Champlain dreams

[TheBossT127]

The first tournament of the BFL Empire division was out of the South Bay launch in Whitehall, NY. 110 boats, 109 co-anglers. I fished for 2 days prior to this event and landed a grand total of 2 little largemouth bass. To say that my confidence wasn't overwhelming was an understatement. My boater draw for this tournament was Scott Fairchild from West Point. We met after the draw and he said he had a spot that he camped on for 2 hours and no one else came in to scout the area. The forecast was all over the board as far as whether we would have rain or not. I was prepared to be soaked like I was on Friday but the rains never came on Saturday.






Scott and I had a 5:15 launch time and we took a 20 minute boat ride to his spot, and what a spot! We never fired up the big motor until it was time to get back for weigh-in. Other than maybe a dozen or so casts with a toad across the top of the weeds, I threw a couple different colors of Outkast Tackle salt sticks, the entire day. It's been a long time since I've had arm pain from setting the hook, but what a sweet pain that is! That's the kind of fishing you want. We each had our limits within an hour and I was able to cull the entire bag. Scott unfortunately had his very first fish die in the livewell and he couldn't upgrade it. I'll bet we each caught 30-35 fish that day, just moving across a spot about 200 yards long in about 6-7ft. Of water. Another beauty of this day was that only one other tournament boat came into this spot and the weird thing about that was that the co-angler on this boat caught a fish, landed it and then they immediately left! That defies explanation.





When the day was said and done my bag weighed in at 13 lbs., 2oz for an 11th place finish and my first tournament check.

[Jim80]

Congrats man looks like you lucked out with the boater they gave ya .

jim

[bcklash]

nice job--sounds like a day we all dream about.

[Bassboss]

Wow !Great job man! You really got lucky with the boater they gave you!

[BigBassin144]

That's awesome man! glad ya got a check

BB

[JerseyFisher]

Was the spot north of whitehall...near ticonderoga?

[3dkicker]

Boss - I've fished both sides as a pro and a co and what you saw is very common. Some guys just don't pay attention to their co-anglers or get locked into "their" pattern and will not deviate from it. I was fortunate to fish with a pro in my first tournament who realized that I had caught a fish in a different way than he had. My fish was a better fish than any of his and he changed the boat position and the way we fished. We both caught a lot of fish and both received checks at the end of the day.
Recently I fished as a co and we struggled the second day. I had a small limit and my pro only had two in the well. I offered to take him to an area that I knew held numbers and quality fish. He chose not to take up my offer and ended up weighing 3.5lbs for the day. His choice but since then I've weighed three limits from the area, two 10lb bags and a 17lb bag. His loss.