Wednesday, January 23, Lake Okeechobee, Day One
Dan writes:
Take-off was at seven am., and I raced straight up to the eel grass flats on the North Shore as soon as they called my boat number. I wasn’t expecting to catch ’em right away, but every second that you have your bait in the water can be important. The fishing was slower today than on previous days, but it was consistent. By noon I had four fish in the boat and my partner had three. No big ones yet, but the fish turn on in the afternoon, right? RIGHT! Drifting over the same spots and pitching into the same holes over and over again, my next fish turned out to be a five pounder, and my partner’s next fish was four pounds. Way to go, Dan. You know where these big ones are… wait ’em out and they WILL turn on for you.
I caught one more fish, but those were the only big bites we had today. At three o’clock we headed back to the weigh-in. My limit weighed ten pounds, four ounces – less than three pounds away from the Top Twenty cut. I think a fourteen pound bag tomorrow will do it for me. That’s what I’ve been catching every day in practice out there, so I feel good about it, and since I didn’t have to spend the evening and all night trying to revise my strategy, we had a pretty good night.
Annie writes:
The past couple days it has been extremely foggy in the morning, and that was my fear for this morning – that they would have to delay the take off. When we peeked out of the tent at 5am, no fog. This is a great sign. I went to put Dan in the water, then came back home. I paid some bills and by 9:00 realized it was windy outside. If it is windy where I am it must be worse on the water. I knew it would not be good for Dan’s fishing.
Dan was due in at 3:40. Anxiously I sat on the bank, watching other anglers bring in some good stringers, and some not so good stringers. I knew it could go either way. Dan came in and signaled that he had five fish. That was a relief. It felt very good when he weighed them in and the total was 10.4 lbs. He was sitting in 51st place at the end of today, well in the money and not far out of the Top Twenty. It is a good place to start at tomorrow.