#13

[lizardsrule]

The 13 is the number we were in a tourney we fished out of Welaka yesterday . Now it definately started out with some serious bad luck As usual I was backing the boat down, while my partner was in the boat. We have done it this way for 2 years now. Unhook everything, I back it inot the water, and boat floats off. Well as I'm backing down the ramp, I did get angled a little, no big deal, just pull up a couple of feet and straighten it out right. Well as I start to pull forward, the boat litterally and completely slides off the trailer with a loud bang, onto the pavement 20 feet or more from the water. I get out and am dumbfounded. My boater is picking himself up off the floor of the boat. He looks at me and says, that I guess the new slides I put on this last week are working well. I look at the trailer, and he has added some glides on the trailer bunks. This was the first time he said anything to me about them, and it really was a bit to late. Well with the generous help of some of our fellow tourney fellows, the boat was mangaded back outo the trailer. However in launching the boat onto the pavement it put a hole in the bottom of the lower unit, which is now leaking oil. He decides he still wants to fish, but of course running the motor isn't gonna happen, so we will stay around the launch and fish. While getting onto the boat, I realize, too late of course, that he has also boken part of the passengers console plastic off. I put my hand down onto it, and it slices a nice couple of gashes in my right hand Wouldn't stop bleeding for about a hour, so I've got blood dripping off my reel and hand. We then proceed across the river, and fish for a hour where we can't buy a bite. We then move back over to the other side, and start fishing docks. I finally decide after 2.5 hours of fishing, that I'm missing something about fishing today. As I get a MT dew out of the cooler, I figured out that perhaps I needed the Chatterbait, since the water were very, very dirty. Of course 2 casts later I put the first fish in the livewell. Then I proceeded to put another in the livewell 15 minutes later. Both fish were just over 14", so nothing great yet. I did forget to mention, that I had just my my Curado back from the repair shop, and they had supposedly fixed my drag(non existant). I wasn't happy how loose it still was, but I really wasn't planning on fishing with it much or the chatterbait that day. Well as usual with being #13 I hooked into what i beleive to be a bass around 5-6lbs. My drag doesn't even slow the girl down as she blows up and tosses my chatterbait since I didn't get a good hookset, or tension from not having any drag. A few expletives followed, by my rather unusual splash of my rod tip into the water. I immediately switched reels. My partner asked if I had any more chatterbaits, and I threw one to him. Now I only had one left, which wasn't in use. The only white one I had was the one I was fishing. The other 2 were chartreuse. Needles to say about 15 minutes later he hangs up the one I gave him, and it's unreachable under a dock. So he ties on a white spinnerbait(which I had been using all morning without success). I then 15 minutes later hang my with chatterbait under a dock with no chance of retrieval. So I put on my last one, and fish it for awhile, with nothing much, so I take off the standard chartreuse trailer, and replace it with a 3" white grub. I hooked a nice 5lber shortly after that. Then put another 3 lber in the boat. Then a small 14" in the boat. I had caught 10 bass, the others being to small. My partner finally catches his first fish, which is a dink on a spinnerbait. At this point 2:45pm, we are approx 100 yards from the boat launch, with a 3pm check in time, and the trolling motor goes completly dead So he ends up starting the engine, which took five minutes (it didn't want to start) and slowly put-puts over to the dock. with 1 minute to spare. We didn't finish in any money, with just over 12lbs, but the top 3 were all under 15lbs, and of course the 5-6lber I lost would have put us into the win. Well needless to say I had a decent day, my partner, had a horrible day, but we made lemonade out of lemons, and the #13

Lizards