What an AWESOME Weekend!!

Anyhooo....Friday we prefished all day and only caught a handful of 6-7 pound fish. We also lost a bunch of fish that just wouldn't stay hooked up. 

We knew come tournament day that we had to find bigger fish to compete against a field of 50 teams that are all locals and hot sticks on Lake Erie.

It was a nice day Friday, and the forecast was looking even better for tournament day with a West wind of less than 5mph and becoming light and variable around noon.   A lot of sunshine was expected too. Thank goodness the forecast was correct, because it was the best day on the water since last year.

The morning of take off, we knew where our number one spot was going to be, and we headed there. 

The lake was calm and it made running easy, and it was one of the very few days on this lake where you can test out your wide open throttle.

When we neared our first location, close to Southbass Island, I said, "Geez, the lake looks calm", and Scott replied with, "I've never seen it look like a pond before". But, after we entered that "calm" water, we realized it wasn't "calm like glass" as we thought, but skimmed over with a layer of ice!

We slowed the boat and decided we had better move to plan B, as the planer boards would have a hard time moving through the ice field and the lines would most assuredly be damaged or cut.

We decided to wait until the hot sun coming up melted the ice, so we moved back towards F and G cans and set up our first trolling pass.

We hadn't gone a 1/2 mile and we hooked into one. She was a healthy 7 pound fish that we managed to get into the boat. While it took the skunk out of the livewell, we knew it wasn't a winning type of fish. We had to catch bigger ones to compete with this field of anglers.

After putting a nice 9 pound fish in the boat on the second pass, we did the one thing most tournament anglers never do..."Leave fish to find fish".

However, we knew what was in our first choice of a spot if the water conditions were good, so we pulled our lines and headed over there. Luckily it was only a 5 minute boat ride from where we were. So, if the conditions were not to our liking, or we didn't mark any fish there, we could always run back and not lose that much time in the process.

When we got to our original spot and set the lines, neither one of us was feeling all that confident in the conditions, but neither one of us had said anything.  We were marking fish, so that encouraged us a little more, but the water clarity was cleaner, and the water temps colder, than where we were before.

After trolling for about 20-30 minutes with nothing, we hooked up with the third fish of the day and it was another pig. It was just shy of 10 pounds, so we put her in the livewell too. 

Now we just needed two more to make a limit and one more to upgrade that 7 pound fish we caught early on.

After catching another big fish, we were talking and found out that neither one of us had good feelings about the spot when we originally got there, but that feeling had now changed. We both laughed. 

The next fish would come unbottoned half way in, and the next one would be another fish just under 10 pounds. We now had our limit of 5 fish to weigh in and now we just needed to upgrade that smaller fish.

We still had a lot of time to fish, and ended up catching that upgrade a 1/2 hour before we had to head back to the launch site.

That would end up being our last fish of the day.

Unfortunately for the fellas in Scott's boat, who were fishing by us all day, they would end the day with zero fish, making it a very long day for them. 

They had us scratching our heads, because they were doing the exact same program as Scott and I. 
And, anyone that has ever spent an entire day watching other people catch fish, when you're not,  know exactly how they felt.

Scott and I finished in 6th place out of 50 teams and were only one of 12 limits brought to the scales that day. Our program was running deep husky jerks (size 12's) in the "Sexy Shad" and "Blue/Chrome/Orange belly" colors 60-90 back.

After we got back to my house to put the boat to bed and take some pictures of the big fishies, we celebrated with a couple of steaks on the grill and a couple of cold beers to end a spectacular day of fishing for us.

Thanks Scotty for asking me to fish this event with you! I had an absolutely fantastic time, and the memory of that day will stay with me forever. :)

April 6th is my first official charter of the season, and I hope the weather is fishable, because I love fishing with these two gentlemen who fished with me last year,  and I want to put them on fish like we had this past weekend. Keeping my fingers crossed that Momma Nature stays in a good mood! :)