Tournament #2 on Jacks Lake is officially in the books and up until about 1pm I was real nervous we were looking at a repeat performance of our showing on Weslemkoon. lucky for us the walk of shame was avoided as we ran into some nice fish late in the afternoon... here is how our day went:
I got us started off on the low note by drawing the worst possible blast off position.. Last!, thats right we had the dubious distinction of blasting off in the #30 spot and being the official event starters (that means we actually sit at the staring gate and yell out boat numbers when it is there turn to blast off). The only thing good about going last is that it gives us the opportunity to watch the direction that all other boats headed. This allowed us to change up our starting spot on the fly and gave us some insight as to some spots we have never seen or fished previously. (we were surprised at the amount of boats that headed "west"
Once we finally got off, we made the short run to our fist spot. This is where our 2012 pre fish failed us, this year we avoided the spots we had successes in and tried to learn a new portion of the lake, but if we would have checked in on some of our old spots we would have noticed a slightly lower water level and less weed/pad growth. Needless to say spot one did not produce a single keeper, so we were on the move new territory that we had tested during pre-fish.
Spot #2 was a long run for our starting spot and we quickly realized that there were 2 other boats sharing what we hoped would be a productive part of our day. Pulling up short we moved on to a deep weed line we had found by accident and proceeded to work it over with everything but the kitchen sink.. jigs, spinner baits, top water and drop shot rigs. These all produced fish but nothing worth adding to the live well.
It was 10:30am and our 4th spot before we actually landed a fish that we could keep, and it was a tiny one. Grasping at straws we moved from the smaller weed beds back into some of the many bays and started to focus on larger pad sections and timber, following this pattern we eventually added 3 more keepers to the live well at a total weight under 5lbs.. yep spirits were low for sure.
As the afternoon wore on we decided to head over to the our most productive area from last years event We had checked in on it a few times throughout the day and each time it was already full of boats, so around 1pm when we saw it was finally empty, he headed on in for the kill.. it was not even 10 minutes later and we had what would be our biggest fish, a just over 4lb large mouth. As we continued working the section we continued to cull fish, and when we left the area we had turned our 5lb bag into a alb bag.
At this time the wind was back in our sales and with confidence boosted we hit up a couple brand new spots and culled the last of our tiny fish to get us to what would eventually be our final weight.. 11.48lbs.
this was good enough to land us in 12th place and 16th place in the overall Team of the Year standings. It feels good to make up some ground on the overall standings and with our current weight we are now only 2lbs out of the top 10... a very doable feet.
Alright now for the rest of the field.. the event winners were Russ Watkins and Jay Hotzak with an outstanding 19.48lb bag.. great job guys..
(Russ Watkins & Jay Hotzak)
This year Jacks lake coughed up yet another monster fish, Grant MaCauley weighed in a 6.14lb largemouth and would tell anyone who listened that he caught it on a micro tube and bobber combo! crazy!
Here are some more pics of the day that was, it was great event, and nice crowd to watch the weigh is always a bonus.
Again congrats to the winners, and we will see you all on August 5th on Chandos Lake
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