Today was the first Bass Pro Shops Associates Tournament of the season. This is a 4 Tournament Series that culminates with the top 10 teams qualifying for the Bass Pro Shops Associate Classic.
The tournament was held on Sparrow Lake and there were 14 teams (boats) entered. Blast Off was at 7:00 am. with the weigh-in scheduled for 3:00 pm.
I was without either of my regular partners, Pogger and Terry couldn't make this one, so I was fortunate enough to team up with Greg Butchart, a fellow Bass Pro Associate who was also without a partner for this tournament. Greg was the guy I put on the 5 1/2 pounder last week at Lake W.
We had a good game plan and by 9:00 am we already had our limit of Bass (5 over 12")!! We would spend the afternoon culling out smaller fish as we caught and replaced them with bigger ones. We made our way over to the backside of an island which had a nice weedy drop off. All of a sudden I've got a nice fish on (at least 4 Lb.), but before you know it he does a classic head shake as if to say "Oh no you don't", and he shook me off. I must say it was a thing of beauty as he flared his gills and walked across the water, a mental picture that I won't soon forget.
We made several more passes along this spot. Greg gets a nice one on, that we get right to the net. He takes one more pass and "ping" it breaks his line!!! This is another 4+ pounder!!!
Another pass and I get a huge fish on a dinger! This is a HUGE FISH and I'm yelling right away for Greg to get the net, Greg is right on it, we both get a good look at this pig and its in the 5-6 pound class, when all of a sudden "Ping"!!! We have probably just lost a total of 13 to 14 Lbs of Fish which would have pretty much guaranteed victory!!!! We both just sat there in shock! My knees were shaking. Knowing that we had probably just blown our chances of winning the tournament, we had to pick ourselves back up and try to get back on our game. We made a couple of more passes and then moved on planning to come back later after the area had settled down again (we did return later, but the bite had shut down).
We shot to the top of the lake in Maclean's Bay and got on fish again. Greg pegged a beauty smallie watching it come out of a clump of weeds and stopping his retrieve just for a moment and watched it inhale his jig and immediately set the hook beautifully, this puppy wasn't going to get off.
We continued to cull our fish and headed back to the south end of the lake and fished the river near the launch. We saw our co-worker, Hung Tran and his partner working the docks ahead of us. What we didn't know at the time was that they had had a tough day and only had 2 fish in their livewell when they got back to the river with a half hour to go. They pegged three fish off of the docks, the last one which we watched. What we didn't realize at the time was that we were actually watching Hung and his buddy Charlie beat us with that fish!!!!
At the weigh-in we were shocked to see how much others had struggled. Some of the favourites didn't even come in with a full bag (5 fish)!! Our bag of fish weighed in at 11.60 Lbs. Hung weighed in 11.72 Lbs. and also beat Greg's 3.52 smallie by 0.14 Lbs. (less than 2 oz.) for Big Fish and a $100 BPS Gift card.
My biggest of the day:
One of Greg's smaller ones.
It was funny to think that we actually watched Hung beat us. He's a great guy and it was nice to see him win the first tournament that he entered. He walked away with $400, while we picked up $200 which was not too bad considering we figured we had blown the day with those lost fish.
Our biggest 4:
Charlie and Hung's fish:
All in all a great day on the water with a bunch of great guys. Pogger will have a bit of pressure on him in the next tournament on Rice Lake in two weeks!! 8O)
More pictures and results are here.
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