Life on Tour
Lake Erie EverStart Tournament, Sandusky, Ohio, Day 1
Dan writes:
My plan for today was to run all the way out to the “helicopter pad” first, and fish my way back south as the day wore on. My partner though, John Kelly, a local who lives out on Pelee Island, convinced me that the fish just a little further out, on another reef, were bigger, so that is where we started this morning. He caught one on his first cast, about three pounds, and in the next hour it seemed that every boat around us was catching fish, except me. When I finally did get a bite, a four-pound fish skyrocketed out of the water and spit out my bait. They are bigger out here, but after another hour without a bite and I decided to move.
I headed over to the helicopter pad and made a few drifts across the edge of the drop. In three passes we had not one bite, yet the boat next to us caught five fish during this time. When I let him know how poorly we were doing thus far, he was nice enough to clue me in to a color change we should make, and once we did we started getting bit. Or at least my partner did. In fact, before I stripped all the ten-pound line off me reel and respooled with eight, may partner had his five fish limit while I still had none! We were throwing the same tube with the same weight and the same hook, yet he was getting all the bites.
With the eight-pound line I finally caught three keepers, and with five minutes left to fish had a fourth one flopping around right at the net but just wouldn’t go in, and instead ended up spitting the bait out right in front of us.
The weather was nasty, and for a ride that took forty minutes to get out we allowed two hours to get back. That was unfortunate because it took only half that, and I could have used that extra hour to maybe finish out my limit out there. I finished the day with three fish that weighed 8.7 pounds, less an eight ounce dead-fish penalty. Had I not lost those other two today I could have weighed fourteen-and-a-half and been right there at the top-30 cutoff.
Annie writes:
I was up at 4:45am as I had to go with Dan this morning so I could have the truck to get to the weigh in this afternoon. I decided to bring the computer and see if I might possibly get a connection in another town. I sat in the parking lot and watched them take off as I tried to get online with my computer. IT WORKED!! I spent 45 minutes there doing research and got some great information for my paper.
I spent the rest of the morning at our campsite, working on my paper, we are nearing the end. I went to the weigh in early to try and do my final research on the computer, but I could not get back on.
Dan arrived in at 4:00 with 3 fish, I was fairly happy with that. I guess I did not have high expectations due to the way his practice went. We arrived home around 6:30 and it was raining, it rained for the rest of the night and I did a lot of mopping up in the tent. We both agreed, we need a new tent.