Hey Everyone,

What an amazing weekend I had on Georgian Bay. We started the day with an hour rain delay and a slight chance of tornados! Everyone was very anxious to blast off. We had a total of 62 boats and we were number 41 for blast off. The tournament director decided to blast us off in 1 heat instead of 2 due to the rain delay.

8:15A.M Our plan of attack was to hit an island that was very promising during practice. It was about 14ft deep with healthy green weeds and a gradual incline to 4ft with scattered weed clumps and a sandy bottom. As we got closer to the edge of the weeds I threw in a darker coloured tube on a 1/4oz jig head. Within ten cast I hooked up with a decent size fish. It weighed in about 2.5lbs, not bad for our first fish. 5mins later another one took my line and went sideways with my tube. This one was a little smaller but still measured 13″ to be legal to keep. We decided to stay the better part of the morning and grind the area for another bite. By 10A.M we had another 1.5lb smallmouth in the livewell.

10:30A.M At this time we decided to hit our second spot. It’s a very unique spot that’s just off a channel marker but get’s very busy with boat traffic to honey harbour. The decision to make the run paid off big time. We spent the majority of our day at this spot. It has the same type of vegetation as our first spot, so we were able to figure out a pattern. The sun played a huge roll as it came out. We were able to see the sandy patches and pitch a drop shot rig with a 4″ minnows. The smallmouth were on fire!

2:00P.M We had filled our limit of 5 fish and it was decision time. Do we head back to spot A and look for a kicker fish or stay on spot B and grind out a bigger fish… We decided to head back to spot A. During practice we saw bigger fish around the island and the sun was in our favour. We spent the last 2hrs trying to upgrade our catch with not even a sniff.

Year after year, I always learn something new. This year has been decision making on the water. We took a gamble and decided to spend the last dying hours on spot A. I hoped for it to pay off and it didn’t. Do we regret our decision? Not one bit. We had a game plan but sometimes you just have to call an audible. There is no what if’s, ands or buts we made our choice and believe it was the right one.

We ended up in 49th place (152pts) with 7.5lbs out of 62 teams and with 3 tournaments left. We need to gain some ground and earn points to make the cut for the classic. Stay turned as I blog about my next tournament on Gloucester Pool,Ont.