The day started with the typical tournament day jitters. The cool thing about this tournament was that we had a caddy. My Dad dropped Nick and I in the water left for the day and at the end of the tournament I called him on his cell and he came and picked us up.
After Dad dropped us off, we met up with Nick's buddy Tadd by the docks in the marina. I have to say that it was pretty cool to put a face with a name. I heard him on the phone a half a dozen times but this morning was the first time I met him in person. The thing that stood out about our conversation was when Nick told him that I found some good fish yesterday and he said, "Well (in his southern draw), you guys might screw around and get 19-20 pounds and cash a good check in this thing." We wished each other good luck and seperated in order to launch.
Nick and I touched fists and said our typical "Do what we do" pre launch routine.
The temperature in the morning was a blistering 39 degrees so we pulled our phishhedz masks over our face and headed down the river 38 miles to our first stop. Despite Nicks flu symptoms, I didn't take it easy on him and he let me know it once we finally stopped. That Legend Alpha 199 handled everything like a charm and like I promised, we passed at the minimum 6 boats.
Once we arrived to our first spot at about 7:30am I hurried to make the ceremonial first cast while Nick was still complaing about how I broke his back. I was a little scared when we didn't get a fish until about our 20th cast. Unfortunately it was too short, but we then proceeded to, as Nick would say, catch the fire out of them. We had a limit by about 8am. During that time we caught a double of 2.5 pounders. It was pretty exciting to say the least, but it was hard to stick to the plan because we couldn't get any size out of them.
By 10:30 we decided to make a short run to another unnamed creek for some more fish that I found the day before. I was optimistic that we may be able to get some more bigger fish from it but this was also the spot that Dad and I wore em out on the day before.
We were able to upgrade to about 16 or 17 pounds before we made our final move to a deeper ditch a little closer to a main lake point. At first I could tell Nick wasn't feeling it, or he was just a little under the weather. Regardless, after he boated and landed his 6.7 pounder, I could start to see a little skip in his step through the way he was carrying himself. About 5 minutes later I proceeded to catch two 5 pounders almost on back to back casts. By that time Nick and I both were getting the shakes with the possibility of really making some noise in this tournament. We had one 3.4 pounder that we had to cull to really make this thing interesting and both of us knew it.
This is the point that I will never forget. I was trying to hold the boat in about a 20 mph wind and believe me, it was taking almost all of his 101 lb thrust minnkota. I was slow rolling my revenge spinnerbait in the front of this brush, right over the ledge of the trough when I felt some tree branches or sunken brush in about 6 foot of water. I told Nick that I was going to slow down and fish it again b/c I was afraid he was getting a little frustrated with me back boating him. On that next cast I hooked a bass that immedietely pulled drag and headed straight for the bushes. At the same time that I reached down and turned the trolling motor up to maneuver the fish to deep water, Nick jumped to the front deck. He assisted me through words on the propper way to keep him from wrapping me up and before I knew it, he landed the fish in the net and sat the fish on the deck and proclaimed, "It might be over, It might be over." We culled the 3.5 pounder and for the next 2 minutes decided back and forth to either keep fishing and risk not making it back on time or allow ourselves 1.5 hours to get back and hopefully not put to much strain on the fish. We decided to batton down the hatches and head for the weigh in. Kentucky lake was looking a bit like Lake Erie but again the Legen handled it like a charm.
We arrived to the marina with about 30 minutes to spare. I called Dad to come pick us up when he immedietely asked me, "So you must have had a bad day then didn't ya, you are coming in a bit early?" "Yeah" I told him, We are ready to go home. Boy was he surprised when Nick loaded the weigh in bag with what we knew was our biggest weight to date. It took both of us to carry our bag to the scales and to prove how nervous we were. A gentleman from Jet A Marina told us to hold up our fish so he could get a picture and Nick and I proceeded to hold up our bag as opposed to what everyone else in the tournament was doing by getting their fish out and showing them off for the camera. When we arrived to the stage the announcer proclaimed, "Looks like a nice bag here" and proceeded to state that the leading weight was 24 pounds even and went as far as to ask me what I thought we had. I told him that I thought we had around 24 pounds and when he uncovered the digital reading and I read 23.14 I was excited and a little bummed at the same time. It was the wierdest feeling I ever had. How could I be bummed for weighing in our personal best and knowing that we had the potential of cashing a good check? Nick on the other hand, couldn't talk, mainly b/c he thought he was going to thow up. Was it the flu or nerves or a little of both. He will never admit it was nerves, and personally I have never seen him not able to talk on stage! We ended the day in third place and missed first and $5,000 by a minimal 4 ounces.
That night Dad and I reflected on the tournament and Dad proceeded to ask me if we used this bait or that bait, or how he would have done this instead. We both realized that hind sight is 20/20 and we all knew that Nick and I did the best that we could.
In reflection, Maybe we could have stayed and fished a little longer but neither Nick or I made a single mistake that day, and our decisions to leave biting fish to find bigger fish acually paid off.
Stay tuned to my next blog, I will talk about the drive home and the non-fishing things about or trip that made it special.
