|
|
 The team boat fully loaded and ready to go tied up at West Basin Marina in St Joe, MI
This was our first tournament of the season and the first time we have fished together since we reconfigured the team boat with all of our new gear. We are getting used to all of it but despite all new equipment we performed well for our first tournament out as the fishing heated up in St Joseph, Michigan as the water temps warmed and the fish moved in. The tournament format for the Pro Division was catch 15 weigh the best twelve - 10 pts. per fish plus a point per pound - 10 bonus points for each tour caught with a max of 30 points for 3 trout.
Day One: Greeted all the competitors with flat calm seas and a bit of fog and haze. The starting time of 6:45 am ticked by and we ran for our A spot in 190 FOW just a bit south of the pierheads. After about 30 minutes of running out we began setting our spread and had lines in aprroximately 7:15 am and had 14 fish by 8:22 am which was a strategic and tactical error because we began pulling lines when we had our 9th fish but caught an additional 5 small cohos while clearing - which only left 1 slot for a trout of any type. In retrospect we should have gone into nuetral and pulled lines so we could have gotten the lines in before filling our ticket. We spent another hour or so trying to fill the one remaing slot with a trout which did not cooperate as we pulled another coho which closed our day and put us out of contention for the tournament.
Because of the small size of the fish there is practically no way to make up 30 bonus points with fish and weight - so missing your trout is the death nail to your tournament hopes. We did bring a 12 fish limit to the scales with 47.13 lbs and 120 points for 167.13.
Day Two: Changing condition greeted all of the competitors with a good 3 foot sea state with roller in the 5 to 6' range mixed in. Having nothing to be be ashamed of after Day One, considering we brought a limit to the board, we modified our strategy to try to put trout in the boat earlier. We stopped short in 95 FOW and setup a South troll setting up a Laker and Big King program. Our first fish was a chunky good sized Laker, followed by 3 good sized Kings, and then we managed a 3# Steelhead for our 2nd trout. Once we hit the alotted time we allowed for fishing this area we moved out to our A spot and set back up trying to fill our ticket for the day. We set up and put 8 coho in the boat in 45 minutes giving us 13 fish and leaving us two spots for out last trout or upgrade kings.
 Don't forget your sunglasses ashore or you have to wear the super fly shades - as exhibited by Jim 'WingNut' Athey
We did exactly what we set out to do - put two limits on the board and let the cards fall where they may. We were extremely happy with our performance, with our ability to get the job done on esentially a new fishing platform, and to set a strategy for Day Two that worked out almost to a T missing one trout but producing a much heavier box and taking advantage of some bonus points. Everyone's performance was outstanding working as a well-oiled machine - we missed only a couple of fish for both days and managed to have everyone working in conjunction with netting, angling, and setting going on simultaneously. |
|
