We look forward to this time every year, it's State Championship time for the Michigan BASS Federation Nation, which lands back on Lake St. Clair. The schedule is the same each year, check-in and pre-tournament banquet is on Thursday afternoon prior to the tournament, so for SAVAGE and I it meant working until mid-morning and heading south from Saginaw around 10:30am. We used my truck to pull his boat and after only having to turn around one time (SAVAGE is pretty forgetful) we were heading due south by 11:15am. Along the way we discovered that the river fish were mauling the jigging spoons pretty good and I realized I had forgotten rain gear (doaahh! aka Homer Simpson) so we planned a stop at BPS to stock up. Always find more than you bargain for at BPS, I mean before we left I was pushing around a mostly full shopping cart, and all I had stopped for was a pair of Frogg Toggs and a jigging spoon! That's what makes a trip with your buddy (without the wife), on the way to go fishing (without the wife), to the premier smallmouth fishery in the country (did I mention the wife isn't with me) so fun! After an additional stop at the Lakeside Fishing Shop to get SAVAGE his Walpole license and a new dropshot rod (oh yeah, SAVAGE's wife wasn't with us either) we made it to our hotel just in time to shower and head to Gino's for check-in.
Don Corkran (BASS Federation Nation Director) was the special keynote speaker at the banquet this year. He is a true gem of a person and another pioneer of the growth of our beloved sport of bass fishing. We enjoyed listening to him talk about the past, present, and future of BASS; I felt honored to be a part of it.
After we were fed, Little Bill rattled off ;D the raffle prize winners, and the tournament rules were explained, it was time for the Day 1 pairings to be revealed. I believe there were 68 boats this year, so the pairings wouldn't take long, as names were called the boater and non-boater would meet up and move to an "out of the way" spot to share information and fill out the registration cards. I stood there waiting for my name to be called for what seemed to be an eternity but was more like 10 minutes or so, then finally "boat 60 Anthony Adams and Blake Arkwood" was announced. Cool, another GLB member and very experienced LSC fisherman. I was instantly pleased with the draw, met Anthony for the first time, we got our "plan" together and the evening was concluded.
We no more than got in the truck to head back to the MicroTel when the storm came through. We had been watching the clouds and far off lightning moving in from the big windows inside Gino's, but when the storm hit, it hit HARD. It was tough to see on the way back to the motel, we made it safely though, got the boat hooked back up to the truck for morning and headed to bed, we were anxious for the next morning but also pretty tired, so sleep was going to be easy...wake up call set and lights out.
To be Continued...
Great job Blake. Keep it coming.
I think what it is...If you are as big as Savage is it takes a little while longer for Data to compute so he has a tendency to forget things...He is kicking our butts this year in Team Bass tourneys though.
Great article.....
I was curious what Blake had to say about a day on the water with me.
I had a great time Blake hope we can do it again sometime.
Quote from: ABA on March 01, 2008, 09:39:16 PM
I was curious what Blake had to say about a day on the water with me.
I had a great time Blake hope we can do it again sometime.
Definitely man, anytime. ;) ;)