MaineBassMan Posted October 12, 2011 Posted October 12, 2011 We finished up the tournament season last weekend with our bass club, The Maine Blade Runners, they have a web page. It was a long season this year, we had 20 regular season tournaments and then the two day fish-off. You have to earn your way into the fish-off and only the top 16 boats can fish. There were some teams that didn't make the cut. The fish-off is like our clubs version of the "Classic". My father and I had a good season over all, not as good as some years prior but good none the less. We had one 2nd place finish,(should have been two but our boat had issues and we had seven pounds taken from us for being 7 minutes late), and two third place finishes. We had a bunch more where we were just outside of a pay check. We had more than enough to make the cut for the Fish-Off. Our fish-off is fished on two different lakes drawn from a hat. Our day one tournament ended up on a lake that has both smallmouths and largemouth and the day two tournament has only smallmouth. Long story short; Day one of the Fish-off did not start good for us. The tournaments go from 8:00am to 4:00pm. We didn't catch a fish until 1:00pm and it was only a 1 lbs 07 ounce smallmouth, our only bite so far!! We thought we were done for and from the few other teams that we talked to while we were fishing said that a lot of other boats were having a hard time. At around 3:00pm we still had only one fish but we kept a positive attitude and we kept saying "NEVER GIVE UP!!!"" THANKS MIKE!! At around 3:15pm we decided to make a short run down the lake and fish the thick pickerel grass for largemouth. When I pre-fished the weekend before I nailed the smallmouth bite and caught a 5 fish limit of smallies that weighed over 16lbs. We went into the Fish-Off with a smallmouth bite mindset. A week later we had a major rain/wind storm blow the whole week prior to the fish-off. This caused the normally Crystal clear water to become very muddy. This killed the smallmouth bite!! We arrived at the grass and I switched to a black and blue jig with a junebug Rage Craw as a trailer. As soon as we started fishing the grass I started to see big clouds of yellow perch moving around! My dad and I both said they have to be here feeding on the perch? well they were!! Within 15 minute we caught two four pound largemouth a three pound largemouth and another largemouth that was a few ounces shy of three pounds. By this time we had less than 15 minutes to fish before we had to make it back to the weigh in. We still had that dink smallmouth so on the way back toward the landing we stopped back were we caught the first two four pounders. We said that we would only take three cast. Well on the third cast my father caught a nice two pound largemouth which called the dink smallmouth. So we hammered it back to weigh in. Talking to the other teams just before weigh in it sounded like other teams struggled bad like we did in the beginning. We ended up with 15.86 pounds and the nearest weight to us going into day two was 12.70 pounds so we had a healthy lead. I'm going to make day two short or else I'm going to write three pages!! Day two was just as bad as day one for us. We didn't get a bite until 12:00pm and it was only 1 pound 1 ounce !! I could feel our victory slipping away. Remember Day two is a smallmouth only lake. I wasn't going to let this happen!! So I grabbed my spinner bait rod and said "Dad we have to run and gun this!!" So we started jumping all over the lake fishing all of the wind blown shores. I was throwing an all white double willow (Gold Blades)spinner bait and my Dad was throwing a black and gold spinner bait with big thumper blades. Finally!! around 1:00pm I boated our second fish, a just under three pound smallmouth and then an hour later I caught another upper two pound smallmouth. My dad still hasn't caught a fish!!!! then at around 2:30pm I caught another one right at two pounds and a couple cast later I caught another dink! but at least we had our five fish. They only went barely over an eight pound bag. At about 3:45pm on our way back to weigh in we made one more stop and my father finally came through and caught two bass one after another. This called our two dinks and put us over ten pounds. At weigh in we found out that if we didn't call those last two bass we would of lost!! But we didn't!!! Our two day total was 26.16 pounds and the second place team had 24.89 pounds!! they almost took it away from us!! It feels good to finally win a fish-off we get a pair of club jackets. We will wear them proudly!! We also got a nice pay check! We also had the day one lunker for an extra $170!! Sorry for the long story I only have a few fishing trips left then Deer season starts.!! REMEMBER NEVER GIVE UP!!! Quote
Super User 00 mod Posted October 12, 2011 Super User Posted October 12, 2011 Awesome story and congrats on the winS! Jeff Quote
Super User Dwight Hottle Posted October 12, 2011 Super User Posted October 12, 2011 Good read. Congrats on the win & club jackets. The money will be long gone but the jackets will wear forever. Quote
MaineBassMan Posted October 12, 2011 Author Posted October 12, 2011 Thanks Dwight and 00 mod! This is our third season fishing for the Fish-Off. Luckily it is in the fall one of our favorite times of the year to fish. The first year we fished the Fish-Off we got a 4th place finish, last year we got a 3rd place finish and finally this year a 1st place finish! Now all we need in a 2nd place finish! What made this Fish-Off so hard for me is that I've been working non-stop for over two weeks with nearly 90 hours of overtime!! Twelve hour night shifts 1800-0600. I could not take leave for the tournament so I tried to fit it in with my work schedule. So I went into Day one as soon as I got off work (12 hour night shift) with no sleep!! Made it barely to the launch site with minutes to spare before take off Fished from 0800-1600 jumped into the truck drove like a mad man got changed went back to work with no sleep!!! Worked another 12 hour night shift got off at 0600 and drove to the next tournament lake which was a little further made it with only 4 minutes to take off!! Fished all day again with no sleep and drove home to work another 12 hour night shift with no sleep!! I have two more days to work before I get a three day weekend! I FEEL LIKE A ZOMBIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Quote
shimmy Posted October 13, 2011 Posted October 13, 2011 Hey, great write up. Enjoyed it. Fun to see the particular details for your tournament. Way to go Quote
sodaksker Posted October 14, 2011 Posted October 14, 2011 Sweet victory! Congratulations on your win. Another testament to keeping a positive attitude in life. Quote
Big-O Posted October 14, 2011 Posted October 14, 2011 Great write up and WTG MBM Be sure to tell your Dad we're proud for him as well! You two obviously make a great TEAM... Big O www.ragetail.com Quote
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