Life On Tour
April 26, Potomac River, Day Two
Dan writes:
One nice thing about being on ’em like this is that when I got home last night, I had to re-tie only two rods. Two jig rods. I broke one off yesterday on seventeen-pound line, so I re-spooled that one with twenty, also. The biggest job of the night last night though was making up some more baits. I have only two jigs left with this magic color combination. I have been to every tackle shop in town since Tuesday trying to duplicate it, but nothing even comes close. What Annie and I are doing now is pulling individual color strands out of other baits and putting them together to make new jig skirts. By the time we went inside last night we had a total of five jigs, to last us two more days.
I met Jason on the dock at 5:30 this morning. The ESPN crew was there to wire us up with microphones, and to go over how they wanted to cover us today. Jason was just as excited today as he was yesterday, and after the camera crew left us I had to pull out away from the dock and have a talk with him. I told him that I knew this was his first B.A.S.S. event, that it was on his home water, and that he was doing well. I said I thought it was great that he was in this position, and that he was so excited about it. In fact , if the day ever comes that you’re not excited at a time like this, it’s time to get out. On the other hand, I explained to him that I try to do this for a living. It is not my first time, that I am controlling my excitement in order to focus on the task ahead. I asked him to respect the fact that I need to concentrate, that I will not be very talkative or receptive, at least until I start catching fish. Then my demeanor can change drastically, and you may not be able to shut me up. Finally I asked him to acknowledge and respect the fact that, while this may change or even flip-flop before the end of the day, at least for now the reason we have this camera boat and all the hoopla today is because I am the one who caught ’em yesterday, not him.
Jason was very receptive to this little talk, and I commend him for it. I just hope I did not come off as being a conceited jerk, but I felt I needed to say these things to him before I could concentrate on what I needed to do today.
Once we took off, my plan for today was exactly the same as yesterday. I was going to run up to the lighthouse, stop and claim that spot if there was no one already there. That didn’t happen. Even though we were boat number twenty-six today, someone beat us there again! So it was back up to yesterday’s honey hole.
We didn’t waste time fishing up against the bank this morning, and we didn’t waste time fishing to far upstream or too far downstream either. Instead I concentrated on just one little stretch just a hundred yards long. Just like yesterday though, I missed the first two bites. I don’t think they really want it first thing in the morning. The third bite of the day though made it all worth while. A fished clamped on to my magic Terminator jig , and when I jerked on this one it just about broke my rod. The ESPN camera man was in the boat with us, and he was almost knocked over when Jason dove for the net and slid it under this monster as I worked it in close to the boat. Once aboard, I held it up for the camera, and I turned and showed it to the the cheering spectator boats who were watching. She was at least five pounds. I must have been smiling from ear to ear, as well as mumbling all kinds of goofy stuff to the camera around that time. What a way to start the day!
A half hour later I put my second keeper in the boat, again to the cheering of the spectator boats. This is awesome. By this time, since I had caught two five-pounders within fifteen feet of each other between yesterday and today, I was really focusing on a very specific section of this bank, hardly moving the boat at all. In the back of the boat, Jason was great, offering nothing but encouragement, and not rushing me or crowding me in any way. I’m not sure he had had even one bite yet, so he was going through his bag of tricks back there trying to figure out how to catch ’em behind me. He did, too. He tied on a crankbait and with a special technique of his, caught a keeper out of water that both of us had just seined. Encouraged, he kept throwing the crankbait and his next bite surprised us all: another five-pounder!!! I hadn’t moved the boat in probably twenty minutes, and that makes three five-pounders from one little ten-yard stretch!
I said to him at that point “Jason, I want to thank you, for two things. First, for letting me fish my fish this morning and do my thing. That’s exactly what I needed. And second, for showing me that these fish can be caught on something other than my magic jig, which they must be getting tired of seeing.” He immediately offered me a bait identical to the one he was throwing, and I accepted. Thanks, Jason, for that crankbait caught my third keeper of the morning.
Around 10:00 a.m. I had one more good, solid jig bite, but I broke him off on the hookset. After that things really slowed, and by eleven I conceded that maybe that was it for this spot, at least for today. I had three fish for over nine pounds, and Jason had two for around seven. I told him it was his turn to pick a fishing spot.
Before leaving though I idled up to the boat who was fishing a few hundred yards away. It was Joe Horvath. I told him I was leaving, but would return soon, and if I promised not to fish beyond a certain mark then would he honor the water I had been fishing all day? He had already made up his mind that he wasn’t going to come down and fish my water if I left. There are some really good people out there.
We took off and went up around the bridge, then up into D.C., and fished four or five different areas. Other than a couple of short fish we didn’t catch any more. With an hour of fishing time remaining I asked Jason if we could return to our earlier spot and try to figure something out. It was dead-low tide when we pulled back in. Joe came down and told us that he’d had to chase any number of boats out of there, beginning as soon as we left. That’s going above and beyond what I had asked of him earlier. Thanks, Joe. So we settled down and started fishing the grassline. Where else would these fish pull out to when the water dropped? It was slow, but my partner missed one on a Brush Hog, and then I got one more bite on the magic jig, but I broke him off again on the hook set! That hurts.
I weighed in only the three fish today, for around nine-and-a-half pounds. That was good enough for first place at the time. Of course there were lots more pictures taken of the big fish I caught, and when I got off the stage I did more interviews with the newspaper and another with the ESPN cameras.
When I met my partner for tomorrow, Jeff Stephens, this time I did get someone who offered to just sit in the back and stay out of the way. He even offered not to fish, and said he’d feel terrible if he caught a big fish off of my spot. I said that that wasn’t fair, that he paid to get into this tournament like everyone else, and that he should bring his rods and fish. Later on though, I did tell him that if he was serious about not wanting to catch one of my big fish, then he could just cast out into the grass all day, and not in towards shore like I was. He said that that would be fine with him.
My first place standing dwindled as the day wore on and the fishermen came to the scales. By the end of it all I had dropped to sixth place. I think that had I landed those two fish today that I broke off, I might have added another five pounds to my weight and remained solidly in second. I don’t know what to do about that though – that’s twenty pound line I’m breaking, and I don’t have anything bigger. I guess I’ll just keep a closer eye on it tomorrow, and retie every time I put any kind of stress on it.