Big Stack - Muskegon
The day had finally come and I would be second to last boat out. I was actually happy about that in this event because it would help make up my mind for me. I had some largemouth that I wanted to spend 10 minutes on before I went smallmouth fishing. I figured I could get at least one over 4 there and maybe some other quality bites. However, if someone went there I was going right to the smallmouth. I was actually going to head to another lake for a bit if the weather was right out there. To no surprise that largemouth area wasn’t overlooked by another competitor (it was loaded) and that plan was out.
Smallmouth fishing it was. It certainly started off slowly, I hadn’t wasted much practice time on them so I would have to figure things out on the fly. There was a lot of good stuff covered up by boats but I got into one open stretch and found the bite to be weak. I had a couple weak taps and lost one fish. No clue how big that one was since I just fought it briefly. This certainly wasn’t the start I envisioned but I was going to see about another lake now. I got out there for a little bit and decided to turn around as the rollers were pretty good sized. I knew fishing would be harder on Muskegon but I felt like I could get the bites. I pulled into a couple areas that I was hoping would have an easy one and hadn’t been fished yet. I did get one bonus small keeper but mostly I learned that nothing was going to come easy today.
It had already been one of those days where everything tangles and half of my casts with a swimbait resulted in a tail wrapped around the hook. It was time to settle in and try and grind out 5 big bites. My next bite came on a dropshot and the fish wasted no time in showing me how big it was. Out of the water 3 times and then almost in the net. Instead he decided it was time to dig below the boat forever. Eventually I would land this fish and now I only needed 4 more bites with a good kicker acquired. I boated another small keeper shortly after and lost another fish I had on briefly on a swimbait. The next big bite came on a dropshot again and the battle was on. They were so full of hate today, I know they fight hard but today was just different. I had him coming and he made one last little headshake/jump and he went back down and my dropshot went flying. That one hurt and it would have meant I only needed 3 more bites. The next bite was a 3 pounder that actually made it to the net. I’d need to get rid of him but it felt good to have another fish!
The next fish was a giant one! I knew it was a drum but I was holding out hope I would be surprised. I’ve caught hundreds of drum (on purpose) so I’ve got a good feel for how they move. Well there was no surprise but of course I had no problems keeping the drum buttoned up. I was moving around a bit now and my next bite would come on something I have very little experience with. It was also as big or bigger that my first fish and also wasted no time coming 3 feet out of the water. Everything was going pretty well but he was just digging and digging under the boat. I didn’t know how much pressure I could put on those tiny treble hooks and he wasn’t giving up or changing course at all. Eventually he dug far down into the rocks and cut me off on the mussels after a fight over a minute. I painfully watched it on the GoPro yesterday. That would have been number 5 and given me 2 fish well over 4 pounds pretty early in the day. I was feeling pretty sick to my stomach after that one. I knew it was going to be hard to get enough bites to recover from losing those 2. More moving around with nothing exciting, just a couple I had on for a few seconds. Things were really not going my way!
I made a little move and quickly hooked up with another big one. I was grabbing the net and had him coming and somehow the hook just came out. I watched it all while looking him in the eyes. I had the bites right to the boat to have about 19 pounds before 9:30. Instead I had 4 fish and 2 of them weren’t worth anything. The very next cast I hooked up again on a heavy fish. Of course, I had no problems getting that pike to the boat. Fishing around a bit yielded nothing else and I was sick to my stomach. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt like that in a tournament. I never felt anything like that the weekend before at the White Lake HOTD when I lost 2 giants. I had so much good stuff that I had to leave and go get 5. I needed to try and claw back into it and maybe fish for something I could land. It was much earlier in the day than I wanted to try some of this stuff. I really wanted to hit it after I had a good bag of smallmouth, preferably after noon. I felt like the later I went the bigger the fish were going to get but I didn’t have the time to waste.
Back to largemouth fishing and the first area I pulled in on I of course lost one on a crankbait. It wasn’t a giant but it surely would have given me 5 and calmed me down a bit. I had 2 spots I felt highly confident in close by and after I got all the 12 inchers out of the way I got a decent largemouth off both of them. I now had a limit and had gotten rid of one of the tiny smallmouth. I think I made the wrong decision here, I had about 25 more very isolated spots nearby. I hadn’t really caught any big ones in the time I dabbled on that stuff. I just marked a lot of it so I wasn’t really sure I wanted to waste any time running it. I’d ran 4 places of it and caught them on 2 of them. I think if I had ran 4 more maybe I’d have gotten one more nice or maybe I should have ran them all and the 4 pounders would have come. But honestly I felt I wasn’t going to have a chance to win doing that and I wasn’t fishing to get a check and trade that last one out for a 3 pounder.
On my way I went back to try and find some smallmouth. I stopped at one more largemouth place and had no issues catching them but for some reason they were all 12-14 inches. I think I could have stayed there for awhile and got a nice one or 2 also. But I had a few hours left and I really felt like I could get another big smallmouth and even if that didn’t work out I had enough stuff to run at the last minute. I also still felt sick to my stomach…
I couldn’t make anything else happen with the smallmouth other than catching small ones. I really thought it was going to go down as a couple times I went consecutive casts catching them. But I guess I could never get it in front of one of the right ones and I was still stuck with that fish that was less than 2 pounds. I had a little over an hour left and it was time to go into scramble mode and get a 3 pounder. I had plenty of places for that but I had to stop on the right ones. You can never be sure what size of fish you’ll get on them. I ended up losing one flipping that squeaked the braid. I’d have like to known what that was and then caught fish at several other places. The big bite would never come and I would be stuck with that small one and have to shoulder the embarrassment of not catching them on the home lake. This literally was one of the most mentally brutal and challenging days I have ever had on the water in my entire lifetime of tournament fishing.
The girls were at the weigh in and it was great to see them but it was hard to tell them that daddy didn’t get them today despite a lot of hard work. Losing fish is part of the game but damn, 2 weekends in a row certainly hurt. It could have been an epic couple weekends but when it’s your time it’s your time and it was certainly not my time! I can take some small comfort in knowing I was on the right stuff. I watched that GoPro footage to make sure I wasn’t doing anything stupid with those fish and everything looked just fine to me. It was incredibly painful to watch and you can see how big each of those fish are in the video. I ended up in 12th with 13.82 and I needed another pound to get paid. That obviously doesn’t make me feel great and maybe I should have laid up and tried harder to get rid of that one under 2 pounds. Or maybe I just should have landed one of those big ones. Nothing can change any of that now but it certainly still hurts. Congrats to my buddy Kyle for pulling off the win and everyone else who got paid. To no surprise the guys from the westside showed out well in this event! On to the next one on the Detroit river. I’ve got to imagine I’m actually sitting pretty decent in points for the AOY championship. But I think it would take a top 5 at the Detroit River for me to have a shot at the top 6. I’ll be honest that is going to be a tall task against this crew especially with no familiarity to the river. Until then I’ve got to work on landing my bites.
