Monday, May 21, 2007
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
BUDDY BASS 2007
I fished in my first bass tournament last weekend, and I have to tell you. I am totally hooked. It was very scary to get there before the sun comes up and put the boat in and all the other boats you see are dark except for their equipment. And that is pretty posh. I'm talkin' big color displays, fancy big boats, the hum of 250 HP motors. It's definitely intimidating.....but thrilling.....
We were in Eufuala, Alabama. It's a groovie lake. It was a Sat, but it wasn't the usual fast boat and jet ski crowd. It's only about an hour south of where I live, but it totally feels like you are in Florida. Maybe it's the wildlife....
Yeah....they are totally everywhere. In your head you are thinking about that scene in Faces of Death where the report guy gets eatin' up, but after a while you just have to ignore them....and pray they ignore you. It does sorta turn fishing into an extreme sport however when every time the boat rocks from the wake of another angler you catch yourself dropping down to the floor. I gave Rusty the disclaimer that should he fall in, I would probably snap a picture, crank up, and get the hell away. The gators pop in and out of the water all around the boat, the whole time you are fishing. Once I was sitting with my feet on the side so I could get some sun on my pale little kickers, and then quickly became aware of my toes dangling out like a snack when I saw just a pair of eyes staring out of the water at me.
If you can forget about your own mortality for just a while, it is actually a very beautiful place to spend some time with nature. We got our spot on the lake that we scoped out from Monday at about 6 in the morning and we could see bait fish jumping in the water and in the grass. I was throwing a spinner bait and Rusty had a chatter bait. Our spot had a fisher on the point and three boats fishing for brim on the other side so we only had about a 75 yard area to work the boat in. We just went back and forth in that area for about 3 hours.
The water was about 72 degrees, and mostly clear. I caught 5 big bass and one very big toothy thing that neither of us would touch and we threw back with pliers (a grenlin??). Now of those 5 bass, two actually made it in the boat. Both of them were about 3 pounds each. My buddy Rusty caught one that also a 3 pounder and 2 that weren't long enough to weight in.
So I had two in the live well and Rusty had one. While I was fishing I could feel one of my bass hitting the top of the live well and once when we checked the aerator, this bass tried to jump out on us. When we were getting the fish into the bag to go to weigh in, it jumped out of the boat....right there at the dock....we call that fish "Amistad". But still we did better than a lot of people we know.....in fact a lot of people had NO fish..... I think a lot of people we shocked that we had big fish. Everything we caught was between3-3.5 pounds. So we would have had about 10 pounds....as it ended up we had 6.5. Not bad for the novices anglers =)
I fished in my first bass tournament last weekend, and I have to tell you. I am totally hooked. It was very scary to get there before the sun comes up and put the boat in and all the other boats you see are dark except for their equipment. And that is pretty posh. I'm talkin' big color displays, fancy big boats, the hum of 250 HP motors. It's definitely intimidating.....but thrilling.....
We were in Eufuala, Alabama. It's a groovie lake. It was a Sat, but it wasn't the usual fast boat and jet ski crowd. It's only about an hour south of where I live, but it totally feels like you are in Florida. Maybe it's the wildlife....
Yeah....they are totally everywhere. In your head you are thinking about that scene in Faces of Death where the report guy gets eatin' up, but after a while you just have to ignore them....and pray they ignore you. It does sorta turn fishing into an extreme sport however when every time the boat rocks from the wake of another angler you catch yourself dropping down to the floor. I gave Rusty the disclaimer that should he fall in, I would probably snap a picture, crank up, and get the hell away. The gators pop in and out of the water all around the boat, the whole time you are fishing. Once I was sitting with my feet on the side so I could get some sun on my pale little kickers, and then quickly became aware of my toes dangling out like a snack when I saw just a pair of eyes staring out of the water at me.
If you can forget about your own mortality for just a while, it is actually a very beautiful place to spend some time with nature. We got our spot on the lake that we scoped out from Monday at about 6 in the morning and we could see bait fish jumping in the water and in the grass. I was throwing a spinner bait and Rusty had a chatter bait. Our spot had a fisher on the point and three boats fishing for brim on the other side so we only had about a 75 yard area to work the boat in. We just went back and forth in that area for about 3 hours.
The water was about 72 degrees, and mostly clear. I caught 5 big bass and one very big toothy thing that neither of us would touch and we threw back with pliers (a grenlin??). Now of those 5 bass, two actually made it in the boat. Both of them were about 3 pounds each. My buddy Rusty caught one that also a 3 pounder and 2 that weren't long enough to weight in.
So I had two in the live well and Rusty had one. While I was fishing I could feel one of my bass hitting the top of the live well and once when we checked the aerator, this bass tried to jump out on us. When we were getting the fish into the bag to go to weigh in, it jumped out of the boat....right there at the dock....we call that fish "Amistad". But still we did better than a lot of people we know.....in fact a lot of people had NO fish..... I think a lot of people we shocked that we had big fish. Everything we caught was between3-3.5 pounds. So we would have had about 10 pounds....as it ended up we had 6.5. Not bad for the novices anglers =)
