First off I'd like to thanks all the anglers that fished our event this year!
I had never been to Houghton before and was looking forward to fishing the lake. As usual between work and planning for the event I ended up arriving am 1:00 am friday morning, hooked up with John Jezerski who was kind enough to let my brother and I sleep at his uncles cottage. Needless to say I didn't get out at the crack of dawn and only had about 4 hours to prefish.
We started out trying the hot tip waypoints for smallies, I was supposed to get 18 lbs. Well that didn't pan out so I headed for the canals for largemouth and got on a decent topwater bite, probably had 12 pounds, my smallest would have been 2 pounds. Well the hot topwater bite and my best area didn't go as planned on our first stop for the tourney. My draw partner Gary Emery started getting them on a senko and it didn't take me long to change. We hit a few more canals and I had 3 keepers and he had 4. I figured it would be best to spend some time trying to find some smallies and we messed around for about 2 1/2 hours, Gary got his 5th fish, but one was questionable length, it would be a close call.
After that we got back to running the canals and we were picking up a lot of shorts but no keepers. At about 2:10 we pulled into a canal and about 2:15 I picked up my fourth and a couple of minutes later Gary got a decent one. The questionable fish was culled and we hustled back feeling there was a good chance for him to make the team. We made it back at about 2:25 with a few minutes to spare.
Gary ended up finishing 7th and made the state team. Gary was a great guy to fish with and I'm gald he amde the team. All in all I really enjoyed the day, we caught a lot of fish and the water was actually flat under my boat. In retrospect if we had just stayed on the largemouth we both would have probalby qualified.
Congats to all those that made the State Team. I think we've got a great team we're sending to Wisconsin! Thanks as well to Houghton Lake Chamber of Commerce the Pig Roast at the registration was great!
Dave Reault
