COTM West Update
Things are crazy this year at our regular Monday night tournaments. Our lowest boat count is 35 and our big memorial tournament for Mitch Hausmann drew 51 boats. It’s about like fishing a weekend tournament with the amount of boats around. With that much competition you have to really catch them to do well. It’s been a lot of fun so far and the most important event of the season was a major success.
When we got the unfortunate news that Mitch had passed, discussions started quickly about what we could do for an event in his honor this summer. A Monday night seemed fitting and the planning began. I expected a good event and I expected to raise some money for his family. However I didn’t anticipate the amount of support that would come. To say I’m proud of our Monday night crew and the west Michigan fishing community would be an understatement. We had a ton of great raffle prizes donated from both companies and individuals. More impressive was the generosity I observed with the raffle. I was right there and I didn’t see anyone scoping out the table hoping to win something. I just saw individuals dropping 20’s for some tickets to show some support. I saw people slip a 100 dollar bill to the directors to donate at the HOTD on White a couple days before, winners donating their winnings back, and people making a special effort to be there. You could definitely tell that it all meant a lot and Mitch is missed. At the end of the night we had raised almost 9k which is absolutely incredible for a 3 hour weeknight event. I did hear of a couple donations coming in after the event so I’m sure that number is even bigger. Thank you to everyone who contributed in one way or another!
The fishing was pretty tough for most including us. We only got 2 quality bites and didn’t get either of them to the boat. Just one of those off nights for us and we ended up with less that 10 pounds. It didn’t take much to get paid either as it was tough all around. We also took over the gun boat duties for the event. Which always seems to be a mess at Muskegon. I will say a lot of teams did a great job following standard bass tournament protocol and waiting until you were past the gun boat before taking off. However not everyone was thinking straight and I even had one boat take off right next to me about 15 feet away. Of course I took on a bunch of water because of it. That really is some clown stuff and there is really no excuse for it. That wasn’t the event to bring back the swamp the gun boat and get disqualified but I am going to lobby for it at the next event.
The other events have gone much better fishing wise. I had to use a sub at the first event while Trevor practiced for Saginaw Bay. Andy and I eventually landed on a school of 3 pounders in White Lake including ending the night with a double of 3 pound topwater fish to finish 3rd. The next event was a Muskegon right after a D&R so Trevor and I had some stuff to go to. We were pretty confident we would catch them and we did. Finally getting that Monday night monkey off our back. We have had so many top 3 finishes on Monday’s but would never win, even when we should have. If we had 16, someone would have 17, every single time. One of the coolest parts about that was getting the Monday night trophies sponsored by Todd Elliott Farm Bureau Insurance. So I guess it was worth the wait to get our first Monday night win. I really hope guys reach out to Todd and get some quotes, he saved us a bunch of money with better coverage. I know most of that crew isn’t the type to spend time shopping around for insurance but I’ll tell you it was worth it for my family and it is also nice dealing with a fellow outdoorsman vs someone who you have no idea what their background is. If you need help connecting with him, I would be happy to facilitate that!
Next up was the Grand and that was really uncertain. Usually Trevor is out there being a river rat but with his boat in the shop he hadn’t been out there since before Saginaw Bay. We ended up gambling on the river and sometimes that can be tricky just to get 5. That was goal number one and then who knows. Our first fish was a nice one and we just kept the trolling motor down from there. It was looking like we might get on some fish eating alewives but the bite sort of died out on us. We lost one nice fish that was surely going to cost us but we came out on top again. A lot of times those June events are the toughest to survive for me so I felt pretty lucky to do well in 3 out of the 4 events.
Looking forward to the rest of the season and once again I am super proud of our crew for all the support at Mitch’s Memorial tournament.