My trip to the Classic...Day 2

[blakstr1]

Day 2 - Thursday 2/23

Thursday began a little later due to a huge need for sleep to replenish my system from the long drive.? The forecast was calling for clear blue skies and a high temperature of 85, so today we were going fishing.? We made it to Big Toho Marina at 10:00am, we still needed licenses so we headed to the dock store near the ramp; only to find out the only place to get a license was at the local Wal-Mart.? We attained directions and started the 10 mile journey to the discount wonderland.? Although Kissimmee has everything a consumer could desire, the traffic causes everything to seem out of reach, we made the trek back to the ramp and finally launched my travel partners 2003 Ranger 521 around 11:00am.

We decided to start out fishing some grass mats in the main lake, I just wanted to see what it was like to fish with 50# braid and an ounce and a half Penetrator weight.? I made one cast with this, then picked up my Senko and pitched to a few pencil reeds, three casts later I felt a familiar tug and with a hard hook set had my first Florida bass of the trip engaged.? It put up a respectable fight, I didn?t want to rush anything, so I let it play for a bit while working it closer to the boat, then finally reached down and lipped it to safety.? I gave out a familiar yell of excitement about the dark black backed bass.? It was great to be fishing in February, from the deck of a bass boat, in my barefeet.? I took a hold of my XTools floating scale and weighed it to find a 3lb 10oz bucket in my grip; we quickly took a picture and released it back to its home.? I caught it on a black / red Senko with a 1/0 Gamakatsu Octopus hook on 10# McCoy line, this turned out to be the winning combination of the day for us.?

We fished our first spot a while longer and began to move around fishing combinations of reeds and cat tails.? Around 2:00pm we moved into a wind protected cove along one of the Lake Toho man made islands, the first 2 casts up towards shore produced our first double-header of the day, one 4lb 2oz that my partner landed and I hooked up with a 4lb 1oz largemouth.? These fish were huddled together in a small cat tail patch.? We continued to catch another 12 fish over the next couple hours from this stretch of island.? All of the fish we landed were caught on Senkos in various color patterns.? Both Texas Rig and Wacky Rig proved to be equally effective.? We failed to catch anything that would classify as a lunker, especially for Toho, but pretty respectable for 2 guys from Michigan.?

We decided to call it a day and return the boat to its Days Inn resting spot before heading to the Classic Expo at the Orlando Convention Center for an evening of tackle ooo-ing and aah-ing, also to get a chance at seeing some of the pros.?

After a shower and getting changed into my Fish Hedz tournament shirt we entered the Expo around 6:30pm, on the way in our excitement was relieved by walking up to Davy Hite in the parking lot.? We shook hands and exchanged small talk, said our goodbyes and continued on to the show.?

Similar to Charlie entering the Chocolate Factory for the first time when we descended down the escalator and finally could see the show floor our eyes were big and our hearts were pumping, we had made it to a bass fisherman?s heaven and hadn?t forgotten our wallets!? There was so much to see from wall to wall we just decided to wander around stopping at the interesting stuff and talking to whomever we could.? We proceeded to see an abundance of pros including Rick Clunn, Tim Horton, Takahiro Omori, Edwin Evers, Paul Elias, Guy Eaker, and Jason Quinn to name a few.?

I resisted temptation tonight and kept from buying anything as I knew I would be back many more times throughout the week.? We ended the evening at the BPS display talking with Bill McElroy (www.scalesandtales.net)? and John Maniaci (www.lscn.net) both from Detroit.? We already had plenty of stories to fill our brains from being at the Classic for a day and a half?and the tournament had still yet to start!