Long road trip!

I left Kenora on May 6 and have been on the road ever since so it's becoming a bit of a long haul!  I'm having fun though!  My Dad joined me for the first part of this trip, as we went to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin to compete in a one-day NABC tournament on Lake Michigan.  It was the the weekend before the annual Sturgeon Bay Open tournament that I have participated in for several years and my Dad had never been out there before so it was a great opportunity to get a few days of fishing in at this great smallmouth fishery.  

There are more five pound plus smallmouths at this place than anywhere I know of, always a lot of fun, weather permitting!  

We had a pretty good practice for the tournament and were prepared with what we thought was a good game plan for a one-day shootout.  The day of the event the wind was blowing really hard out of the north, which is always the worst for this place.  We made the run to Little Sturgeon Bay and made it without to much problem, though we were wet and cold!  After a change of clothes, it was time to get busy!  When we started fishing we noticed the water temperatures had dropped off significantly from where it had been the day before, from 52 degrees down to 42 degrees!  Not good!  We ended up putting one five pound fish in the boat and then decided at 11:30 we would try to run back up to Sturgeon Bay to hit a few spots there.   When we reached the mouth of Sturgeon Bay, the waves were some of the biggest I have ever seen in my life, 6-8 footers, so we made the decisison to turn around and pull into the marina in Little Sturgeon and load the boat on the trailer.  We had to make an 18 hour drive south to Eufaula, Alabama following the event and this was a call that we made because I didn't want to risk damaging anything on my boat because I needed to have it ready to go two days later to start practicing for the Eufaula FLW Tour event and I did not have any time to get anything fixed.  We weren't the only ones who packed it in early, five other boats joined us in getting a ride on land to pick up our trucks.

My Dad travelled with me down to Eufaula and participated in his first event as a co-angler.  We had a fun practice for this tournament and caught a decent number of fish, epecially on the last day when my Dad put on a clinic for me!  I felt like I had a really solid program going into this event, throwing a Jackall Flick Shake worm around some docks and throwing an Iobee Frog in the shallow grass during the afternoons.  

The first day of the event went great, I caught 13-06 and was in 38th place, not to far off the top 20 pace, so I was happy.  I had a strong finish to the day and was really optimistic that I would have a great second day.  My co-angler from day one, Jason Johnson had an even better day and boated over 15 pounds which landed him in first place in his division.  He ended up second overall...a great dude that I enjoyed sharing the boat with.  

Fishing is a humbling sport is what I learned on day two!  I fished my butt off all day and was only able to put one small keeper in the boat to end up with a 90-something place finish.  I'm not really sure what happened, looking back, I'm not even sure what I would have done differently, it was just one of those days.  I did miss a couple of big blow-ups on a frog and caught a bunch of short fish, but it just wasn't my day.  I wish I could do it over again, that's for sure!  I'm thinking the fish I was catching were just on their way out and had the tournament been a couple of days earlier I probably would have been able to put something good together.  Oh well, move on to the next one. 

After Eufaula, I moved up to Dayton, Tennessee, on the shores of Lake Chickamauga to get a little pre-scouting in for the final FLW event at the end of June.  I had a good time fishing on Chickamauga and caught a few nice fish.  Spent a lot of time scouting around with my Side-Imaging, looking for offshore structure and cover.  I found a bunch of stuff that looked great so hopefully it will hold some fish when we come back in June!  

I did catch some nice fish throwing rattle baits like this Jackall TN70 in the evenings and early mornings...so that was fun.  Looking forward to going back there in a few weeks!

This week, my fiance August came down to visit me and we spent a few days in Nashville which was a blast!  We're in Branson, Missouri now, working our way over to Grand Lake, Oklahoma, site of the next FLW Tour event next week.  I will post a report on the Grand Lake tournament when I get home.  You can follow online next week at www.flwoutdoors.com