After each guide trip I did, I'd come home and make notes of the areas that seemed to be holding the better fish on a consistant basis. As the days got closer to the tournament our anticipation for the tournament grew and grew.
The night before the tournament I sat down and narrowed the lake down into about 10 spots that I planned to rotate thru the day of the tournament.
Our plan was simple... go to each of our spots and make 3-4 casts each and if we didnt get bit in that time then we'd move to the next spot. We figured if the fish were there they would bite within a couple casts, if not then we'd move and come back later.
Diamond Valley is the type of lake where the bass may not be in a certain spot one moment but if you come back in an hour or two, they are there!
Tournament Morning.....
I wake up before the alarm (like usual on tournament morning), shower, get dressed and head out to the garage where much to my shagrine I find that one of my batteries isnt charged AT ALL!!! WTF??? was the 1st thing to come to mind.
I obviously had a blown cell on one of my trolling motor batteries......NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I stayed calm and told Carissa that we'd just have to stay off the troller a little more then usual and hope that the wind didnt blow too much or we'd be dead in the water by noon.
On the way to the lake we go over the game plan again. My moto is that if you arent planning to win, then you are planning to lose.
We get to the lake and I go to signups while Carissa stays in the truck to try to get some last minute shut eye.
I get to the signup trailer and I'm greeted with smiles as always by Lynne Peterson and Megan (owner of Last Chance Bait and Tackle). I get signed in and head back to the truck all the while in the back of my mind all I can think about is my friggin bad battery. I try my best to get it out of my mind and set my sites on the task at hand. I figured we'd have to have a big morning before our batteries went dead if the wind was blowin.
Blast off time.... We take off and head to our starting spot. I put the trolling motor down and we get to work. Our starting spot was about 50 yards long.
On my 3rd cast...BENDO...solid 3 1/2 lb fish in the boat. Two casts later...I'm ON AGAIN!!! Another 3 1/2 lb keeper in the boat. Then I look up and see a boat fishing the same small stretch that we were fishing heading towards me. Then I realized that it was Mike Peterson (Owner of National Bass) who after calling out the launch numbers decided to go fun fishing for a while. What happened next was one of the nicest, classiest things that Ive seen in a while. When Mike realized it was me, he immediately pulled up his trolling motor and left the spot so he wouldnt get in my way. THANK YOU MIKE!!!!! As he motored away, Carissa says "I'm On" and I put my rod down and net our 3rd keeper. Another solid 3 lb fish in the well. Then I go over pick up my rod and continue to dead stick my bait for another 30-40 seconds. I then reeled in my slack and felt a SLIGHT "TIC" on the line. I reeel down and set the hook....my rod bows and line is torn from my reel as my drags sings...."NET...BIG FISH" I yell. After a 3 minute battle Carissa nets a donkey. 7 lber. goes into the well. A high five and a kiss from the netgirl and we continue to fish. I knew that one was an important fish...our kicker. 5 minutes later, "I'm on again" and Carissa nets our 5th keeper. Thats our limit!!! about 20 lbs in the boat, we havent left our starting spot and we've only been fishing for about 30 minutes. Its coming together as palnned...
We head to our next spot...my 1st cast "I'm on" and Carissa nets our first cull fish, a solid 4 lber. YES!!!! Carissa's 2nd cast she says calmly "I'm on" and I net our next cull fish. Another solid 4 lber. More high fives and a kiss and its back to work.
This went on the whole day...we'd hit a spot catch a couple fish and move to the next spot. Around noon I decide to check to see If I can find a big bedfish that might help our limit. I pulled up on this spot on the west dam and look down and see a solid 7 lber. locked on a bed... I couldnt beleive my eyes...THIS IS THE ONE WE NEED TO SECURE THE WIN!! I fire out my bait and it sank down to the bed and that big female instantly sucked in my bait and spit it out quicker heck. It happened so quick that I swung and missed it. I spend the next 30 minutes trying to get her to eat again but she never sucked the whole bait in to her mouth again. She would nip at the bait and even sucked in part of the bait, but not the hook, several times. But I didnt want to take the chance of foul hooking her or possibly losing her so I wanted to wait until she had the bait completely. This went on for about 30 minutes so I decided to switch to a jig.. I flip it out to her and she instanly went vertical on the jig and was about to eat it when the jig slid off the rock and off the bed. My hands are shaking at this point. I can usually stay calm but for some reason on this fish my emotions were getting the best of me. I tell Carissa to get ready with the net because I knew I'd catch it on the next flip. I make a perfect flip onto the bed and instantly she ate the bait. I rear back and cross her eyes as hard as I could....BUT as I did, my reel engaged into free spool because my thumb must have hit the button in my hast to swing hard. and in the process my line got caught on the reel handle and I didnt notice and when I swung again my 20 lb line snapped..........NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! The fish slowly swam away with my jig hanging out of its mouth with my broken line trailing behind. 10, 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, I was about to have an epic meltdown!!
I almost puked when I saw her swim away into the darkness....Every ounce of energy left my body and I needed to sit down because I was on the verge of breakin my rod over the side of the boat. What a DONKEY I am for losing that fish was ALL I could say for the next 20 minutes. I had to put it behind me and move on so we made a move... my sight fishing rods go back into the rod locker and its time to get back to work. We get to our next spot and on my 1st cast I say "NET" and Carissa nets another cull fish...almost 5 lber. That took "SOME" of the sting away from losing that big one. I cast back out and I say "NET" again Carissa nets another cull fish solid 4 lber.
We continued to hop from spot to spot all day and we both continued to catch fish culling out an ounce here and an ounce there.
With 45 minutes left in the day the wind started to howl and with my battery running low it was tough to stay on my spots so Carissa got on the big motor and kept us on the spots while I kept my vest on and fished the spots.
We never quit!!!!!
We did that until it was time to go in...
I thought our big fish was about 6 lbs so I figured we had about 23 lbs.
As it turned out our big fish was 7.04 lb and was the big fish of the tournament and our total weight was 24.30 lbs good enough to squeek out the win on what was one of our most emotional rollercoaster tournaments ever. It worked out though for us this time and we are greatful for the ones we got in the boat.
Thank you again to Mike Peterson for showing us the ultimate respect in the morning and letting us have the spot to ourselves.
Thank you to my sponsors...Skeeter boats, Yamaha, Eye Surrender Eyewear, Maxima Line, Team Dead Money Apparel, Gee Gee Baits, and Hot Sauce Gel.
Also I want to thank Mike and Lynne and their staff for doing a great job this year at all the tournaments. Its a pleasure to fish your events..
Congrats also to Mitch and Will for their 2nd place finish and to John K. and Mike C. on their 3rd place finish.. 1st place was 24.30. 2nd palce was 24.20 and 3rd place was 24.04....NOW THAT IS TIGHT!!!!
Also congrats to Cory and Larry for winning the AOY title!! Good job guys on winning the title in what is an EXTREMELY competitive region!!
All of our fish were caught on 5-6 lb Flouro , drop shot, small baits, dead sticking or VERY SLOW presentation very shallow 1-7 feet deep.
Sorry this was so long but I wanted to share the ride with everyone..
Pete
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