Weather is always unpredictable at this point in season, and this weekend was no exception. The tournament was scheduled to be on Rice Lake, but with winds forecasted to gust higher than 45 knots from the southwest; the location was changed to a more wind friendly location at Seymour Lake. The day was windy, cold and for the last 2 hours wet. Fishing was extremely tough for most anglers. I knew from my pre-fishing on Rice Lake that to catch fish this weekend you had to slow down to a crawls pace, and the fish would eventually bite.

Throughout the day we caught 15 or so fish, and culled our way up to a 12.75 lb limit. Clown coloured jerk baits, chartreuse and white spinner baits and natural coloured jigs were the tools that got the job done. Our two biggest fish came on a jerk bait and a tube, worked extremely slow. I lost one fish on a jerk bait early in the morning that probably cost us the win, but I was pretty happy that our mediocre limit was enough for 7th place and also enough to win the Angler of the Year award for our local club.

Next week is the last tournament of the year; the Bass Pro Shops Lake Simcoe Open. This is the biggest and best 1-day tournament in Ontario (and likely Canada). Lake Simcoe is a cruel body of water to anglers. Winds can whip the waves into 6-8 ft rollers and usually half of the 100 boat field will not weigh-in a 5-fish limit. The best boats will need over 25lbs to crack the top ten. Last year the big fish for the event was an 8.05 pound behemoth smallmouth bass and the winners weighted-in a record setting 31.55 pounds; that is what draws anglers from all over the province to Lake Simcoe in the fall.

My fingers and toes are crossed that the winds and weather cooperate for this one!

Tight Lines,
Andrew

This last weekend I was in Belleville for the eastern stop of the CSFL Bassmania tour. The Bay of Quinte is one of the best fisheries in Canada, and this weekend it lived up to its reputation.

Day 1
In practice I had located lots of smallmouth bass (including a few big ones) on Lake Ontario, a 60 mile run from the boat launch in Trenton. The weather cooperated and Doug Strong (my fishing partner) and I made the long run out to Lake Ontario relatively unscathed. The day was going great with lots of big fish in the boat. I knew we had a good limit of bass, but I was not confident it was enough for the win; and it wasn’t. The Johnston brothers of Peterborough came in with a record setting catch of 27.3 pounds to take the win. We ended up in forth place (of 75 boats) with 23.55 pounds, my heaviest ever limit of fish.

Day 2
The winds were still cooperating on Saturday so we made the long trip out to Lake Ontario; this time with mixed feelings. The only fish we didn’t catch the day before were the smaller ones, so we would have to get lucky this day to bring in a big limit. This day also went exactly as we had predicted. We caught over 40 smallmouth bass (half on the jerkbait which was an absolute blast), but none over 4 lbs. On day two we weighed in 17.25 pounds good enough for 20th place (out of 63 boats). A good day and we were happy with decent points to help us qualify for the year-end classic.

Day 3
On day 3 Lake Ontario was out of bounds so we would have to find some largemouth bass in the Bay. Doug and I had pre-fished the Bay of Quinte (excluding Lake Ontario) just one day and it was a tough practice catching only small fish and only able to fish certain sheltered bays due to high winds. We had little hope for this day and again needed to get lucky to pull off a good finish. In the end it was another day of catching lots of fish, but this time none were over 3 pounds, so we ended as expected near the bottom of the pack in 44th place (out of 56 boats).

Even with a poor showing on the final day it was a great weekend for us. It is pretty tough to complain when you weigh-in your personal best limit, competed for top place and catch over a hundred bass

Congratulations to day one and day three winners Cory and Chris Johnston and congrats to day two winners Jim Dodd and Chris Giles. Another impressive performance by the Johnston brothers.

Tight lines,
Andrew

Reds Fishin Blog

Thank you to Power Pole, Upper Canada Marine and Aqua Vu

At this time of the year water temperature is one of the most important factors I consider before wetting a line for pike. Pike spawn in weedy shallow bays when temperatures reach 5° Celsius (41° F). Post spawn they will recover in these shallow depths for a week or two if forage is available. On special occasions several sunny days follow the pike spawn and water temperatures in these shallow back bays quickly warm into the range that sunfish begin their annual nesting phase. When that happens the shallow water bite can be outstanding for numbers and for big fish.

On Thursday I had my fingers crossed that that the water temperatures had cooperated, but I was denied such pleasure when I saw the water temperature in what I call a limbo phase, hovering around 10° C (50° F). We started shallow and worked our way deep to try and connect with some active pike. It wasn’t until we hit the six to eight foot depths that we started to get into some action.

My “go to” lure this time of year has always been a fire tiger coloured Rapala Husky Jerk, but Thursday morning my fishing partner for the day was out fishing me 2:1 with a Smithwick Rouge suspending jerk bait. The Rouge was getting down about 5-6 feet whereas my Husky Jerk was digging 3-4 feet. It didn’t take long for me to switch lures and get back into the game. We caught a dozen pike on Thursday, the two biggest around the five pound mark. Friday was more of the same, but on a different lake (both lakes are on the eastern edge of the Kawartha’s). Again, shallow water less than four feet did not produce many bites, but six to eight feet did. Another dozen or so pike cooperated including a decent one around 7 pounds. What a great way to end a week!

Tight Lines,
Andrew

What worked?
· Purple/Silver or Black/Silver coloured Smithwick Rougue jerk bait
· Depths 6-8 feet
· Shimano Clarus 6’6” medium heavy, extra fast action rod
· Shimano Chronach 6.2:1 gear ratio reel
· 30lb Stren Super Braid main line with 8″ 30lb fluorocarbon leaders

Pattern for the day: Six to eight foot depths just outside of shallow south facing muddy/weedy back bays with temperatures that were warmer than the main lake. Weeds needed to be present or else no bites were registered.

Weather Conditions:

Thursday
Sunny with stiff north winds gusting to 25 km/h
Surface water temperatures 9° C (48° F) rising to 11° (51° F)
Air temperatures 10° C (50° F) rising to 17° C (63° F)

Friday
Sunny with moderate south winds blowing about 10 to 15 km/h
Surface water temperatures 9° C (48° F) rising to 11° (51° F)
Air temperatures 11° C (52° F) rising to 15° C (59° F)

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!

Saturday – Bass Pro Shops Lake Simcoe Open

The weather was near perfect for this tournament with light winds no rain and cool but not cold temperatures. In pre-fish I used my Aqua-Vu underwater video camera to locate a mother load of bass, and big ones too. The problem in pre-fish was catching these fish, but I was confident on the day of the tournament my fishing partner (Dan McMullen) and I would be able to figure them out. After fishing our number one spot for several hours and with only one small fish in the live well we had to make the tough decision to “leave fish to find fish”; a motto most anglers believe is a mistake. We tried a couple other spots and found some more fish, but we were still unable to coax them into biting. With 30 minutes lefty in the day we surrendered to the Lake Simcoe fishing gods and made our way back to check-in to see how the rest of the field fared.

As expected the great weather allowed anglers to reach their spots and to fish them thoroughly; a combination that proved to be historic. The first big moment came when James Paluch and Shaun McKay came to the weigh-in with an impressive bag of fish at 23 lbs, but it wasn’t until they brought out their big fish that the crowd came alive. Their big fish stretched end to end in the tank and weighed an outstanding 8.05 lbs! Good enough for the Big Fish prize of approximately $5,000 and lots of cheers from the crowd.

The next exciting and historic moment came when Mark Moran and Joe Muszynski came to the stage. The current Canadian record for the heaviest five fish limit ever caught in a major tournament was 30.35 lbs and Mark and Joe smashed the record with an extraordinary 31.50 lbs, a historic moment which won them the tournament and over $45,000 in cash and prizes!

Even though my fishing partner and I did not get on the right fish this day I was pretty happy to just be in attendance to witness that spectacle. It was easily the most exciting weigh-in I have ever been too. Congrats to all the anglers for some truly impressive bags of fish!

Sunday – Kawartha Lakes Fishing Club Haliburton Event

This small Haliburton lake is a gem nestled just an hour north of Peterborough. In 2008 the big fish was a 6.4 lb giant largemouth bass and in 2009 the winning weight was over 21 lbs of largemouth. There are numerous smallmouth in the lake, but each year it seems green fish win. I was paired up with Jason Zigomanis for the day and our strategy was to try our largemouth spots early and go smallie fishing if the largemouth didn’t cooperate. I’m glad to say we never had to chase smallies this day as by 10 am we had a couple good largemouth and went searching the lake for a kicker (big fish). Over the next few hours we upgraded a few of our fish and culled five times, but without a big fish we knew it would be tough to finish first. At the dock I was surprised to hear that most of the competitors had struggled to catch largemouth and only the smallies were biting on this cold and rainy day. Jason and I ended up with a bag of fish that weighed 14.2 lbs good enough for the win.

The fishing season is surely winding down, with only one more tournament left this year. I hope we get a warm autumn that will allow me get out many times for some fun fishing before the lakes freeze over.

Tight lines,
Andrew

What worked (KLFC Tournament)?
Lure – Black and Blue Strike King Bitsy Jig with a matching Zoom Trailer
Depth – 4 to 8 feet of weed and weed/rock
Rod – 7’2” Shimano Cumara medium power, extra fast action
Reel – Shimano Chronarch CH101D7 7.0:1 gear ratio
Line – 65 lb High-Vis Yellow Power Pro braided fishing line

Weather Conditions:
Cloudy with light rain all day
Winds from the east at 10 – 15 km/h
Surface water temperatures 49-50 Fahrenheit
Air temperatures reached a high of 7 Celsius

Last weekend I competed in one of our local club bass tournaments on Lower Buckhorn Lake. This lake is fun to fish as the numbers of fish is phenomenal, but the big ones are tough to come by. My plan that day was to catch smallmouth bass in the morning and target big largemouth bass in the afternoon. In the morning we caught lots of smallies, but nothing bigger than 2 lbs. In the afternoon the big largies we were hoping for were nonexistent, so our five fish limit we ended up with was pretty light at 6.5 lbs. When I reached the weigh-in dock it sounded as if the other boats had an even tougher day so I was hopeful our light limit might work out. Long story short, we squeaked into third place and won a few bucks for our efforts; not a bad way to spend a cool and blustery autumn afternoon. Congrats to Mark Bennett and Dave Horn for landing an impressive 15.8 lb bag of largemouth bass, impressive for sure!

Winning Bag on Lower Buckhorn

This weekend coming up I have two tournaments; one is possibly the biggest and best tournament in Canada the other is a small 8-10 boat club tournament on a fantastic small Haliburton lake. I’m really looking forward to both.

On Saturday I am fishing in the Bass Pro Shops Lake Simcoe Open. This is one of the best one-day tournaments, not only because it is well run and on a great body of water but also because there is so much sponsorship support the prize list is like no other tournament in Canada. If the stars align for one team and they get really lucky, the winners could walk away with almost $100,000 in cash and prizes! Nothing even comes close anywhere else in Canada. I have been getting out once a week to check out the conditions on Lake Simcoe and up until yesterday my pre-fish has been pretty disappointing. Fortunately my luck turned around on Monday I found a mother load of big smallies. Catching them will be the problem on Saturday as Simcoe smallmouth bass have a unique personality. At times you might even think they are smart little creatures. I have rigged up a few unorthodox lures that should work and fingers crossed the smallies cooperate on Saturday.

On Sunday I’m fishing a small club tournament on a great little lake in Haliburton (which shall remain nameless, sorry!). This lake is a gem with lots of smallmouth bass and some very big largemouth. To win in 2009 it took 20 lbs, and in 2008 the big fish was a 6.4 lb monster bucket mouth. I don’t fish this little lake often enough, but I look forward to it every year.

There are two whole months of fishing left in the open-water Kawartha season and that includes some slime time for muskies late November to mid December. Don’t put your tackle away yet, and get out and enjoy some great fall fishing action; weather permitting of course!

Tight lines,
Andrew

What worked (on Lower Buckhorn)?
Lure – Strike Zone Slammers and BPS Tungsten Jigging Spoons
Depths – 20 to 30 feet of rock
Rods – 6’ 10” Shimano Cumulus rod medium-light power, extra fast action
Reels – Shimano Stradic CI4 2500 6.0:1 gear ratio
Line – 20 lb Phantom Red Power Pro braided fishing line

Weather Conditions:
Cloudy with Sunny periods
Winds – northwest 20-25 km/h
Surface water temperatures 51-52 Fahrenheit
Air temperatures reached a high of 12 Celsius

The federation clubs range from Ottawa all the way to Waterloo and this year seven teams qualified and 150 anglers descended upon the town of Belleville and the Bay of Quinte for this annual tradition.

Day one of this two day event went exactly according to plan, a new occurrence for me this year. I was paired up with our club president Chris Water for the day, and we had a fantastic outing catching 19.74 pounds of smallmouth bass. We placed third after day one only half a pound off the day one leader JP DeRose. More importantly our team was in second place, just six pounds behind the Simcoe Bass Anglers.

A couple Smallies from Day 1

On day two nothing went according to plan for me and Jay Bendall (my partner for day two). Due to small craft wind warnings much of “the Lake” (Lake Ontario) was deemed off limits and only the north shore including Amherst Island and 5 miles off it was in play. This tough call was made by tournament director JP DeRose and I’m sure it saved a few of us anglers from putting ourselves in harms way. After an hour boat ride Jay and I got to our first spot on the downwind side of Amherst Island and quickly netted a small keeper on my first drop of the day. Knowing that a five fish limit of small bass would not help us, I decided we had to make the painful three mile journey to a spot on the upwind side of the island which would be a very challenging and rough location to fish. In prefish we got a couple of really good smallies off this second spot, so I had lots of confidence we could net a big bag there. About ten minutes into our first drift and my partner was beginning to show signs of succumbing to motion sickness. I have seen this scenario play out before and I knew Jay was in for a tough battle. He managed to hold on for an excruciating 30 more minutes before giving me the “I can’t take it anymore” sign; a decision I do not blame on him as I think his eyes were going to pop out of his head he was so sick.

An hour into the boat ride back to Belleville, Jay decides he’s feeling well enough that we can try to continue fishing and attempt to squeak out a winning bag on “the Bay” with the remaining few hours left. Finally after fishing for a couple hours with nothing to show for our efforts, we start to figure out a pattern as Jay lands two nice largemouth bass within five minutes of each other off a shallow rock/weed shoreline. As he puts the second largie into the live well I ask him what time it is and he says 2:44. That gave us only fifteen minutes to get back to check-in from Trenton. I fire up the main motor and race back to check-in at 70+ mph. We get to check-in with only a minute to spare and thus ended our day with a disappointing 6.44 pound day two limit for a combined two day total of 26.2 pounds and 35^th place overall.

At the weigh-in I learn that the rest of the Kawartha Lakes team has had another good day on the bay and that our team might have a chance at the Fed Cup this year. As the individual awards are handed out, Kawartha Lakes Fishing Club hauls in an impressive seven, including first place for Rich “KVD” Jenkins as overall top boater of the weekend. Suspense builds as CBAF President Rick Weatherill reads out the winning team weights. In third place congratulations goes to Golden Horseshoe Bass Anglers with a team weight of 344.8 pounds (applause!). And second place congratulations goes too…

…Kawartha Lakes Fishing Club (groan!), with a team weight of 354.7 pounds only twelve pounds behind the Simcoe Bass Anglers who won with an impressive 367.4 pound team weight (applause!).

Some quick mental math and I realize that had I weighed in close to my previous day’s weight I would have won the individual award, but more importantly our team would have won the Fed Cup (admittedly a difficult task to accomplish on a wind blown Lake Ontario which impacted all the teams especially Simcoe).

Congratulations to the Simcoe Bass Anglers with an impressive showing this year. And congratulations to all the members of the CBAF and especially the Kawartha Lakes Fishing Club for putting in some remarkable individual performances on a body of water as vast and as difficult as the Bay of Quinte.

Special thanks to all the federation members and volunteers for putting in numerous hours of preparation and hard work again this year. I know all the members of the Kawartha Lakes Fishing Club look forward to this event with much anticipation and without all the behind the scenes work, none of it would be possible. Way to go Rick and gang!

Tight lines,

Andrew

To read more of my Blog entries check out: Red’s Fishin’

What worked?

Lure – Green/Smoke Strike Zone Slammer

Depths – 35+ feet of rock adjacent to deep water drop offs

Rods – 6’ 10” Shimano Cumulus rod medium-light power, extra fast action

Reels – Shimano Stradic CI4 2500 6.0:1 gear ratio

Line – 20 pound Phantom Red Power Pro braided fishing line

Weather Conditions:

Cloudy with sunny periods Saturday, Mostly overcast Sunday

Winds – northeast 10-15 km/h Saturday, northeast 20 km/h gusting to 40 km/h Sunday

Surface water temperatures – 58 to 61 Fahrenheit

Air temperatures – a high of 14 Celsius Saturday and 12 Celsius Sunday

blog:

January 11, 2005 Urban Word of the Day

n. Short for weblog.
A meandering, blatantly uninteresting online diary that gives the author the illusion that people are interested in their stupid, pathetic life…”

and I thought; hey…what better way to describe this Non-Boaters Perspective (and Charlito’s of course)!                                                      

So here goes!

May 02, 2010 LAKE ERIE NY

My first tournament out of Buffalo Harbor was nothing short of exhilarating and I’m still trying to wrap my head around it!  Imagine you’ve set the hook on something you think is big, then your rod doubles over and the drag starts peeling…and you catch your first glimpse of a giant smallmouth racing to get under the boat and now that you’ve seen it, you know without a doubt it’s a big fish… your heart rate gets going and you hold your breath for the last few turns of the handle until she’s safely in the net and you can finally exhale.  As a non-boater new to tournaments…there was no better feeling for me on that Sunday morning than being able to deliver a 4 or 5 pounder to the boat on tournament day before 10am and no experience weirder than to have my boater look up from the measuring board shaking his head, muttering something about “just about 19”… and slipping your behemoth smallmouth back into the water and watch it wiggle its way out of sight.  And that’s a common occurrence when fishing early season on Lake Erie out of Buffalo Harbor which enforces a two fish, twenty inch minimum rule for early season.  I stood there stunned for a moment, trying to understand what had just happened before shaking it off and making another cast… and even later that day as my boater went to slip a massive 19 ¾” fish over the side of the boat I realized that my brain was screaming… nooooooooooo… as I asked if he was sure this one was going back… he was sure, and away she went.

My boater for the day; Pete Bartonek, was spectacular and held a tremendous amount of insight on the body of water we were fishing.  I was amazed by Pete’s ability to not only keep us on track with the trolling motor while monitoring the electronics for position, depth and water temperature, all while keeping aware of what his rod was doing while making suggestions on what I could be doing better and staying vigilant on the prevailing winds and what they were bringing towards us…I remember suggesting how lucky we were to be out on such a calm flat day, to which he quickly corrected as not being as calm or as flat as I thought as he directed my attention to the dark clouds and increasing winds that would soon be upon us.  Even towards the end of our day as the sun was bright and the wind was nowhere to be found I learned how drifting along with relatively calm rollers was a lot different than racing back to weigh in over them! We may not have had any keeper’s at day’s end (well I guess we’ll never know about that giant that came unbuttoned… sorry about that Pete) but there was no shortage of big fish to keep us busy throughout the day and a lot of good laughs to go along with them.

This is a truly outstanding fishery and it was awesome to get out in May and chase down some absolutely huge Lake Erie smallies.  I know I’ll be making the trip again and if hooking into a 6 or 7 pound smallmouth is on your “to do” list… a trip to New York could very well make that dream a reality!

In closing I’d like to add my thanks to the boater’s in the CBAF. I know I speak for all of us when I say you guys are absolutely second to none!  Your willingness to welcome us non’s on board and share a day on the water, while improving our abilities is greatly appreciated.  In some cases we are meeting for the very first time as we are welcomed aboard and it really means a great deal.  Special thanks to Flavio Gomes who really came through for non Evan Hetherington making it possible for him to get out and fish which helped Evan cash a cheque in this event!

And that’s my NBP…thanks for checking it out… or for being bored enough to read just about anything.

TL

and perhaps most importantly:

• It has to be FAIR and MAKE SENSE – in other words – make the tournament better and more equitable for ALL participants

I think his point carries a lot of merit.

Firstly – it’s the only Pro/Co “series” or “circuit” available in Canada at the moment.  And nobody can deny that Pro/Cos are a more skill-testing format of fishing tournament.  There’s a reason that team tournaments are called “buddy” tournaments in the states.  Is it disparaging, I guess so, but it’s also a simple fact that all of the really high profile big money events are either Pro/Observer or Pro/Co.  There is a reason for this.  The perception of integrity.  And we all know perception is reality as far as the eyeballs of the public are concerned.

Let’s think about about what happens in a bass fishing tournament.  Anglers are sent off into the wild blue yonder.  The playing fields are sometimes about the size of Prince Edward Island and competitors can be as much as 200 miles apart!  The participants are not judged or officiated for the duration of the “game”.  They check back in after 8 hours of fishing, knitting, knee-boarding or lovemaking (don’t get your hopes up if you draw me).  Nobody knows what goes on during those 8 hours but the people in that boat.  So which scenario is more likely to have fishiness (pardon the pun):

• 2 semi-strangers put together by a random draw

or

• 2 friends/relatives that sign up together

It’s pretty obvious that it’s more likely that 2 friends/relatives that fish together would feel more at ease taking liberties with the rules.  Now polygraphs are available, but the admitted dirty lowdown cheater Robby Rose beat a bunch of polygraphs.  I’d guess that sociopaths like him are far more likely to “game” a polygraph than a nervous honest person would be to pass a polygraph even having done nothing wrong.  It’s an imperfect science at best.

Secondly, the thing I admire the most about the CBAF events are the incredibly high standards of sportsmanship and rules enforcement by Simon Frost, JP DeRose, Rick Weatherill and the other tournament organizers.  There is no favoritism.  Alvin unloaded his fish while his boat was on the trailer at the Fed Cup and was DQed.  Did it matter that he was the National Championship qualifier? No.  Did it matter that he is a super nice guy that everyone likes? No.  Did it matter that he was from the eventual champion megapowerhouse Mississauga CBAF team?  No.  Did it matter that he broke the rules? Yes and so it was enforced regardless of who it was.  I think there were 7-8 DQs last year for various offenses – and most were just cases of not knowing the rules or the proper blast off time – relvatively minor things like that.  The DQed participants included club presidents, CBAF executive members, sponsored/wrapped boat pros, it simply did not matter who or what you were.  The rules were applied evenly.  When was the last time you heard that at ANY series?   Most series will do anything to not “rock the boat” for fear of losing participation.  I think it is really great that we continue to hold each other and the sport in high regard and do everything we can to promote fair play and responsibility in knowing the rules and respect in following the rules.  If anything it has INCREASED our participation and value.

Kudos CBAFers!