Recap
What a year it has been! It certainly wasn’t the smoothest start but things got rolling and kept rolling from there. We’ve still got some work left to do but here are some thoughts up until this point.
This season brought the lightest schedule I’ve had in awhile. 3 Big Stack tournaments and 3 regular D&R tournaments and a classic. Of course I found a couple more to throw in there but with only 7 tournaments to fish the odds of picking up a win go way down. I always feel some pressure at the beginning of the year since I’ve had success in the past. I know I’m capable of catching them and expect that out of myself every event. However, that is much easier said than done.
I skipped opening day and didn’t fish an event until mid June. That first big stack was a rough one for me, I just did everything wrong. Scraping up a small limit was a consolation prize and at least gave me a little bit of confidence. However, I was far from being in a groove. Trevor and I were blasting them on the weeknight tournaments but it was impossible to catch a big one. One night we caught 40-50 keepers on Muskegon Lake and never had a 3 pounder.
I wouldn’t fish another big tournament until almost mid July. But after day 1 of practice on the Grand I was definitely feeling good. It isn’t very often you get a chance to be that dialed in for a big tournament. It was the Grand River though so things could change at a moments notice. We smashed them in that event, the fish changed up a little bit but didn’t move far. We ended up getting a true giant, 2 bigs, and 2 decent sized fish (all with the flipping stick). The only scrambling we had to do was trying to find another 4 pounder with a MEGA bag already in the livewell before noon. It wasn’t a very stressful day and we ended up with a win and big bass. That certainly took the pressure off for the rest of the season.
I was heading to Saginaw Bay for a big stack next. Although the tournament was cancelled practice was incredible. It was like some sort of fishing batting practice, big fish and eager to bite! I knew the rest of the lakes were going to be a letdown from that but those practice days certainly helped my confidence.
Next up was a HOTD on Muskegon that Trevor and I just jumped in. A few hour practice was horrible, but no one gets better by only fishing when things are going their way. We ended up junking around just fishing what looked good. Caught a couple decent fish, learned a few things, gained a bunch of confidence, and cashed a check. Unlike the previous event a spinning rod was the main player on Muskegon.
Back to feeling the pressure again with a D&R on White Lake. We were only 1 tournament in but after winning the first team of the year was certainly on my mind. Practice on White turned out some big bites however they were random and not repeatable. I had some magic in my back pocket that I had found earlier in the summer. Knowing that I could almost guarantee a decent bag off of that stuff gave us a lot of confidence. It took us all day but we eventually got 5 fish over 3 pounds in the boat, 3 with a flipping stick and 2 with spinning rods. No kicker today but our bag of solid fish somehow gave us a win on White with 16.41 pounds. That one will probably go down as the most surprising big tournament win of my career as the thought never even crossed my mind.
I got the last minute call to fish Payback Bass on the Grand River with Dave. We had both been fishing well so I thought let’s give it a shot. Bites were easy to come by but quality wasn’t. In the end we scraped up a decent bag and cashed a check. The one that got away will haunt me for quite some time.
Time for more pressure with the last D&R on Muskegon. We had an epic practice flipping grass, things were setting up to be so perfect. Could we win all 3? I certainly thought it was going to be a possibility. Then boom crazy SW winds that changed it all. The fish left the grass and we had to scramble. 2 monster bites changed our day and we dropped 18.08 on the scales with a 5.37. I thought maybe we were going to booked the season with another win and big bass. It didn’t work out that way as we got bumped down one spot in each category. Very different from the other D&R’s but similar to our first HOTD Muskegon event as we really had to make things up as we went.
Mission accomplished on team of the year though and that feels good with the list of hammers behind us! It was just really a special season because it is so hard to win or even finish in the top 10 a lot of times. I got in a groove this year and things just clicked. Practices overall went pretty well and we kept an open mind when it was time to scramble for a bite. We also didn’t string together a bunch of lost fish in one tournament. We lost a couple that would have bumped up our overall weight but didn’t affect results but there were others in the 2 Muskegon tournaments and the Payback event on the Grand that would have made a difference. If anyone has a secret to landing them all I’d love to know it!
It was the first season I’ve fished weekend tournaments with Trevor and while he’s no stranger to tournaments these are on a different level than weeknight events. I’ve got to give him a lot of credit for catching fish, working hard, and staying focused. But I’d say the most impressive thing is he’s kept a level head. I know as a senior in high school I couldn’t have handled that much success without coming off like a jerk sometimes. I don’t really think many people could at that age but he’s stayed humble the whole time. I’m certainly glad he’s on my team because I wouldn’t want to be fishing against him in the future.
There’s still some work left to do in October this year. It’s been a season to remember regardless of how those events play out. I know I’m not feeling any pressure for either of them. Which is nice because they are both going to be fairly new places and learning events for me. I have no idea what to expect on St. Clair for Big Stack or really the D&R Classic on Elk and Torch. I do know I’m going to have fun fishing some different places and catch whatever I can catch!