2nd day I am paired with Bob Kuhn from Minnesota. We have no idea where we are going to fish. We head toward ruggles but end up down by Vermillion. We see it says dumping grounds on his map and head that way where a couple other boats are and a ton of perch fisherman. We idle around and mark a couple rises with fish showing on them. We start fishing and I am stunned to get a bite after about 10 min. Thinking it must be a Sheephead I am shocked when a 4lb plus smallie comes to the net. This is one of those special days and at 10 o'clock I put #5 in the boat. They are all clones and I know I have 20lbs in the box. Knowing I cant do much better I back off hoping my partner can get his limit. He ends the day with 2 and even fishing sporadically I cull twice. I weigh in 21lbs 4 oz. I am shocked to have the biggest bag of the day and even more shocked to be leading the whole thing. Day three I am paired with Loren Peters of Illinois. He is not on much but him and his partner each weighed in a nice smallie today. I did not want to go back to vermillion because it was going to be rough water again in the forecast and I felt I accidently fished on some of my teamates water. Even though they encouraged me to go backto it, it just isn't me. So we decided to hit the area where he caught the smallies and then grind it out for LM. I knew it would be a tough day. We only caught sheephead ,catfish and silverbass on the SM spot so we started grinding. Loren managed one nice Lm that went 4lbs plus and I only caught 6 or 8 shorts. I had my chance and it did'nt happen. I missed being one of the Mich reps at the Nationals by 15 oz. Congrats to Wayne Macklin and Thom Kiefer for making it. Wayne was fishing the area in Vermillion that I did not want to intrude on. All in all it was a great time and I look foreward to trying to make the team again next year. Thanks to Dennis Beltz for all his hard work
