MBFN State Championship LSC - Day 2 8/25

[blakstr1]

After another night of severe storms throughout Michigan, the forecast told a story of 75 degree highs, but upon exiting the hotel at 4:30am it was already 74 degrees and quite humid.  This morning I was in the first flight of boats, boat 6 to be exact a complete turn around from the boat 60 draw a day earlier.  As I indicated earlier today my boater was Larry Gargus and his Ranger 520, what a beautiful boat.  Coincidentally Larry is also now employed at Gander Mountain under Anthony Adams.  Gander Mountain did a good job finding these two gentlemen to launch there new boat venture.  Once again today it began to spit rain a bit when we were close to the end of the Metro no wake zone but today the rain didn't develop, at least during the launch.  We were the first to enter the middle channel and make our run up the river.  The water was beautiful, flat as glass, nobody else to be seen.  It was a very; I'll call it "spiritual"; run this morning.

Once again Larry had done his homework and knew the river to pinpoint accuracy.  If the fish were still there that he and his parnter caught the day before we would be in for a treat.  Our first stop of the morning didn't yield a fish, at least for us.  We saw Ron Dowdy (who went on to make this years' state team) a Lake Neppessing Bass Club member along with Larry, boat a couple fish right off the bat.  We later found out at the weigh-in that Ron caught over 3 limits of keepers on Day 2 to his non-boater's 1 fish.  Larry caught numbers far exceeding mine throughout the day as well, unfortunately for Larry most of his were short fish.

So the first keeper in our boat went to me off of Larry's Day 1 "big fish" spot.  The smallmouth hammered my tube and then tried to hug the bottom.  I could tell it was a decent fish, maybe 4 to 4 1/2 pounds or so.  I eventually landed the fish and she was a beauty, solid 4 1/2#, I attached a couple belly weights to her and slipped her into the livewell.  Larry couldn't find his fizzing needle so the belly weight was our only option; they ended up doing there job and kept the fish upright all day.

The rains came back pretty good throughout the day, and the winds picked up, which messed up our drift out on the "big fish" spot.  We decided to explore some different options out of the direct wind.  Larry went on to boat 4 fish throughout the day and I was only able to pick up one more keeper.  Although we got blew off the best spot, the bigger fish didn't seem to be in there when we were able to fish it.

We decided to call it a day and head back out anticipating a rough ride across Lake St. Clair.  There were some decent waves, although I talked to SAVAGE and there were some major waves pounding him coming from the south.  We made it back in plenty of time and headed to get our weigh-in bags.  On the way up I saw another Team Bass member that indicated that another fellow Team Bass member, Garry Williams had a monster bag today.  I made it up to the scales just before Garry weighed in, I got to see him dump the fish into the tub and there before my eyes was a monster smallmouth.  Big fish weight for Garry (also ended up as big fish for the tournament) was a 6.7# smallmouth!  Garry's total weight for Day 2 was over 23#.  Now Garry was a non-boater for the tournament, tried to convince his boater for Day 1 that he knew where some fish were but they didn't make it there; Garry only had 7# after day 1.  Garry caught over 20# off this spot during our club event a week earlier, now he was sitting just over 30# and to me a shoe-in to make the state team.

We got our fish to the scales and if you remember my solid 4 1/2# smallie, well when I dumped her out into the tub it looked bigger, I picked it up and it felt bigger, it went to the scale and Little Bill announced 5.77#!  Wow!  that was my biggest smallmouth ever and the biggest bass I've ever weighed in during a tournament.  Neither Larry or myself had enough weight to make the state team, but Garry did go on to finish 10th and make the team.

Larry was another great boater to fish with; I felt really fortunate to spend two days on this awesome body of water with two great guys.  I've made two new lasting friendships.

Congratulations to the 2007 Michigan BASS Federation Nation State Team, good luck in Wisconsin.