Man what a weekend.

[carolina-rig-01]

Britney and I had 2 tournaments this weekend. On Saturday the weather was less than ideal for fishing with your wife, but I can't say that I have ever been more proud of her. It started raining 15 minutes before take off and didn't let up until about 30 minutes before weigh-in, but she hung in there like a champ and not only did she not complain about the rain but she caught two of our 5 keepers. I was really surprised how much we struggled because the weather was ideal for my favorite kind of fishing which is shallow and covering a lot of water. Anyways we did manage a small limit and to my surprise everyone else struggled worse than we did and we ended up winning.

Sunday was not such a great day, but still a day that turned out better than I expected. I had mixed feelings about where to run to for Sundays tournament. I had a gut feeling that it wouldn't be a good idea to go back to the area we fished on Saturday because although we won, we really had to work our butts off for every fish we caught and I had a feeling that our areas were pretty used up because we beat them to death several times throughout the day. However if we didn't do well in Sundays tournament how in the world could I justify running to another area after winning Saturday and seeing how bad everyone else struggled elsewhere? So against my better judgement we went right back to the areas we fished on Saturday and by 9:00 I knew it was a mistake. The fish just weren't in these areas like they were the day before and my plan B area was about 30 miles north of us. I did manage to put one descent keeping in the boat early but we were struggling pretty bad after that. Then about noon things got interesting. We came into an area that had a bunch of baitfish and I quickly caught two dinks in about 3 or 4 minutes. Then I caught a keeper. When I got him in the boat he had both crankbait hooks in his mouth and I was holding him around his back and was just about to reach for the needlenose pliers when he flopped and slipped out of my hand. The front treble hook stayed in his mouth but the back one popped out and ended up burried in my finger. So he was playing tug of war with me and winning pretty easily. I finally got him off of the front hook which isn't easy when your impaled with the rear hook and your wife is running around screaming LOL. I managed to get her to calm down enough to put the fish in the livewell and bring me a pair of side cutters so I could get the hook off of the bait. This is when I decided to give her a crash course in the braided line hook removal trick. I made her promise me that when it was time to yank, she would yank hard and not just tug on it, she promised so we proceeded to wrap the braid around the bend of the hook. We were getting pushed up towards some docks by the waves so I said OK hold on, only she heard me say OK and yanked before the hold on part came out of my mouth. I was no where near ready, I wasn't even pushing down on the eye of the hook. It goes without saying that it didn't work and it hurt like hell. Then she started crying and appolagizing. I told her it was ok and no real harm was done but she wasn't going to get a second chance today. I seen a wrapped boat fishing down the bank a ways so I figured one of the guys in the boat would probably know how to do it. I pulled up and asked if they knew how to do the trick and I swear to God the guy in the front of the boat said "yeah I know how but I am not very good at it". I laughed and said nice talking to ya and we made the run back to the truck. I had Britney call into town and get directions to the Urgent Care and ask how fast they could get me in and out. We explained we were in a tournament and needed to get back on the water quickly and the lady promised they would rush us through. Keeping their word they got us out in no time and in about an hour and a half we were back on the water (not bad considering it was an hour of drive time). We were able to get back on the water fast enough to salvage a 3rd place finish which I was pretty proud of. When we got home I made Britney sit down and watch 4 or 5 videos of the hook removal trick on youtube so she should be ready next time hahaha.




You know they must see a lot of this when they keep steralized side cutters on hand.