Saturday, FLW Tournament – Lake St. Clair, Day Four
Dan writes:
Such an early morning. This is the toughest day of all after a long hard week. They start Saturday mornings extra early, so that the weigh-in at Wal-Mart in the afternoon can be held early also. The alarm went off this morning waking me at 3:15, and I began preparing for the last day of the FLW tournament season.
The guys took off at 6:00, and once again I followed Steve Daniels down through Detroit to the end of the river. What made it more interesting this morning was that the ESPN television crew followed us down in the helicopter, and flew right overhead as the boats were tearing through downtown Detroit. They had a cell-phone hookup in Steve’s boat, and Jerry McKinnis interviewed him as he was running along at 65mph with the Detroit skyline in the background.
Steve’s fishing unfortunately was not as exciting as yesterday. He caught only around seven or eight keeper bass, and no real big ones. Sometimes on Day Four of this event, since there is no co-angler in the boat with the pro the cameraman will get in instead and shoot a portion of his footage from there. When this is the situation there is no need for the camera boat to be right there with them, so I can just sit a hundred yards off and stay out of the way. Around 10:00 this is what I was doing, and because of the long week and early mornings, I drifted off into a little nap. Though this is probably not the first time I’ve taken a nap, what was a first was that when I opened my eyes, I was all alone! My fisherman and cameraman had left, and along with him the three spectator boats as well! Did I ever feel like an idiot. I never heard any of them go. I tried to act casual, calmly looking about me out to ever increasing distances to see if they had perhaps just moved off on the trolling motor. They were gone though, so I casually picked up my anchor, put on my life jacket and left.
I found them thankfully in the first place I looked – Steve had really just been bouncing back and forth between two spots for the last two days – and I pulled in and set my anchor again a hundred yards away like nothing had happened.
Back at the weigh-in Steve had a little over ten pounds, but everyone else had caught `em real good. This was surprising, since everyone seemed to have struggled a bit yesterday. The guys who stayed in Lake St. Clair today seemed to have made the right adjustments, since there were three bags of over sixteen pounds each, but Larry Nixon is the one who weighed-in eighteen pounds to take the $200,000 first prize.
After the weigh-in we said our good-bye’s and quickly got on the road. We wanted to make it down to the Flying J truck stop where we would spend the night, but it was a difficult hundred miles for both of us. We’ve been kept occupied up until now by the busy days, but on the drive this evening it hit both of us that this was the last FLW event, the end of the season. Things would have been different had I caught just one more fish this week and at least gotten a check, but I didn’t. So we got to thinking during our drive about what we had accomplished this season, about what our plans would be regarding the future, about where we stood with sponsorship deals, and we were both rather depressed by the time we stopped for the night. We’ll write more on that in future updates, as we reflect on what we’ve learned this season, and what we feel we’ve accomplished or not accomplished.
Annie writes:
I went out window-shopping for a little while this morning. Then I cleaned the camper and got it ready for our ride home tonight, and I also planned out a route for us to drive back to NH. When we drove out here we came through Canada, but this time we are returning home through the States.
I met up with Dan at the weigh in. I had gone over early so as to schmooze a little more. When Dan came in things were very hectic. We went to the camper to drop off his stuff, then went to watch the weigh in. It was a good weigh in and I was glad to see Larry Nixon win. We are not sure when we will see everyone again, so we said our good-byes and got ready for our drive.
We were feeling very melancholy. We were glad that we are going home and have lots to do there, but we are once again left with the feeling that this season is over and we are not sure what is in store for us next year.
As we were driving to the Flying J Dan would call me on the walkie-talkies and ask me how I was. I informed him that I was doing OK physically, but mentally I was really shaken up. So much is happening, the unknown, our new house, end of the season, no check here. When you drive you have way to much thinking time. Dan reminded me of the Serenity Prayer, which I said, and within 10 minutes I felt that my shoulders were carrying a lighter load.
When we got parked at the Flying J, I cooked us dinner and Dan suggested we do nothing but hang out and watch a movie together tonight. This quiet time was much needed, and we felt much better by the time we shut off the TV for the night.