Grand Haven Offshore Challenge - Day 2
The anticipation for day 2 was even greater. 10 more fish and we would likely win the tournament and the 7,500 dollar payday. We didn't have much room in the boat and we had an observer on board today. The forecast had switched too and we were going to catch the tail end of some north winds.
We took a couple waves over the front of the 22 foot boat on the way out in the channel. If it's rough, the Grand Haven channel is a washing machine of waves. This clearly had our observer questioning his choices of volunteering for the day. Conditions were going to make a challenging bite even more challenging today.
It took much longer to get our first bite today. But we got 2 small ones fairly early. Could we grind out 8 more? Constantly trying to find something that would work was going to be the theme for the day. We took a nice rip from what I'm guessing was a steelhead next. That fish would have been a huge help. We got a quick bite after a color adjustment and thought things might get going. However right after that conditions changed so who knows if it would have kept working. I really don’t have enough experience to know exactly what adjustments to make. Especially in conditions/water that we don’t normally fish.
Our next bite was one of the right ones. Cash was actually holding the rod when it bit and we knew right away what was at stake. An absolute giant steelhead was jumping all over the place. A relatively short but intense battle was on. Luckily it calmed down near the boat and the celebration was on like only a big fish in a tournament can make happen.
We had our kicker, just 6 more fish and we were going to be in good shape. It was 9 am and if the bite window from the previous day happened again we would be in good shape. We had high hopes for the 10am feed.
It just never came. We went out deeper for a bit but really all our bets were on those fish that we knew were still there. They needed to feed one more time and it just never happened. One more good steelhead rip was the last of our action. It hurt knowing we'd blown it but we were pretty confident that we might get big steelhead for the event. That however wasn't making me feel much better at the time as I also thought we would fall out of check range. They don’t do a great job at publishing payouts or anything like that so it was really a guess as to what would happen.
It did feel good to take our disappointing cooler to the tent to be sealed until the end of weigh in (top 5 teams in both divisions do this). We truly got to experience all that a salmon tournament has to offer, well except for winning. But the observer, sealed cooler, last to weigh in, and big fish really covered all the bases. While it is still burning at me that we didn’t make the adjustments (whatever those adjustments were, I have no idea) to win that event. We just needed 10 fish, we might not have even have even needed 10. I never did the math on the minimum it would have taken to put us up there. Congrats to the winners in both the pro and amateur divisions.
Our 4 fish box would put us in 7th place at the end of the day but our monster 16.72 steelhead would be big steelhead of the tournament. We messed up and didn’t get in the 333 part of the tournament where you weigh your biggest fish. We were unsure if we could compete in that and also what the prizes were. But we cost ourselves a high finish in that even lumped in with all the pro boats.
It was interesting to see the strategies that the pro boats and some of the AM boats used. Long runs were the norm in the pro division. Everywhere from Onekema to Milwaukee were things I heard. We also clearly need to learn lake trout if we are going to start doing some tournaments especially the Grand Haven one. It is a way to accumulate some weight when the salmon fishing is really tough.
Some of the baits that worked for us during the event were Dreamweaver SS spoons in Hitman, Stingers in Coyote, Stingrays in various shades of mixed veggie, Nuclear Green Stingray took our offshore steelhead, and a Magic Man Flasher with a custom fly that Traver tied took our big king. I’m sure there were a couple others too but I can’t remember what they were at this point. Divers took our big fish while long lines on planer boards got our numbers. You can get all that stuff at ClearH20 Tackle!
Looking back on things it was a really cool experience and with our setup/experience level, have no business finishing that high. However I think we also did a pretty good job overall for a team with 2 guys who rarely salmon fish, a bass fisherman, and a salmon obsessed captain with one year of experience. I think that not coming from a salmon background also helps us at times though. Especially when it comes to chasing other peoples fish. I notice a lot of salmon fisherman really caring about the “reports” vs just doing your own thing. A little more experience in making the right adjustments and having more equipment and we could be dangerous.
I wasted no time getting back to bass as our Monday division kicked off this week. A fun night of catching 3 pound clones gave us almost 16 pounds and put us in 3rd place out of 35 boats. Yes I said that correctly, 35 boats at a weeknight tournament! Also we got through the weigh in, in about a half hour and I think that is impressive. 1st place plaques sponsored by Todd Elliott Farm Bureau were handed out as well as some legit cash for a weeknight division. Hopefully we can hit 40 this year and people will keep turning out for the awesome contingencies. D&R Sports kicks off this weekend and it should be an interesting one. I'm expecting them to be biting with the challenge just being catching the big ones. I have mixed feelings in how it is going to go for Trevor and I but we are looking forward to it.