Final Day - Houghton Lake

We had more wind forecasted and the potential for some storms on day 2. However based on the forecast earlier in the week it had turned into a pretty nice day. The first surprise of the morning was that they didn’t reverse boat numbers. We started off boat 21 which was a downgrade from if we had just previously switched. It’s never been done like this before and the rules stated numbers would be switched. I didn’t expect it to affect us a ton but it really changed the game plans for other boats in the house.

There were really 2 areas that were worthy of starting on and they were way far apart. We went to bed with them both being options but in the morning something felt right about one of them. When something feels right, I never ever second guess it. Even if it seems dumb, which this time it didn’t. The ride there was a little bumpy but we got our spot. I hadn’t even got set up yet and was hooked up. I’m trying to fight the fish and drop the Talons and it comes 3 feet out of the water. 3.5-3.75 pounder goes one way and my bait goes the other. Not a great start but we got set up and dropped the Talons (which were a huge help in this event in such shallow water). It didn’t take long to hook up again and there were a bunch of fish around. That keeper was a mini but the next fish was a decent one. Trevor is scrambling to tie on what I’m throwing, gets tied up, throws out and hooks up. It’s a big one and it is all the way out of the water several times. This one jumps again at the boat and I reach out with the Clam Outdoors net and catch it just in case. It still had the bait and we actually caught several fish on jumps on day 2. For some reason they were just acrobatic. That fish was our big fish at 3.91 and things were rolling. But as quickly as it got started those fish just shut down and left. We hooked 2 more, one that was just on for a second and another that I felt on slack line just pound it. Hooked up with it for a couple seconds and it felt like a big one but who knows. Then it was gone, that is the bite that sticks with me most during the tournament.

We had to decide weather to grind for a couple more keepers or go run some stuff during prime time. We decided to hammer down and hit some spots even though it was hard to leave there without 5. We hit about 8 places and were still sitting on 3 fish. I’d have never guessed that would be the case and it was hard to block out the what if we landed our couple other good bites to start the day. But we were feeling confident that some more opportunities were coming even though it was obvious today was going to be much tougher. That other area better kick them out!

It was a relief to see no one was anywhere close to that stuff and we could set up on it and take our time fishing into the wind. We pulled in on a tiny shell bed that we had found while driving around the day before. We had never even made a cast on it before. It was deep enough I could see one out there with MEGA Live. It checked all the boxes, it wanted to bite, made it to the boat, and was a good one. We had something going now with 3 solid fish and a keeper.

It was slow going because there really weren’t a lot of fish here but you could catch them later in the day than a lot of places. Finally, we got another bite. This fish ate it on the fall which was the first we’d seen of that. It didn’t even seem like a keeper but it was 15 inches and a LIMIT! A few casts later and we bowed up with another good one. Things were happening fast and we had a good bag if we could get rid of that last little one. We did make one more cull for a just a little bit in that area but we needed to make some moves and hope to get lucky. We had 3 grass clumps that had all produced bites and while I wanted to wait until the very end to run those we went to check them. But it was time to get there now. There were no bass in the grass today, I don’t know if it was the wind, clouds, little bit of rain or what but we were really counting on those. There was a gravel patch in the area that had produced some perch bites when we fished it during practice. We headed that way and Trevor got that one more good bite that we so desperately needed.

We had a pretty good bag now and just hoped to stumble into something else. We fished around all over just hoping to find some more grass clumps, gravel, or schools in the area like I had found on the previous classic at Houghton. Nothing good would come of it but I felt like we might at least move up into check range after our day.

I felt even better about that after hearing about multiple teams that had good bags on day one really struggling on day 2. These 2 day events are just so challenging especially on a tough bite. It goes both ways with moving up or moving down as it seems like there is always a lot of inconsistency in the weights other than a few teams. I felt pretty good about sliding up into the top 15 now when we weighed 16.52. I got really confused when I couldn’t find us on the leaderboard (because I never looked at the top spot). That wasn’t going to last but it was fun to be there for a bit. Only sliding down to 5th with a 2 day total of  30.4 was a pleasant surprise (full results at WMB). I can’t help but think about how many times we had the 3rd place fish on as we didn’t need much. But I’ve got no complaints about coming from 21st to 5th, it was a great end to the season. Congrats to the winners and everyone else who did well, that was no easy event.

Unless you win there’s always those thoughts about what little things you could have done to do better but instead of thinking about that I am ready to go hunting and fishing (for other species). I’m super far behind on everything again because I wasn’t going to lose focus on this tournament and it paid off. We all had a great time getting away for a few days and hanging out when we weren’t on the water. Even had a glorious steak dinner one night at the house (thanks Mike!) and those are some of the best things about going to these out of town classics. I’m grateful for a lot of good friends in this sport and we’ll see you all next year!

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Grab a Buck by the Horns

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Day 1 - Houghton Lake