It started Friday night with a trip to Gander Mountain.  The two team members in my boat – my cousin and I – needed to gear up for the next day’s tournament; with a ton of rain in the forecast we both needed some rain pants as well as a couple lures we were short on.

The alarm went off at 5am on Saturday morning, and the weather at that time didn’t look too bad:  it was spitting rain a little, but overall I was pretty comfortable with the drizzle that was happening.  And since it wasn’t raining that bad we all decided that the fishing tournament was still on and headed to the lake…..and waited…..and waited some more.  We were all trying to assess the weather situation, because the farther south we drove the more lightning we saw – and lightning and fishing do not mix well together.

We waited at the boat launch for a half hour or so, and then decided to launch.  After fishing for about 20 minutes, and having one fish in the boat it started to downpour.  I buttoned down the rain jacket and kept on fishing……………and then it started to lightning again – and I’m talking cloud to ground nasty lightning.  The fishing tournament – at least the morning leg of it – was over.

My cousin and I headed back to the dock feeling pretty confident about the morning’s catch.  We figured having one in the boat after 20 minutes of fishing would put us in pretty good shape.  After getting back to the dock, however, we found we were two fish down already………to my brother of course.

It rained…….and rained some more….and rained some more.  Finally, about 4:30pm it started to let up, and the prospects of us getting back out for the afternoon leg of the tournament looked good.  Everyone was in the water by 5:45, and it was on for the next 4 hours or so.  Unfortunately for my fishing partner and me it was slow going at the start and we found ourselves in a huge hole – down 11 fish to 3.  We weren’t in last place, but we were still 8 fish down to the leaders with only a few hours left to make up for it…..but it just wasn’t meant to be.

The last two hours were the best fishing hours we had all day:  I landed a legal pike, plus a few bass, and my fishing partner added another pike, and one keeper bass to the total as well; in fact that keeper bass would be the winner of the biggest caught bass of the day, and make him a little richer.  Ever after all of our efforts, though, we still only managed to have 8 fish in the boat, five short of the 13 that would be the number to beat.

Of course my brother Jeff, and his fishing partner, Matt, left the winners of the first annual SimplyOutdoors fishing tournament.  It was close, with my sister and her boyfriend giving them a run for their money right up until the end, but ultimately Matt’s floating Rapala came through and caught the thirteenth fish.  Dirt Bags!

It made for an awesome day on the water, and despite losing the tournament I still had an awesome time.  I caught the biggest pike I’ve caught in years, we broke in my cousin’s new Nitro fishing boat, and he managed to catch his first top water fish ever!  Plus we made some other memories that will last a lifetime – one having to do with leaving the trolling motor down when we were trying to head to another spot.  That is a story for a whole other post, though.  Man did we laugh our butts off.

I guess I have to give props to Jeff and Matt for winning the tournament.  And if you ever wonder what you go through in order to win tournaments such as these just take a look at Matt’s face in that picture.  It can be stressful trying to win these tournaments, and you can see it written right across his weird looking face.  Of course I’m sure his face doesn’t look like that now, since his wallet is a little fatter then it was before.

I hate losing!

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