Today was the day I had been waiting for....The Bass Pro Associate's Classic. The top 10 teams from the four summer tournaments would qualify for the Classic. I finished 4th overall out of about 20 boats to qualify. I had not pre-fished a tournament all season and had made out pretty well so I didn't pre-fish this tournament either (big mistake) despite the fact that all the other qualifiying teams had. The tournament was being launched at Camp Ashtabula on Pigeon Lake which provided access to the Tri-Lakes (Pigeon, Upper Buckhorn and Chemung).
The weather at launch time was excellent:
Pogger and I took off for Buckhorn with a bunch of waypoints that I had been given from a couple of buddies. Most of the strategy was based on working the shallows believing the bass had still not moved to deeper water. We worked the first few points to no avail. We moved from waypoint to waypoint throwing everything out there. Paul caught a little one that looked like it might measure the minimum 12 inches. We work a weed patch by a rocky shoal near the main channel and I finally catch one. Its bigger than Paul's but certainly no monster. We decide to abandon plan A and headed the 10- 15 miles to the north end of Pigeon Lake. We worked a few rocky shoals but nothing. We headed the 10 miles back near the launch and finished the last couple of hours fishing a shallow bay nearby. What a downer coming in to weigh knowing that we had eliminated ourselves.
When we went to weigh our fish, Paul's fish did not measure which added insult to injury. We weighed in my one fish for a miserly 1.86 Lbs.
It turns out that the guys that won only had 2 small dinks 5 hours into the tournament. They started fishing a deep weedline right off the launch site and caught and weighed in 5 fish weighing 14.76 lbs!
The neat thing was that Jay had gone to Michigan only 4 days earlier to pick up his Ranger Bass Boat. What a great way to celebrate his new aquisition!!
They won $1000 for first place and another $300 BPS gift card for big Smallmouth (4.12 Lbs.)
Paul and I finished a dismal 9th, but still collected $150.
Not a great performance, but still a good day on the water with one of my boys.
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