Houghton Lake - Day 1

Day 1 brought cold and lots of wind after 10 o’clock or so. I had no concerns about the fish biting but the big question is what would be fishable. I never get into the draw for takeoff 1 and 2. I really don’t like it at all because it has the potential to change the outcome of a tournament just because someone wants to spend more money. Take off numbers should be random or in the case of a classic determined by your AOY standing. Anyway, I bought some tickets and was 1 number off from the winning ticket. I did win a nice D&R Sports flask and sweatshirt from the drawing.

After my name hadn’t been called by boat number 20, I was really rooting for one of the last take off numbers so I could at least get what I wanted on day 2. Instead I ended up with 42 and a lot of uncertainty of where I would be able to fish. On a lake this big I made sure I had back up areas near where I was hoping to go. The last thing I wanted to do was waste all morning running around. Talking to Dave and Kyle that morning I found out they were going to start on a couple areas I wanted but wasn’t planning on hitting for a bit. So I knew some things would be out of play for sure. The lake is so big it is hard to tell if someone is on your stuff until you get close to it. About halfway through my run I couldn’t see any boats in the area I wanted but that is just because it was so far away.

It turns out someone was right on it and I was surprised to see them fishing and not both fighting fish. I turned and put the hammer down to spot B which had no one nearby. I think I caught my limit in 6 casts (only because I made the first cast before I got close enough), the only problem was only 1 was over 2 pounds. I was actually kind of worried at this point since I never checked to see how big these fish were, I just knew that there was a lot of them. It was cast, cull, repeat, for awhile after that. One big disadvantage fishing by myself was not only wasting all that time culling but I could not have another line in the water while dealing with fish. Simply time was ticking off the close while this school was eating anything they could get their mouths on. I was mixing it up between reaction baits, drop shots, and a spider grub. It sucked that treble hooks were even involved but they couldn’t resist an “unnamed bait” with them.

I can’t even begin to tell you what fish came in what order but I do know it didn’t take long to get to a respectable bag. I had 2 issues netting them by myself, one was with a rod tip that had become tangled in the net. Of course that would be with the biggest fish of the day and all I could do was hope that rod wasn’t going to break. The other was with a fish that made a quick move and stuck a treble in the netting. I’ve seen this many times with salmon so I was prepared. With some quick thinking I just reversed the net and scooped him up. I was fishing shallow water and battles were intense. Fish had no where to go but up and there was lots of jumps, thrashing on the surface, and digging at the boat. There was no mystery about what size fish you had on and every battle was intense until they got inside the boat. Then once they got in the boat it was a rush to not get impaled by treble hooks, get them out of the net, and cull in as little time as possible. It was a lot to manage but I did the best I could.

It took me too long to get a good weight so I just burned that school down and caught everyone that I could. I lost a few I never saw but I only had one major mishap on that spot. While sliding the net out to scoop a big one up a split ring gave out. I knew that wasn’t a good sign because typically you don’t win big events when things like that happen. That fish actually sat there on the surface long enough that I might have still been able to scoop him if I could fully extend and was a little quicker. I finally felt like I needed to check some other stuff and went to another shell bed. I had a ton of confidence in this one but today (and the next day it would suck). I did see a school of 5-6 big ones on it but for whatever reason they wouldn’t bite. That was fine because I could use them tomorrow. I could still see that boat sitting on my A spot and assumed they were going to have a monster bag. However they didn’t appear to be doing what I would consider the right thing or catching them so who knows (they ended up with just under 15lbs for the day). I went to an unproven place next and caught a nice one on a dropshot to cull with and a few more that didn’t help. I didn’t want to press on this spot as I had a good bag and could see more big ones swimming around. The fast and furious bite was fading and this was potentially a starting sport for day 2.

I finally could get on my A spot and assumed it would be all broken up and it was past prime time anyway. I spotted a big one pretty quickly on 360 and culled with that. I would catch some more fish here today but I never hit it right. I did catch another nice one that wouldn’t help me so I decided to put it on the scale. I’d been beaming them all day and I was glad to see that a fish over 3 pounds wasn’t going to help.

The wind was out of control at this point and moving around was difficult. There was a bunch of stuff that I just decided I wasn’t going to get destroyed running to. I was already taking a lot of spray and water on the calm side of the lake. I had one area that I had found some individual fish in that was calm enough to fish and another place a weird loose school was on the day before. Nothing really panned out for me the rest of the day and I had just hoped the wind saved some of my fish for tomorrow.

I had myself convinced I had 15 or maybe 16 pounds, I knew they weren’t a bunch of true magnums so I never even tried to add up their weight in my head all day. I knew I wasn’t going to be totally out of it with that but It wasn’t what I hoped for. I felt even more deflated when everyone I talked to had 16 or 17 pounds on the day. Certainly Houghton Lake was a different beast this time around and the smallmouth population was healthy. I felt a little better when I had 18.33 after putting them on the scales though! Sitting in 3rd place with Dave and Kyle right ahead of me and a 20 pound bag in the top spot. Then there was a whole bunch of teams right behind me that you really don’t want anywhere near you in a 2 day event.

Other than that one lost fish with the treble hook that would have put me around 19 for the day, I’d done my job. Certainly the top team was going to have to struggle on day 2 to open the door but I’d kept myself in position to have a chance. I think it would take a special day to catch 21 on Houghton with 65 other boats on it but anything could happen. I felt like I could catch a similar bag to today and that could at least give me a chance if guys had tougher days. I’d also be approaching day 2 with a different game plan and rotation. 2 day events are just so much more exciting than a one day shoot out! We crushed some giant ribeyes at the house that night (thanks Jason) and all crashed early ready for day 2.