Still in the Money!!!

Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The second stop on the Bass Pro Associate Tournament Tour was Rice Lake. Paul was able to fish this one, so I took the boat to Bass Pro with me on Tuesday and went to Pogger's house after work. Rachel was already in bed when I got there, but I spent some fun time getting caught up with Evan's latest adventures at camp etc.
Rice Lake was not very high on the confidence scale. I've only fished it once before in our tournament there 2 years ago and Terry and I struggled all day and only came in with 7.08 Lbs. for a poor finish. Rice is like a home lake for a lot of the Associates so the cards were stacked against us. Our goal was a top ten finish with 18 boats entered. We tried a totally different strategy this time and shot the 20-25 miles to the other end of the lake, up the Otonobee River almost all the way to Hastings! We were on the water for 25 minutes before we wet a line! While others were targeting Smallies, our initial strategy was to work the heavier weed areas for Largemouths.
We had marked about a dozen spots on the GPS that we wanted to try. The plan was to start at the top of the lake and work our way back through the day.
We stopped at a good looking spot and worked the pads and quickly put two in the boat. We worked our way through a few spots and by 10 am we had our five fish limit and spent the balance of the day trying to cull out the smaller ones.
The lure of the day was a Watermelon BrushHawg. While we continually changed up with various presentations, the BrushHawg consistently got the hits. We did a good job of landing everything we hooked. The afternoon proved a little frustrating as we were unable to cull any of our smaller fish as the day wore on.
Surprisingly at weigh-in, others were not doing as well as we expected. We thought that it would take 16 - 18 pounds to win, but in fact the winners only weighed 13.56 Lbs. We weighed in at 11.52 which was good enough for 4th place and $150!!!



More info here: http://www.rogercraig.ca/bps/2009/20090722rice/rice.htm

We picked up some Swiss Chalet with some of our winnings and chowed down with Andrea, Evan & Rachel back at their place. Chris had sent an old cell phone for Rachel which turned out to be a great hit with Rachie.........

It was great to see Evan and Rachel again. Rachel is growing up so fast!