our pre tournament pattern of throwing lucky craft jerkbaits in and around 10ft of water. The bite wasn't nearly on as well as it was the previous weekend but never the less we were starting to tune in to exactly how they wanted it. At about 11:30 after Nick just landed a 10lb sheephead a huuuuge smallie hit my jerkbait about 3 feet from the boat. I yelled for Nick to get the net and he instantly netted the fish with his bait still in the net. It was very quick thinking on his part and looking back, it was the pinnacle of the tournament. The smallmouth weighed 6lbs even and eventually won us big bass.
Once the bite turned off a bit, we made a few moves and were able to cull up a bit. With about 1 1/2 hours to go, we decided to batton down the hatches and head in. I was starting to get worried about the weather but Nick on the other hand, kept singing the Edmund Fitzgerald song and laughing about the 5 footers that would soon soak us to the bone on the drive in.
At the weigh in, we were a little dissapointed to only take second place with 24.69 lbs but the gentleman that we lossed to is quite the fisherman on that side of lake Erie. Jared Rhode is his name and him and his Dad also run a full time charter service out of Port Clinton. You can locate their site at http://www.dickrhode.com/. From only meeting him yesterday, I can already tell that they run a top notch business and I plan on booking them soon for a walleye or perch outing.
All in all we had a great day and knowing that for the next few weeks I will be fishing locally, I'm kind of bummed that I will have to wait until next year to catch them toad ohio smallies again.