Day 1 WMB Classic -Elk/Torch/Skegmog
Today was the day to take some gambles. We were on fish but honestly they weren’t big enough to do much especially with predictions of it taking a 17lbs to get paid. Odds of us winning after our practice were pretty slim but we both felt confident that we could do decent just catching what we could catch. We had boat 20 and felt we could use that to our advantage to hopefully get a good start.
But first we had to get through the show at the launch. That is a nice launch ramp but the way all the traffic merges there and the amount of boats that parked without launching made it an absolute disaster. I only know of one trailer ding but those are some tight spots even for experienced drivers to back out of. Eventually the cluster subsided and all the boats got launched.
We were off and by some miracle actually got the community spot we wanted. 1 or 2 big bites here could make our day. It didn’t take long and we picked up our first fish unfortunately it was a pike. The next bite was a magnum that went right over the top of a topwater bait. That one was crushing, it was the bite we needed and also the first and only fish to miss a topwater the entire trip. We had one area with a lot of bites in it, it was very dependent on getting bit first thing so we didn’t linger long.
To our surprise there were no boats anywhere near that area and it was time to get to work. I pretty much assumed we could get a quick limit with a couple solid fish right here. But moving around to all the places we caught them and exploring the in between didn’t yield a single bite. The morning deal had been important to us and we could see that window fading fast. Seemed like it was going by even faster with no fish in the box but there was no feeling of panic. We just knew we would have to make another bite window work for us. The next area had quite a bit of traffic and literally boats sitting on our waypoints. But there was lots of room in between and it was more of a roaming area anyway. It wasn’t long and we were sitting on 3 fish. Number 4 took a little more time and number 5 took a while. You could feel the clock ticking and it was obvious we had no choice but to head to our fish in Elk. I don’t remember where it came at in the order of things but we had one that was just a 14 incher, the rest of them were just solid keepers.
Finally we hooked up with a good one on a drop shot and a lengthy battle was about to go down. Tense, stressful, and ultimately defeating when we watched the fish swim away. That smallmouth just would’nt stop digging beneath the boat and even though we could see it down there it was still so far away. Nothing we could have done as it was just one of those fish that just simply came off. That would have been a major cull and could have changed the course of our day. We never had one thing that was dominating our bite as our fish to this point had come on drop shots, bottom contact baits, and something unique that won’t be mentioned on here.
It was time to go to Elk and if it was like the day before we would cull everything out. But we both knew it was more likely that the large area would be a ghost town. Luckily we pulled in well short of it assuming we would have to relocate them. It was just minutes in to getting there and we already culled that little one out for another little one. However this one was substantially fatter. Minutes later we got another bite and it was another solid fish. All the little ones were gone and if we could just relocate that school and get a couple good bites we would be in business.
To make a long story short, that never happened. We couldn’t relocate any other quality bass the rest of the day. We did catch a couple more keepers but nothing that would help us. Frustrating for sure but we were hoping to stay within striking distance at getting paid for day 2. Those fish up there are dense though and always weigh more than you think and 13.46 was a nice surprise. We couldn’t help but think what a difference those 2 big bites would have made. For the day we were in 28th out of 119 and weights were a far cry from what they had been predicted except for the eventual winners 26lbs.
We had been in this situation before here. Weigh in 13lbs on day one and sitting just out of check range then all you have to do is find a limit to move up on day 2. Our previous visit here with D&R was exactly the same and we didn’t execute on day 2 and only had a couple fish. We weren’t nearly as confident in getting bites in that tournament though so this time we felt much better that we could improve our bag. But the goal was simple go into Skegmog and figure out a way to catch 5 bass in 8 hours.