[April] May 2001 [June]

Later in the day we attended Jeff’s track meet, where he throws the discus and runs the hundred-meter, the two-hundred-meter, and the relay, and in the evening Annie went out shopping with her mom.

Later in the day we went over to see Kate’s tennis match, and my mother, up for a week visiting from Florida, came over to watch the tennis as well. After that Annie and I attended a college fair at one of the local schools and collected all kinds of information to help Kate get started selecting a school to attend starting in the fall of 2002.

We had the realtor put together an offer on the house, and submit it to the sellers. We asked that the sellers make a decision on the offer within twenty-four hours, but of course secretly hoped that they would call us later that night. The five of us went out to dinner and discussed what it would be like living in this new house, and basically spent the entire night on pins and needles waiting for the phone to ring.

What are YOU having for supper?!!!		This is going to be good!		Alright, enough! Let me eat now!!!

Chris had his first baseball game of the season at noon, and afterwards we set up yet another showing of our new house. Annie’s parents hadn’t seen it yet, nor had Jeff, so I asked the realtor if the owners would be nice enough to let us in one more time. They agreed and we all converged on the house at 4pm. I say converged because we arrived in six different cars, and when I saw like-six kids pile out of Kate’s car I was shocked. Everyone was so excited that they had brought their friends with them to see the new house. I had to stand outside and tell them that I was sorry, but I couldn’t let them all come in. This house still belongs to someone else, who still lives here, and who was doing us a favor. In fact they were probably just driving around the block killing time while we were wandering around in their home. I felt badly and eventually the realtor let everybody in and everyone got to see the place. We all left anticipating the day when it would truly be ours.

That evening we celebrated Jeff’s birthday (he’ll be sixteen on May 14th, while we’re away on another trip) as well as Mother’s Day at Bob and Flo’s house. This is our last night here, as we fly back to Little Rock tomorrow to prepare for the FLW on the Red River.

John and I fished a small lake straight across from Clark’s Landing, where we are camped and where the tournament is going out of. This lake, Shaw Lake, was about a mile back off the main river through a maze of standing timber, yet it still had a good deal of color too it, more than I had expected. We both caught one fish in there, flipping soft plastic into the shade of a log jam. Water temperature was, get this, ninety-one degrees. Remember last week back in New Hampshire where there was still ice on the lake?

Annie writes:
Dan had to do some work on the boat this morning, so I took the truck and went into town to do groceries. Dan and John went fishing around 2, and came in a little after 6. I spent my afternoon going through our mail, taking care of some business, and setting up our camper for the next week. After dinner, we went to socialize at the Hobbie’s for a bit.

The last stop of the day was downstream towards the dam, in Little Ninock Lake. I was flipping a tube also by this time and about 5pm finally caught a good three-and-a-half pound fish, and then missed another big fish about ten feet away under the same log jam. We quit at this point with the intention of returning to fish this area some more tomorrow morning. We had fished from 6am until 6pm, and I finished the day with only two keepers, while Dick had about seven.

Annie writes:
I spent the day cleaning and organizing the camper. I am so busy making all kinds of lists now for our new house back in New Hampshire, such as things that need to be done, and things we need to get. The end of June can not come soon enough so we can move into our new home.

Dan and Dick came in around 6pm and I invited Dick to stay for dinner. There is not much by way of restaurants in this town, and I had enough food for the three of us. After much fish talk, I eventually had Danny to myself. No matter how much time we spend together, I always look forward to seeing him at the end of the day.

The lock dropped us into Pool Four twenty minutes later. We fished three different lakes down there, and in each caught one or two keepers, but we saw nothing that really grabbed our attention. All told we fished for eleven hours today, and I had seven or eight keepers, with a limit of about eight pounds.

On another note, I wanted to mention that it’s a bad week for snakes here, mating season apparently, and we’d been told to watch out for them. I didn’t think they were as bad yesterday as everyone had been talking about, but today they were out in full force. Hundreds of them. Around one log jam there were seven or eight, and I had to fight one of them off twice when he kept approaching the boat like he wanted a piece of my leg. When I finally left that place, I sat down to start the motor and another snake who had climbed up onto the engine, dropped back down into the water. It’s tough to fish when you’re constantly looking back over your shoulder, expecting to see a snake slithering up over your transom. I learned later that Dick had one actually climb up his trolling motor!

Annie writes:
I was opening up the house this morning when Elaine came over and invited me to breakfast with Laraine, Stella and herself. I accepted and we had a very good breakfast at IHOP. Afterwards, we did a few errands and I found Chris and Jeff each a pair of shorts. We returned back home after stopping at the grocery store.

Dan came in around 6 again tonight, and we had a nice dinner. Every night during dinner, we fill each other in on our day. Dan began telling me about fishing, as usual, then he told me his experience of seeing a dead body. I was shocked. I had seen a few police cars at our launch ramp today, and there was rumor of a body found, but I could not believe Dan had seen it.

We went to visit the Hobbie’s after dinner. Dan & John were talking fishing, and John convinced me that where Dan is going tomorrow is very pretty, and has no snakes. We decided if I wanted to go out in the boat, tomorrow would be the best day. When we left the Hobbie’s we walked up to the store, bought me a fishing license, then returned home to bed by 9:15.

The weather was threatening all morning, and up until noon we had clouds and a little rain, and rather disappointing fishing. We had had nothing but 90+ degrees of heat every day since we’ve been here, with full sun and not a breath of wind, and I would have expected the overcast skies today to make the fish more active, but between the two of us we caught only four keepers by mid-afternoon.

By three o’clock though the skies were blue and the sun was hot, and everything changed. I had been flipping a jig most of the day, but in a moment of inspiration I switched to an old standby, save-me bait: the Gambler Paddle Tail worm. On my very first pitch a fish grabbed it and took-off towards the deep water. It must have swum ten feet before I could catch up with it and set the hook. A solid two-pound’er. Ten minutes later, having moved down the bank some and then doubled-back towards that same spot, I told Annie not the set the hook if she got bit, as there was another boat fishing this bank from the other direction. No sooner did I say this than I felt the tap and looked down to see my line once again racing out of the bushes. I said to Annie "Look, look at this fish!" My line was tearing off like a rocket toward the deeper water. I restrained myself and tried to shake it off, but the fish was determined to eat that worm. The other boat was quite close by this point so I had to pretend I was hung-up on a bush, trying to free my stuck bait, as the other fisherman pulled up his trolling motor and idled slowly by on his way to another spot. By the time he was clear the fish had tied me up in knots and I had to break the line, leaving a fish with a hook in his mouth, something I didn’t want to do. Excited though I retied and continued down the bank, and in just one pass over this three-hundred yard stretch I caught five solid two-pounder’s, plus one that weighed three-and-a-half.

At four o’clock either the hot streak ended, or I just got too far away from where the fish were. We fished for another hour before quitting for the day, and never got another bite. Including the three pounder I had caught this morning, I had a five fish limit today that would weigh about twelve-and-a-half pounds. I’m excited.

Annie writes:
I was up at 4:29am. I could not see very well, but I was up. We were out of the house at 5:02!! No one in this campground even had their lights on yet. It was a forty-five minute ride up to the launch ramp we were using, and we were in the water by 6:00. John was right, the lake we were fishing was very pretty and I only saw one snake all day. That made it a good day in itself.

It rained briefly this morning, and we were supposed to get thunderstorms, but luckily they all seemed to miss us. I fished hard and continuous until about 3:00, by which time I had caught only two fish. Dan was a bit discouraged but, when he hit his hot streak, he was on fire. (I love it when he catches fish, because then the fishing conversations we are having can change to any topic I want.) He was very excited and at the end of the day we figured he could be in the Top 10 with two days like today. You try not to get overly excited though because we are well aware that things change every day. BUT, it is certainly nice to picture him in the Top Ten!! We had a great day together on the water, and I am very glad I went.

We arrived back home at 6:15, and I knew if I stopped for a moment I would be completely exhausted. So, instead of resting, I wiped down the boat, then made us dinner. Afterwards we visited our neighbors for a bit, then I gave Dan a haircut. By 9:00 we were in bed and had no problems falling asleep.

First I had to re-spool a reel with light line, then I tied on the smallest crankbait I had, a crappie crankbait, and threw it out there. I quickly caught one of the schooling fish, and as soon as I saw the three-inch white bass on the end of my line I knew exactly how to catch the big ones. I laid the little white bass down on the deck and pulled out my box of lipless crankbaits. I grabbed a half-ounce chrome & blue, compared it with the fish flopping on my carpet, then dug around in my bag for a black marker pen. With the marker I colored over all the blue, and then drew lines down the side of my bait until it looked exactly like the white bass. A minute later when the ink was dry, I threw it out there and just like that, first cast, I had a bass try to rip the bait and the rod out or my arms. A solid two pounder that fought like a four, and when I got it up to the boat I saw why - a three-pound-plus fish was right there with it trying to take the bait away from him.

In the next two hours I caught two more like this, on the lipless crankbait. Eventually I decided to try the white bass imitation on my spinnerbait, too, and I modified it to be twin silver blades, with a silver and black skirt. It wasn’t working for me though, until a fish boiled in a bush and I threw right in there on top of him and he grabbed it. That was when I had my second inspiration of the day. I said to myself that these fish weren’t hitting a bait that they saw coming at them - this was strictly a reaction bite and the way to force them to react was to throw the spinnerbait so that it lands not six feet beyond the bush, but rather right smack in the middle of it. As soon as I said this I picked a likely looking bush and splashed that bait right down into it. Bang! A fish nailed it! On the very first cast! What is going on here? That makes three times in the last two days where an idea has popped into my head, and on the very first cast after applying the new idea, it works!

I think I’ve got the fish in this lake figured out. I think that they’re not in these bushes all day long, but rather they’re out roaming around in the deeper water much of the time. Periodically throughout the day, because the minnows move up or the white bass move up of for whatever reason, the bass move up into the bushes to eat, and they move up in schools. Yesterday afternoon when I hit that little hot streak, it wasn’t just because I was in the right place, more importantly it was because I was there at the right time. I fished that same area again today and there wasn’t a fish in sight. Between yesterday and today though I have marked on my GPS every fish I’ve caught, and they are all on one bank between "point A" and "point B", with the distance between the two about a quarter-mile. All I have to do on tournament day is move back and forth between these two points all day long, and sooner or later I’ll find myself in the right place at the right time to catch five that weigh 12-15 pounds.

Annie writes:
Dan was up again at 4am and gone before 5. I know he is very excited after the day he had yesterday, but I am hoping he takes Tuesday off, so he doesn’t wear himself out.

I called my mom, and Dan’s mom, to wish them a Happy Mother’s Day. Jeff called me to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day, I can not put into words how those three little words from Jeff made me feel.

Dan called me at 3 and said that he had pulled out of the lake he was in, and was driving past the campground to put in at another ramp further south. He said he was staying out until dark, so I told him to stop by and pick me up and I would spend the afternoon with him. When he arrived at the camper, he went into a secret hiding space of his and produced two cards for me. The first card was a Mother’s Day card for me, from him. The words that were written in the card fit our life so well, it was as if the card was printed especially for me. The second card was another Mother’s Day card, this one was from the kids, and they each wrote something in the card and signed it back when we were home. Yes, the tears were flowing. He knows how something so simple means so much to me. These cards will be with me forever.

We had a great afternoon together, even though I had to get out of the boat and push us off a sandbar we had run up on!! The water was is about 12 inches deep with a nice sandy bottom, and it was 90 degrees out, so I could not really complain. We returned home around 7:30. Dan wiped the boat down while I cooked us dinner.

I fished today out in the main river, right around the take-off at Clark’s Landing, and caught a limit of fish throwing a crankbait along the dikes and wing dams in the "community holes", but they were just pound-and-a-half fish. I learned later on that Dick, and everyone else, was catching them in these holes also, and talk around the campground this afternoon was about how if a man drew an early boat number, he could go out and catch a few fish quickly on Wednesday morning.

There are boats everywhere down here in Pool 5 - every place I went today there have already been dozens of boats who’ve fished that spot in the last three days. If I were to find a wad of fish right now, I’ll be just one of ten people who’d want to fish those same fish come Wednesday. I’ve got to have faith in those North Lake fish - I caught two over three pounds the first day, no big ones the second day, but I just know they’re there. That’s where I’m headed Wednesday. That’s where I’m going to catch a fifteen-pound sack.

Annie writes:
At 5:30 this morning the phone was ringing, Dan was still home and I figured it was Dick calling him. Suddenly, Dan was in the bedroom saying "I’ll see if she’s awake...". I took the phone and it was Kate, she was calling to wish me a Happy belated Mother’s Day, and to say she was sorry she didn’t get to call yesterday. She is so sweet, I can’t wait to see her again. I got up to tell Dan about it, and then went back to bed. By 6:00 the phone was ringing again, and Dan was gone so I had to get up to answer it. It was Dick, and I told him that Dan & I had switched phones for the day. Hung up, went back to bed. 6:15, the phone rings, Dick again, he could not find Dan. Just then the front door opened, Dan came in and he and Dick got to speak on the phone, and Dan would meet him someplace soon. I figured I would not have a good chance of falling back asleep, so I stayed up and began doing some computer work. 6:35.......ring, ring.........it’s Dick, he thought maybe Dan & I switched phones again when he came home. It was pretty funny.

This afternoon I called Chris to see how baseball was going. We had a good talk, and he told me that he wants to come on another fishing trip with us, like he did last year. As soon as I hung up I began looking at our calendar and making plans. It made me feel good that he told us he wants to come, rather than us asking him, so I want to work hard to make it happen.

After some research and a number of phone calls, here’s what we came up with: We’ll pull him out of school early (he’ll miss the last day,) and then he’ll fly out to Detroit to spend the week of the St. Clair FLW with us. That will be a great trip for him to come on, as the park there has a lot to do, and the fishing will be just awesome. Afterwards we’ll all drive back home to New Hampshire together.

I drew number seventeen. That’s great - I can get to some of those easy fish first thing, before anyone else. But now I’m anxious about how many of those little holes I can hit before they get covered up with boats. My plan is to fish as many as I can quickly, then run the hour or so it takes up to North Lake, my primary area.

Annie writes:
Dan had to catch up on writing his journal this morning, so I went outside to vacuum the boat and organize his tackle. When Dan was finished he came out in the boat and started restringing line on his rods. I got to lay out and sun on the boat for a little while when he was working on it. It was very nice to have him home for the day.

We left for registration around 3:00 so we could run a few errands while we were out. After registering, we had the partner pairings. Dan got boat # 17 for tomorrow, which is great. We also met a local journal reader, Hamilton Bell, at the registration. He has been trying to help Dan out here, offering advice through email and telephone, and tonight he made it into the tournament at the last minute as a non-boater.

We got home around 8pm, and Dan is so excited. He has a very good feeling about this tournament. He has worked so hard this week, he has the confidence, and he knows he has taken a big step in his career, which is developing "CONFIDENCE". There is such an odd feeling we both have regarding this tournament, and it is really strange. It is difficult to admit the feelings you have when you feel you could win, but we both have this feeling and are anxious for the tournament to start.

We took off at 6:30 and though I was boat seventeen, my first spot was already taken when I arrived. I ran on by to my second spot, empty, and jumped up on the trolling motor. We fished it for five minutes without a bite, then ran on to my third hole. No takers, and we took off for my fourth spot. Here I had a good fish roll on my crankbait right up at the boat, but he missed it. We fished this spot a little longer and a little harder, but at 7:00 we finally strapped the rods down to make the run up to North Lake.

It took most of an hour to get there. Up to Shreveport, past the casino gambling boats, and on up the river another twenty miles. We flew through the chute going in to the lake, and out into the open water of this beautiful old oxbow. I kept telling myself to expect there to be other boats sitting on my good areas, and I shouldn’t let that bother me. These fish don’t bite all the time, and if those other boats aren’t there at the right time they won’t catch ‘em. If I just stick to my plan, back and forth between point A and point B, then I will.

That was my gameplan. As I’ve learned in the past though, a pro must know when to stick to his plan and when to abandon it. As I fished today I realized that conditions here had changed. Number one - a good breeze was stirring up the flat, calm water that had existed on practice days. Number two - there was virtually no baitfish activity, and no schooling white bass. These things I believed were key in turning on the largemouth on practice days. As I passed back and forth over my previously productive waters, I became more and more anxious with each pass. I fished it fast at first, and then slow, flipping into every bush, and then fast again trying to elicit a reaction bite, and then back to slow. I moved out and fished it deeper, and I moved in and fished shallower. Through all this had we not a single bite and finally, after four hours, I made the decision to abandon North Lake at noon-time. I figured I would run the hour back to the take-off, and then scramble the remaining two hours to try to put a few fish in the livewell.

By one o’clock we were running a copy of this morning’s route, in reverse order. We fished fast and hard at five different community holes, and my partner caught a two-pound fish in one of them. When we had exhausted all of these, it was time to go flipping. This is how Dick and I had started catching fish in the early days of practice, and perhaps this is what I should have done all day today, for in the last hour today I put two two-pound fish in the livewell, and missed a third that we think was much bigger. I weighed-in exactly four pounds.

The cut for the Top Ten after day one is around fourteen pounds; the cut for a check is eight pounds. While disappointed that my fish in North Lake didn’t bite today, at least I have a secondary pattern that seems to be working, and since the last flight isn’t due in until 4:20 tomorrow, instead of the one hour I spent flipping today, tomorrow I’ll do it for nine-and-a-half hours.

Annie writes:
It was a strange day, as it almost felt like Dan was fishing Day 3 instead of Day 1 of this tournament. I have a knot in my stomach and I know Dan is capable of making it to the final day here. I tried to keep busy by going out to do laundry, then over to the local mall, but it didn’t help much.

Dan was in the first flight, due in at 3pm, Thank God. This is no different than any other tournament, but I just think this will be a good one for us, and I want to get on with it and find out for sure! When Dan did come in, I watched forever as he idled through the long no-wake zone, stopped to put on his tournament shirt, and tied up at the dock. When he finally motioned to me that he had only two fish, my heart sank. It is that initial blow that gets you.

Dan weighed-in a total of 4lbs. Afterwards he took the boat over to the camper and tied it up to the dock out back, then worked on setting up his tackle for tomorrow. I sat in the boat with him while he did his work, and at one point he looked up at me and said he was sorry. Something came over me and I started crying. He thought I was upset at him for not catching fish. That’s not it at all. We talked, and I explained my sudden flow of emotion. You see, Dan is out in the boat all day, and as the day progresses he knows exactly how his day is going, and what the outcome is likely to be, hours before I do. I on the other hand, am sitting at home just thinking about it all day. This could be the one... He had such a good practice... It is finally our time... Then when he comes in and instead of the 12 to 15 pounds we had been expecting, he has only 2 fish, and all of my emotions come out. I want to be supportive of Dan, but it is not what we expected to happen in this tournament. IN NO WAY am I disappointed in Dan. I know how hard he works, and that it is nothing that he did wrong. I do not understand why these things happen, but never would I be mad at Dan for not catching fish.

After the weigh-in we attended the Christian Anglers Meeting, then got a printout of the standings. Dan is #125 out of 175. We shut ourselves in the camper at 7pm and never came out. We hid in there, just the two of us, so as not to hear the fishing stories of the day. We ate dinner, hung out and watched some TV together. He is still optimistic and excited to go fishing tomorrow, as he is changing his pattern and thinking it’s going to work. I am not sure how I am feeling.

Yesterday’s disappointment put my chances of making the Top Ten out of the question, and just to get a check I would need eleven or twelve pounds today. That was my target weight, my breakeven point, and anything less was as good as nothing. I started this morning flipping the logjams where I finished up yesterday, and where I know big fish live. I figured that even if they’re not aggressive early, sooner or later I’d hit one in the head and he’d just react. As the day wore on and my livewell remained empty though, I questioned my strategy and considered abandoning it in favor of something else. I felt I could catch a seven or eight pound limit fishing out on the rocks, which is where most everybody else was, but I didn’t feel I could reach my target weight. I believed that flipping was my best bet for catching big fish, and the later in the day it got the more important it was to catch big fish, so I just kept flipping.

I did it for almost ten hours today, and it just never happened. Even that hot afternoon bite that I had been counting on never occurred. I had only two bites all day long, and one of those fish I lost when I couldn’t pull it out of the logs. In the end I weighed just one fish, a little over two pounds, and finished way, way back in the pack.

Both Annie and I are just dumbfounded, and don’t understand how this could have happened. I had one of the best practice periods I have ever had, and established both a primary and a secondary pattern. I drew a great boat number for day one, and had spots to run to where I should have been able to take advantage of that boat number. In five years of professional fishing, never have I felt more strongly that this was my time, my tournament to break through and make it at least to the Top Ten, if not win outright. I found the fish in practice to do it and now, when it’s all over, I don’t have a clue what went wrong. The river didn’t rise or fall, or all-of-a-sudden become muddy, and other than a little wind on tournament days (which should have improved the fishing?), we had no change in the weather. Nothing changed except that my fish just wouldn’t bite. I need a few days now to reflect on the whole thing, to try and figure out what went wrong.

Annie writes:
Today, my outlook on this tournament had changed. I was not having any expectations, did not get nervous, and figured that whatever happens, happens. Dan was in the last flight and due in at 4:20. At 4pm my phone rang. After the events of yesterday, Dan wanted to warn me ahead of time that today was going to be worse than yesterday. It was kind-of cute that he didn’t want me to get the "big blow" when he drove up with only one fish, so he called to give me time to digest it.

We have pulled a check out of every FLW tournament we’ve fished this year, up until this one, and cannot expect to do well in every one, so by 8pm I was over any disappointment and ready to move on to the next tournament.

Dan is driving a camera boat tomorrow, so he had a meeting to go to after the weigh-in. Since he does not have to get up early tomorrow, we stayed up later than usual tonight. Jeff has been calling us every day and keeping track of Dan’s tournament, which is good for Dan’s spirits, and helps ease the disappointment of a not-so-good finish for him.

Dan was out in the camera boat with the fishermen today, and when they returned we went over to WalMart to watch the Top Ten weigh-in. In the end we realized that only nine pros had weighed in. One of the Top Ten, Joel Baker, got disqualified just minutes before he was to weigh his fish. Apparently, he had been wearing an illegal logo all day, in front of the TV camera, which is a violation of the FLW rules. You are only allowed to wear logos of the official sponsors of the FLW, and Joel had on a college logo hat. I felt extremely bad for him. You could tell that he did not do it intentionally, it was just a baseball hat. But, I also see why they had to disqualify him - if they are not consistent in enforcing all the rules, all the time, then there would be even more problems down the road.

By the time we got home it was 8:00, we were both edgy and tired and went to bed around 9:30, but we both had a great deal of trouble sleeping. We think it is the disappointment from the tournament setting in, and we are just trying to let it pass by.

One lesson I learned here, which can be applied to any river system in the south with similar characteristics (stained to muddy water, fluctuating river stages, wing dams and dikes to direct water flow,) is how important it is to fish the rocks and the current at this time of year, early summer. When I first arrived a week ago to start practice, I was scared off the main river by the muddy water conditions. Water clarity improved every day that we were here, but judging by the number of fish and the relative ease of catching them off the rocks during the tournament, chances are the fish were there the week before also, in spite of the muddy water.

If I had to do it all over again now, what I would do is establish a pattern in which I could catch a limit off the rocks, and then find another pattern or perhaps a specific area where I could upgrade that limit by fishing shallow wood, around current.

As I said, the most consistent pattern here this week was fishing the rocks. But I’ll also say that, from what I can tell, it looks like four out of five of the final-day fishermen were targeting not rocks, but shallow wood, close to the main river.

Now some side notes to our week on the Red River:

• Snakebite!: There were more snakes out this week than I’ve seen in my entire life. The vast majority were non-poisonous, but there were a few bad ones mixed in as well. On Day Two, when I was flipping my tube around log jams, I went to pull it out of the water when a Cottonmouth grabbed hold of it and wouldn’t let go. I shook it and shook it but he held on; I jumped up and down and waved my arms, but he didn’t care; I started to pull him towards the boat, but neither my partner nor I thought this was a great idea. It wasn’t until I realized that with my long flipping stick I could cast the entire situation far out into the lake that that snake, when he was twenty feet in the air, finally released his hold on my bait.

• Dead Lake: There were perhaps ten boats who fished my "North Lake" area during this tournament. I recognized about five of them up there, and after the final standings were posted I checked... not one of them even drew a check at this tournament. It appears that we all recognized the potential of the area during practice, but the fish just shut-off for everyone up there come tournament day.

• Controversy: At least two different anglers caught enough fish to make it into the Top Ten this week, but because one or more of their fish died before being weighed-in they were assessed an eight ounce per dead fish penalty, which was enough to cost them their spot in the final rounds. This of course is a controversial issue - tournament organizations want to promote the sport as being conservation-minded, they do all they can during the weigh-in process to assure the health of the fish brought to the scales, and for this we commend them. On the other hand some of the anglers are contending that no one intentionally kills their fish - and often take extra measures such as adding ice to their livewells to improve the chances of survival, but there are some things that are just beyond the fisherman’s control and an eight-ounce penalty for each dead fish is excessive. Obviously both sides of this issue could be argued, and I believe some of that was going on this week.

• Headaches: At one point during this tournament I was maneuvering my boat through the standing timber and got it wedged into a tight area. In attempting to free myself I had the engine in reverse and was backing up, and bumped one of the dead trees. No big deal, I knew I was going to bump it and as I watched the rubrail on the transom hit the trunk of the tree, but then I heard a crack. I questioned that for just an instant, for I didn’t see the wood crack where I had been watching, and then it hit me... literally! The tree had cracked twenty feet above us and the top came crashing down, hitting me dead-center on the top of the head. I never saw it coming. My partner did, but was unable to do anything about it, and his first words were "Wow, that had to have hurt!". It did, and I learned a lesson about fishing in the trees.

As soon as Dan came in, we raced over to Walmart to watch the weigh in. It was great. Craig Powers won, and it was very emotional, for both him and us. His whole family was there which makes it even more exciting. He cried, they cried, I cried, and that is the sign of a great weigh in!!

We began our long journey home at 6pm. I knew Dan would be tired from the early morning and hot sun and camera boat driving, so I did not expect to get very far. We stopped for the night after 150 miles; pretty good for our first day. We slept in a rest area for the night, and it was loud, which made for another bad night’s sleep.

• Opened up the lakehouse, where we lived for the week;
• Took Jeff up to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get his driver’s license;
• Attended four of Chris’s Babe Ruth baseball games, and got to see him hit a homerun;
• Went to two of Kate’s tennis matches -the state quarter-finals, which they won, and the semi-finals, which they also won;
• Dogsat for Charlie & Debbie’s six-month old puppy for the weekend;
• Had Chris stay overnight with us four nights, and Jeff two;
• Drove by our new house in Concord, which we move into at the end of June;
• Went to the mall with Chris to buy him some summer clothes;
• Got a new set of tires for the Suburban (it was past-due, and the 1,800 miles we drove through the rain last week had us pretty nervous);
• Got our new Lowrance X15 depthfinders/GPS units mounted in the boat;
• Played tennis with Chris, in which he beat me fair and square for the first time ever;
• Packed up much of the stuff we had stored at the lake in preparation for our move next month;
• Took Jeff to the mall to shop for new clothes;
• Went to see Annie’s niece Kaitlyn’s dance recital; and
• Saw two moose on the side of the road our last day here.

Along with all this, we got to do some fishing too. Every year I do all I can to ensure that I’m home in New Hampshire for at least a few days right around the first of June. I have fished in a lot of different places over the past ten years, and I can tell you that there is nothing, anyplace I’ve been, that compares to the fishing here in NH at this time of year. This is the time when the smallmouth are on the beds, and they are so easy to find that you could literally throw a dart at a map of Lake Winnipesaukee, then go out and find piles of fish along that shoreline.

This is sight-fishing in clear water for bedding bass, but all you need to know about bed-fishing for smallmouth is that if you put the bait IN the bed, the fish WILL bite it. Guaranteed. If you get it in the bed on the first cast, before the fish sees the boat, you’ll get bit on the first cast. If the fish sees the boat or has been caught already in the last half-hour, then it may take a little longer but it’s still a sure thing. As for finessing them with light line and sissy-baits... I went out with the flipping stick I was using on Louisiana’s muddy Red River last week, and without changing a thing started pitching a 5" tube into the beds on 17-pound test line. The fish didn’t care a bit, they just ate it up. And another nice thing about these NH smallmouth: you catch one and you let him go, and he’ll go straight back to the bed where he came from. Five minutes later you can catch him again, on the same bait even! It’s unbelievable.

I took Chris out one morning this week, and though I’ve fished this lake hundreds of times I decided to go look at some places I’ve never been before. In about four hours of fishing we caught fifty fish between us, all between two and four pounds. The next day I took Jeff out, and in an hour-and-a-half right behind our house we caught thirty three, and we never even started the big motor!

I’ve decide that for next year, just to make it interesting, I’m going to make up a little challenge for myself. I’m going to pick an area that I think has a lot of fish, and go out and see if I can catch a hundred fish in one day, without ever starting the big motor. I’ll bet I can do it.

Link to: June 2001