Off to the Berkley B1 we went, although not quite as excited as we were prior to the 2 events that Doug & I fished down on Lake St. Francis earlier this summer. We had considered doing the B1 in 2009 but Doug’s work schedule & potential lack of preparation time prevented us from attending. Then we heard about the issues regarding the weigh-in in 2009 and figured that we made the right move. Our interest was peaked once again when we heard that it would be held in 2010 on Lake St. Francis in the fall.
We had fished Lake St. Francis for the first time in 2008 in the Renegade circuit, weighed in just over 20 lbs. and ended up in 11th place. We were completely impressed by the quantity & quality of the fish on this section of the St. Lawrence. So we contacted the organizer, Ben Woo about fishing this year’s event and he was very excited about the possibility of having us as participants. We registered based on his promise that there would be no issues such as in 2009. He assured us that there would be certified scales at the event plus a proper weigh-in management group.
He came through with flying colours as the B1 hired the Renegade Bass Tour to conduct their weigh-in for them. We were thrilled because we were familiar with this crew and knew that the weights would be bang on! In fact we asked for a re-weigh of our fish on day 2 and the difference was 0.01 lbs. that’s pretty dam accurate!
Our spirits were somewhat dampened after our Renegade events in August, the fish were not nearly as plentiful or big? We were hoping that this was an anomaly but found that it wasn’t when we arrived to pre-fish. I arrived on Wed. and found the fishing very tough. I checked some familiar water and explored some new water! The result was I caught 5 fish for maybe 13-14 lbs. not nearly good enough and I never caught more than 1 fish in any area. Of course the wind never once let up and all I heard many other competitors complaining about the fishing. We normally never listen to dock talk but after awhile…
I managed to get a good night’s rest but awoke to rain Thurs. AM. Doug had arrived so now we had 2 boats to cover a little more water. The plan was for Doug to look for some Buckets and I would check out some new water closer to the blast-off. Doug quickly had some success, finding some decent Largies as back-up. He also found that an area that we had fished for Smallies in Aug. was now loaded with Largies. As the day went on, we fully expected to see an bearded old man(Noah) in long robes working on building an ark. The rain was relentless, never stopping once all day long.
Doug went to give some of our other Smallie water a rub and found those areas totally vacant. Although a lot of the new water that I checked out looked like it should hold fish alas it did not. Although I did get into several schools of jumbo perch, I did not manage to catch a bass this day but eliminated all kinds of water. At the end of the day, which for me came at 3PM, I was totally soaked and was starting to shiver. When I arrived back at the Raisin River Marina, lo & behold who do I discover taking advantage of a covered slip but Bob Izumi himself.
Bob figured that he wasn’t catching or finding any fish so he might as well retie out of the rain. He was also soaked and took the time to strip down to his skivvies and get into some dry clothes. He was very thankful that the OPP didn’t show up while he was doing this as their police boat was parked in the next slip. Just the thought of Bob Izumi standing in his underwear is enough to give even the bravest soul nightmares! Didn’t quite work out for Bob as after sitting nice & dry in the covered slip he eventually had to drive back to Cornwall so I’m pretty sure that he got wet again.
The rain lasted for over 20 hours. When we arrived at the launch we were greeted by the sight of a 16′ aluminum with a 40hp zipping down the river, which in itself would not be unusual except for the lack of an operator. There was a raging current at about 6 mph and at the mouth there was a complete dock with a submerged boat tied to it along with a pedal boat plus all kinds of trees. Pretty well, the whole north shore from there to Valleyfield was pure chocolate milk, this changed things substantially.
After spending some time looking for clear water in the east end of the lake I finally abandoned those efforts and joined Doug in the west end exploring some deep current areas. Doug had caught a few decent fish in the 3 lbs. range and I started catching some as well almost immediately after I had arrived. That pretty well made up our minds for us. Our plan was to stop and pick up a quick limit of Largemouths, with hopefully one or two being of the variety that would be hard to cull. Not necessarily the strongest game plan we’ve ever had going into a major event but we knew that this lake was fishing tough and if we worked hard and stayed focused, anything could happen.
We had to get off the water early on Fri. to attend a mandatory competitors meeting. Announcements and rules were reviewed, followed by a toss of the coin for which half of the field were going to receive scrutineers. We ended up in the lucky group that had scrutineers. We just crossed our fingers & hoped for someone fairly light. Although it’s a bit of a pain to carry that extra weight, the credibility that it brings to a event like this makes it worthwhile. Finally the start numbers were drawn for and we got to re-tie our lines and finally have dinner. Luckily, we had a great pub/restaurant located about 20 metres away from motel room. The burgers were great, the beers huge and we made a vow to come back for steak if we weigh over 20 lbs. on day 1. Finally it was off to bed. We had to get up early as we were preparing ourselves for a klusterf*** at the ramp as there usually is when 144 boats are involved.
The AM launching went much smoother than anticipated as they had plenty of volunteers to direct traffic plus 2 launch ramps & plenty of parking. We picked up our scrutineer and chilled out (literally) awaiting the blast-off. Day 1 didn’t go exactly as planned as we abandoned the Largemouth portion of it after about 10 minutes as the water in that area was still muddied up pretty badly. We both agreed that “Brown” was going to be the way to go! When we arrived at our first Smallie area, we were pleased to see no one there although several of our other secondary areas had boats all over them. Our second fish was a 4 lber., we were on our way! We managed to finish off our limit here but there was a bit of a size issue with our other 4 fish. We decided to make a move and fish another area. What a great call, as we proceeded to upgrade huge with several big fish including one that turned out to be a 5.67 lber.
Man, it would have been cool to have a cameraman on board for that one. When Doug set hook on it it rocketed straight up and probably cleared the water by 3 ft.(so I’m told). I actually didn’t see the first jump as I was turned to get the net but it sounded like someone had dropped a cinder block in so I knew that it was a keeper! It went down hard then shot straight up and rocketed in the air about 4 feet from the boat, luckily my arms were long enough as I caught it in mid-air. It would have made great television! Once we knew that we had over 20 lbs. we just fended off a couple of other encroaching boats for a while and then decide to go pre-fishing for day 2. We managed to catch several more 3 lbers. but nothing that could upgrade our sack. When we finally arrived back at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, we spoke to a few fellow competitors and were surprised at their estimated weights considering the day that we had. You just never know how the rest of the field is making out.
There didn’t seem to be any plan when it came to weighing in as the boats clustered together trying to get a spot at the docks. It didn’t help that some of the competitors that were tied up to the docks decided that it would be a good idea to stick around to watch other teams weigh in. We finally got a spot and loaded up our weigh-in bag to a few oohs & aahs. I looked at Doug and remarked that I thought that we had over 22 lbs. We never weigh any of our fish during an event, we just know that we’re bringing in our 5 heaviest fish. As we handed our bag to Art Cunningham of the Renegade weigh-in crew, we started to hear the talk of the Izumis weighing in 1 fish each and the other low weights that were coming in. When we finally made it to the stage and the scales did the talking, 24.06 lbs we were the new leaders by almost 5 lbs. We were thrilled to say the least and were both already anticipating that steak dinner. We didn’t expect our weight to hold up as there were many boats still to weigh-in, but we knew that we were in the hunt!
Retied our lines, had a hearty steak dinner and hit the sack early! Interesting, while we were getting ready for bed we reflected on quickly we became the grizzled veterans when it only seemed like yesterday that we were the hot young sticks on the trails! How quickly time passes!