Lady Luck

Here's the tourney scoop. It will be a long post, but bear with me as I try to make it interesting.

This was a two day contest with a limited bracket system; you had to qualify on Saturday to fish for the big money Sunday. Those that do not qualify to go for the $5500, fished for their own purse as a "consolation bracket" on Sunday. It breaks down like this:

Day 1
75 boats fishing to secure a spot in the top 25 boats fishing on Sunday. Saturday's weights are zeroed for Sunday...fresh start for everyone.

Day 2
25 boats competing for $5500 top prize, and the bracket pays down 11 places. The remaining 50 boats fishing for $1000 top prize, but paying down only 4 spots . Also, the top 25 get an extra half hour and the bottom bracket gets shorted some time (this will play huge into the story).

In the interest of brevity...we SUCKED on Saturday. Our gameplan was the same as anyone who had a brain; fish some different stuff, and save your best spots for the big show on Sunday. Do just enough to qualify without burning spots up to do it. Well, a huge cold front blew through about 9:30 AM Saturday and absolutely shut the fish down. By 11 AM, we had only on fish in the livewell, and had fished two of our reserve spots to get it. Knowing how the prefishing had been, I estimated it would take 4 fish to make the cut, but the front had shut down the fish on our deep spots completely. But instead of changing gears and moving shallower...we died over the deep spots hoping to pull just three more fish.

It never happend. We weighed in just one fish and took up residence at boat #47 for the second day, smack dab in the middle of the consolation bracket. (Side note: Just how tough it really was is demonstrated by us finishing in the middle...with only one fish. I think there was nearly 20 zeros the first day!)

That night, all the talk was about the leaders catching them shallow. Our friends who made the cut gave us advice to move in. "Burning the bank" is the term, and we were told to do it early because everyone else was going to do the same thing. The deep bite was dead across the whole lake we learned, and I did not have any evidence to the contrary. So Sunday morning we took off at 7 AM and did just that...for nearly four hours...without a legal fish. In desperation, we moved at 11:15 to one of our best deep spots, which is a main lake dropoff from 5 to 16 feet with weeds on it and a fish crib nearby. Joddi caught a legal fish on the second cast, but that was it. We had not even gotten a bite there on Saturday. We then had a pow-wow where both of us quit fishing, sat down and regrouped. I told Joddi I thought the deep fish were recovering, that almost the entire field was now fishing dick shallow, and if we wanted to pull a rabbit out of the hat, we better get outta the box and get smarter...and do it fast. He suggested we go try a deep spot we had not fished in a couple of months. It's kind of a goofy spot in that there is not much there, but it is similar to the spot that just produced a legal, and more importantly, it's over looked.

As we pulled up, I shed the lifejacket and grabbed a rod in the same motion. I was casting before Joddi was even out of his seat. As he fiddled around, I got a strike and set the hook into something heavy. "Net!" I said, "this is a good one". Seconds later, a #4.20 largemouth was safely in the well. As Joddi unhooked a tangled rod from the net, I cast out and immediately was hit again. "Net!" I called. Joddi moved as fast a big man can to get that fish in the boat as well, a #3.15 bass. This happend five more times on five consecutive casts, but only two of the five were legals. Joddi never got a cast off during this. Unbelievable. We now had 5 fish, and our fortunes had completely changed in a little under 7 minutes, but then the frenzy died. We had caught the tail end of a major feeding spree, and that was very lucky, but it was not the end of our luck that day.

We fished the spot hard for the rest of the day. After all, we had until 2:30, the fish were there, and we had little else going. At about 5 minutes till 2PM, we noticed boats running down the lake towards the weigh-in location. I did not think anything about the first 6 or 7, but then more and more came by. "What time is our weigh in?" I say. "2:30...isn't it? Yeh, I'm sure the tournament director said we had 7.5 hours instead of 8 hours" he says. "I heard that too" I confirmed. Another minute goes by and I am thinking to myself "if 1st flight weighs at 3PM, and we weigh at 2:30, what time does 3rd flight weigh? 3 o'clock is the end of the contest, that would mean 3rd flight would have to weigh at 2PM to avoid over lapping. Okay, those are 3rd flight guys heading in" I say to myself and to Joddi out loud. Another minute goes by. Joddi says "Eric, that would mean that 3rd flight was shorted more time than us. They only get 7 hours? I never heard anything about that." "Yeh, I am thinking the same thing. You want to go in?" I half heartedly say. "Up to you" he says. Thinking it better safe than sorry, I made the call to head in. With increasing panic, we feverishly stowed the flyables, fired up, and screamed full throttle to the dock. As we approached, I see 2nd flight guys already weighing fish. I asked a passerby "what flight is weighing" and he replied it was flight #2. Holy shit! We crossed the line with my watch reading less than 30 seconds to spare...and we were being watched and timed until we were in bounds.
Not only that, but a minute before we were actually TEETERING on the edge of even coming in! Evidently, we were not alone in the confusion. Our friends, along with 3 other boats from 2nd flight, were disqualified when they showed up at 2:30. Despite protests by them, and denials by the director he had ever said we had 7.5 hours (he did..I heard him), they stuck by the published rule. It said 2 PM. They were out. End of story.

Longer story shorter, we won the consolation bracket and cashed a check for $1000. The second place team was four pounds behind us, and the DQs would not have made a difference either. Had we qualified for the top 25 and weighed in the same bag on Sunday, we would have placed 4th in that bracket...good for $1000. So it really did not matter. We were destined to win $1000 in this tournament. What matters is how much luck it took us to do it. Lucky we chose that spot and not another, lucky we decided to head in, lucky we were within sight of the boats to even see THEM headed in, and lucky we made the run with 30 seconds to spare.

I bought a lottery ticket on the way home, but my luck ran out then and there.