2003 Tournament Season

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My 2003 Tournament & Fishing Season Recap

Spring Fishing

Another fun year of fishing in and around Michigan this year. We are so lucky to have the variety and quality of waters we have.

Started this spring catching big crappie and bass on inland lakes in

dark-bottomed bays around new pads and brush. With the low

water even affecting some inland lakes, we didn’t boat near as

many big crappie as last spring, but marauding bass like this

one made up for the slower fishing.

I decided to put some more time into the catch &

release lakes since spring bass fishing is a very

challenging and fun activity that we miss out on

way too much here in Michigan. With all the

great waters we have in Michigan, it doesn’t

make much sense to be traveling out of state

taking that additional time to give any more

of my money to other economies when my

own state can really use it.

I had some really great days fishing those lakes

adding to the enjoyment I get out of all the

other great fishing we have available to us here.

Other Spring Fishing Opportunities not quite as exciting as it can be

Got talked into a couple side trips over the Detroit River for the ‘world-famous’ spring walleye fishing. We never boated a fish. We saw 1 small walleye and a sucker caught among the zillions of boats in US waters around us.

Best I did was a plastic bag with a tiny crayfish hanging on it. Mud all over the deck and an unhappy craw back in the water. All the walleyes were apparently speaking Canadian at the time and we didn’t have Canadian licenses yet. That’s were a lot of the best bite seemed to be happening. We had some fun still, but we seemed to pick the cold muddy days to go.

I did make it to Hardy Dam Pond once and had a really great day of smallmouth fishing with Brian Spear and Mark Gomez. We caught most of our bass like this one deep, but found some moving shallow later in the day. We got a few walleye too.

The Tournament Season begins…

Nothing real memorable happened up at Elk/Torch for the first tournament (Michigan BASS Federation) unless you consider the possible end of the world as we know it. We had some interesting weather. The most interesting was after finding relatively calm, not too cool weather the 2nd day on Elk Lake, I happened to look across to the East shore from the side we are fishing and see a solid, dark gray wall coming across the lake. I didn’t like it one bit.

I told Derek if I saw 4 great horsemen riding the leading edge, we were OUT OF THERE! It came so fast, we didn’t have time to decide which way to run. The dark gray wall SLAMMED

into us with a wind increasing from ~3mph to about 40mph instantly. The air temp dropped about 15 degrees and an icy rain assaulted us. We decided to run through the mess to the East side of the lake. Turned out to be a good move. It got nicer fast there and we never actually saw any horsemen, apocalyptic or otherwise. Things settled down and we were shortly back on the old ‘wind blows into whichever shore we choose to fish’ pattern. It always feels better when things go like I’m used to. We finished with 2 just above middle of the pack finishes despite finding plenty of bass in practice. We didn’t find the big ones.

Next up, finally getting ready for the ‘St. Clair’ tournament year. Every day is an adventure on the big lake. With that being said, I guess that means only the extraordinary days should be talked about to avoid turning this into another book.

The first unusual event was the ‘smallmouth’ musky incident in Fisher Bay. A brisk breeze had piled up a slew of better than-average-smallies along real shallow reed banks. They were swimming all around Jeff Bishop (Bish) and me. Bish tossed out a tube into 2 feet of water and hooked a nice 40+ inch musky that we hadn’t even seen.

It takes a while to land these swimming muscles on light spinning tackle. As I’m watching Bish play tug of war with musky #1, a 2nd musky swims right out from underneath my

feet and in an apparent act of mild curiosity, approaches Bish’s musky. The fish was practically a twin of the other.

After I got over my initial surprise, I flipped a 5” St. Clair Goby tube in front of musky #2. The burly fish immediately turned on the tube and drilled it like it meant business. Unfortunately, my hook set was either too slow or too fast. The toothy critter bit me off clean, keeping us from having my first musky double ever.

The next day, I landed a mid-40 inch musky on the same tube way over on the East side of the lake off a deep hump with sparse weeds. Same tube color too. We really tore up the bass that day all across the lake.

My BFL season of tournament 1 through 4 can be summed up as tons of keepers with most of the big ones coming in practice. I was on more decent keepers this year than I’ve ever been. Getting a limit was remarkably easy all year. Many tournaments, I’d get a limit within 20 minutes of starting. Even from the Detroit River launches, I couldn’t help but run up. I like St. Clair and I caught decent quality before every tournament. As the year progressed, they got bigger too and even more numerous.

For whatever reason, things just wouldn’t go quite as planned in the tournaments. I’d get one quality bite and a whole bunch of keepers. The first BFL tournament, I didn’t land any big ones, but almost every single spot we stopped on, I’d pop a keeper on the first cast. Most spots gave up several quick keepers. I had planned on taking my early limit to a rock bar on the South Shore that had held scattered quality fish in practice.

I stopped on one last rock bar before heading east since it sometimes held better bass. My first tube cast was popped. A decent keeper immediately jumped and threw the tube. I threw to the same spot again. I hooked and lost another fish. On my third cast, I broke the line on my hook set. This was getting annoying. I wanted to retie the same tube since it had been working really well. For some reason, I push

another tube rod to the edge of my boat and the tube fell into the water, hanging a foot under the water right next to the boat.

I was intent on tying my new tube onto the line I’d just broken. The water was clear almost to the bottom and I was a long cast off the rock bar. I wasn’t focusing on the water. I glanced over the side of the boat and was more than mildly surprised to see a 3-pound smallie sitting next to my boat eyeing my other tube. How it got there, I do not know. But it saw me move and lazily drifted straight down towards bottom. I opened the bail on the tube hanging in the water and when I lifted up, I hooked the fish. It was my best of that day. I guess I’ll take them any way I can get them.

I actually adjusted my approach on a hunch shortly after, moving shallower and throwing a larger spinnerbait, and quickly hooked a smallie well over 4 pounds. The nice fish tossed the bait to me about a foot and a half from the net. I hooked another small fish a few casts later. Had another big one swipe at the spinnerbait a few casts after that and then my hunch died a painful and unexplainable death. I couldn’t buy another hit in that area by the bigger bass.

Weighmaster John Maniaci helps me hold up some of our Saginaw

Bay limit of smallies.

The Michigan BASS Federation sent us to Saginaw Bay in July for a difference. I found some really dumb smallies that followed my boat around. I didn’t realize how strongly they were attracted to my boat until it was too late though to keep from messing up the spot. I was in a brisk Saginaw Bay ‘breeze’ while working on my tackle. I drifted a long ways from the original spot. When I looked down, the whole school of smallies was still under my boat following along. I was in the middle of nowhere.

I ended up slowly trolling all the way back to the original contact spot with the bass ‘in tow.’ All I needed was a flute. The smallies scattered some maybe because of the distance, and my noise and movement. We never got as much out of the spot as I hoped, but we did get a couple of the better bass each day from the spot and several keepers. Many were caught out from under the boat. It wasn’t deep. You could usually see them down there and just drop a tube to them.

The most entertaining part of the tournament wasn’t the fishing though. As usual, Saginaw Bay kicked up at times. It kicked up a mean cross-chop that was determined to pound us all the way in to the weigh in. We pushed it too long since we had an ‘aircraft carrier’ Ranger 522 underneath us. On making the run in, it became apparent that we had cut it way too short. Derek started pushing it harder and harder.

We were smacking the waves hard at bad angles. We were even putting the big boat up in the air some. We took quite a beating, but made it with a minute to spare to weigh in our respectable catch. The families were there to see us weigh. It’s interesting when the wives find out we may not

be the stable, upstanding citizens they see us as.

Derek’s wife Lori told how they were all out on the Au Gres River point walkway and could see this boat coming across the waves like madmen. She pointed out to my wife Angie and said, “Look as those maniacs! They’re driving like they’re crazy!” Of course, they hadn’t seen us yet, but ‘knew’ a couple of older, mature fellows like Derek and I would NEVER drive a boat like that. Lori said something about wondering who the heck those nuts were. And eight year old Aaron shouted out, “That’s my Dad!” Boy, did we get a lecture. (Aaron was proud though – I could tell.)

There were exciting moments after that but my next unusual adventure occurred in the following federation event out of the Detroit River. We again decided to make the long run up into the St. Clair River after a really good practice. Derek and I stopped on our first spot and popped a limit including a 4+ smallie in less than 20 minutes. We ran further up the river and popped another 4+.

Things were starting to look really good, but when we went to move to our next spot, we couldn’t get on plane. Here we were, over 40 miles from weigh in and we couldn’t do more than idle speed.

Being the eternal optimist, Derek said, “We’re screwed!” (I’m sure having blown the motor the spring before and two previous blown powerheads on his old outboard had something to do with it.) We had an alarm though and it sounded familiar to the alarm I had when my sensor wires in my similar outboard got damaged. Derek thought it was cylinder-related, but I said we weren’t done yet and I thought it was throttle-related.

I called my good buddy Miles at D& R Sports Center

service and described the problem and alarm. After consultation, he told us to take off the cowling and check connections and throttle components. After a couple minutes of looking things over, I found a metal rod link that had come off a brass knob. I thanked Miles and hung up thinking “we’re back in business!”

I popped the end back onto the connector and replaced the cover. Derek gave the motor some gas and we started to move. Alright! We were done that quick again as the rod popped back off and we slowed to idle again. The end of the rod just has a plastic cap on it that rotates on the brass knob. The plastic had wallowed out and wouldn’t stay on the knob under acceleration pressure.

After judicious use of duct tape and part of a shoe lace (the first attempts were poor, but we eventually got it right), we were able to slowly get on plane and drive, but we now knew we were risking things if we didn’t start back on our long run so we could do a smooth, slow speed. We lost about 3 hours of fishing time, but we made it back with still a decent catch, our best federation weight of the year.

The next day, we took my old veteran Ranger 492VS since we couldn’t repair Derek’s motor. We had a slower start and never really found the quality bass. We caught a good number as the day progressed, but none of the big ones from practice or even the day before.

I thought we were close to the cut for the Federation Classic, but I had a fear that even if we won the last day, we would fall just short. Our small limit wasn’t enough, but I had been right that we were still going to just miss the 12- team cut. They went to pull two wild-card teams and I thought with our bad luck that maybe this would work out. We ended up with a late draw from the box of marked balls. Figures! We’d never even get to draw probably.

The first wild-card was drawn early. But the second one was not being pulled. Team after team drew without getting the right ball. I started to think ‘this could happen!’ Then, my optimism faltered so I asked Derek, “Are we drawing last?” As soon as I asked it, I knew the answer because I

also realized the team drawing right ahead of us were locals on the Classic lake (and a lot luckier than us). Sure enough, the ball made it all the way until the second to last team! Just ahead of us! And they drew the second wild-card ball. I was already heading for the truck before the shouting started. I may sound like a pessimist, but I do know my luck. No Federation Classic.

All this particular weekend of excitement was wrapped around the “Great Power Outage of the Century” and a dead starter that found my camper stranded in the Harley Ensign MDNR ramp with no tow company available nor parts store open. The adventure in getting my boat to Jeff’s house near the ramp and getting my truck eventually towed to the one open service station, and then getting parts found and installed could make a novella in itself, but I’ll spare you that story since I have no doubt we all had our adventures around that momentous calamity.

One goal down and missed. Next goal was to make the state team. It was launching on St. Clair so I felt good about it. The weekend before, I caught tons of bass. Got on a great pattern and was catching more quality bass than I had all summer up in the channels. Unfortunately, I didn’t run far enough up the river to see how many big weights were up there. Big weight after big weight came in.

I try not to think about what could have been if I had done just one of two things different. I didn’t start on a key spot that ended being the best of the pattern I was on. It was only big enough for one boat and when I got to it on my third stop, a boat was on it and he was just beginning to figure out how to fish it right. I left when he put a toad in the boat for his 4th bass I saw him catch. Secondly, it

turned out that I had stopped less than a mile downriver from where most of the bigger weights came from during the big upriver bite past Fawn Island.

Since I hadn’t caught them in practice, I resisted the temptation to run up there and fish the packs the second day. A ton of boats didn’t have a problem with it though. As I sat on one of my points catching keeper after keeper, 60 boats must have passed me heading upriver. I did okay, but my same problem hit me. I just wasn’t putting the numbers of quality bass in the boat on tournament days. I hit all the spots including key ones multiple times. Another goal missed.

I’d been fortunately consistent in the BFL, so I was back in the top 30 heading for a Regional spot at Chautauqua. I decided to skip practicing early at Chautauqua to try for more time on Erie. Between the weather and my usual Erie luck, I changed my mind. I would run to St. Clair again. I was getting more consistent on quality bass even though the way upriver stuff was tapering off. I felt I had a shot at a huge limit up the St. Clair River despite slower fishing for me. I still had several spots downriver where I could get a quick limit.

While out searching for big smallies in the St. Clair shipping channel with Jeff, I was tossing a 5” Xtreme Bass St. Clair Goby tube to a small point that usually holds good bass

late in the summer. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t even getting a bite until I ‘snagged’ and my snag started to swim out towards a passing freighter. I call this – my biggest musky so far – Polaris for the way she shot out of the water like a missile right alongside that freighter. What a powerful fish, explaining why the bass may have been shy. I was finding plenty good bass on other spots, so…

For the last BFL Super tournament, I decided to run to the lower St. Clair and get any size limit before heading up the river a ways for as long as I felt I could stay. Of course, it was rougher than blazes running up the last few miles of the Detroit River. Running across the channel mouths, I swear some waves were over 6 feet. There were some whoppers crossing the current. We made it just into the shipping channel without getting completely soaked.

I decided to take a break from wave-running and check a small inside turn just off the shipping channel that had bass stacked on it the weekend before. My boat was sitting just on the edge of the big waves as they came up the channel. I wanted to be safe but still be able cast to the key spot, which was out in the waves. As often happens in these conditions, the stirred up water scattered the bass and many moved up out of the channel onto the sand flats.

As I was moving the boat to reach the key spot, I landed a smallie over 5 pounds on my 3rd cast. After a few minutes, it was apparent there were bass all around us on the deeper parts of the flat instead of out on the edge. I lost one over 3 pounds, then landed another almost 4 pounds. Despite every 10th wave or so curling up the channel and roaring underneath like a bucking bronco, I limited out and my co-angler partner Brian McCarter (aka Madman/PoorBoy) was close to a limit.

I tried another spot right out in the waves, but after losing a 2-pounder on the first cast, I realized it was just too rough to spot fish with the wind blowing hard one way and the current running underneath another way. I ran us up into calmer water upriver, but having taken almost 2 hours just to get here and seeing it wasn’t letting up much, I decided I had a good enough limit to stay closer to the lake. We hit several more lower river spots. Brian got his limit and I culled a few.

With about 2 hours left, I started back down the lake. I stopped at the mouth of the Detroit for a breather and we popped a few more keepers too small to help along with some dinks. The waves going across the mouth of the Detroit down to Belle Isle were huge choppers. Even though it was late September, there were just enough big Tuna boats to add to the fun.

I made sure we were battened down and then headed towards the Canadian shore across from Belle Isle. I knew I had one over 5 pounds and close to 17 pounds total. I was confident I was finishing in the top 30 for the year and probably making the cut for the second day and a decent

check – which would be my first of the year – my worst dry spell ever.

I basically plowed nose high about 20 mph diagonally across the channel and cut behind a big party boat. I was actually through the worst of the waves when I heard a sickening crunch and no longer had power. I turned around just in time to see my big outboard sink below the water. That was it. Game over.

I made it to a dock on trolling motor power with my outboard hanging by cables slamming up underneath the hull on every swell. One last tournament boat went by heading in. We tried to get their attention, but we must have blended in with the shore. It would have been a tough risky move anyway.

I called Tournament Director Ronnie Brinegar at the weigh in to let him know Brian and I were safe, but not going to make it in. After I finally secured assistance through a tow agency, I called Ronnie back and asked what the cut was for boaters. It ended up being less than 14 pounds. Co-angler was less than 11 I believe. Brian would have been close also.

Thinking about how I was now missing the cut and knocked out of going to the Regional at Chautauqua, a thought came to me about how things could be a little worse. Big bass had been running close to six pounds or more all year so I hadn’t thought about the ~$1,000 big bass award, but the way things were going… I asked Ronnie what boater big bass was and he said 4 pounds 10 ounces. Of course, I had one about 5-3 in the well. Insult to injury, I guess.

I thanked Ronnie and then we threw all our bass back. I let Brian do it so I didn’t have to think about missing out on a guaranteed minimum $1,400 check. I was still trying to get the outboard out from under the boat and up onto the shallower sand out of the current.

I was glad Tuna boat numbers were down because every one that went by slammed us into the dock posts and tried to break us lose. The worst of that was a freighter that caught us by surprise. The downbound ones were easier than the Tuna boats. So I wasn’t paying much attention when one glided past upstream. I heard a noise and turned just in time to warn Brian to duck. Going against the current

the big ship had made a big wake.

Brian ducked and the wave rolled over the top of both of us about 2 feet above the boat. We had just enough time to look up laughing about “WHAT NEXT!” when I yelled, “here comes another one!” The next one rolled over us even worse. We were basically underwater for a couple seconds. Okay, we didn’t laugh quite as much after that one. Luckily, my batteries were still working so I could pump out all the water. The US Coast Guard called back right than to check on us. I told him I could probably be doing a little better…

It took two rescue boats and several hours to get the outboard out of the water and onto the back deck. We were finally towed into a Nautical Mile marina on St. Clair about 10pm that night. Still had to drive down to Elizabeth Park and get the trailer. Come back and get the boat on the trailer. Jeff Bishop helped a ton driving over and taking me to the trailer. My parking brake had broke first thing that morning (should have been my first clue about the day) and I have a stick, so Brian used his truck to get my boat up the steep marina ramp.

My boat was done for the year and the motor was toast. Forget New York. The only real bright spots after that were Derek and I tried to defend our Cass Lake October titles. We missed the money in one, but squeaked into 4th place with a limit of little smallies in the other tournament fishing out of Derek’s boat. Then, I remembered my friend David Simmons had kindly said he would like to get me in a Yamaha. Figuring I would keep my pattern of switching brands after a motor comes off the back, I called him up and the rest is history. I now have a gorgeous 225HP HPDI Yamaha V-Max that I hope to keep on the back of my boat.

So far, so good.