Yet another tournament in the books with nothing to show for it. This one at Chesapeake Bay. I am very lucky that these last two tournaments were not club related. If that was the case I would be slumming down around 10th place in points.
It started out that I was not event going to fish. I had not found a partner come Friday night and I was not too worried about it. I made a call to a buddy in my club to see if I could dig up a co-angler. Sure enough he had some kid that he knew through Link's Marine. So, I pony up the $55 entry fee, not knowing who was going to be fishing behind me.
Come Sunday morning at the dock I meet this 20 year old kid with 2 rods and a tackle bag. I didn't want to seem too chummy at first because I had no idea what type of person he was. From blast off, we started heading down river on the North East, to a marina on the western bank. Guess what... 'ol boy forgot to strap down his rods. As they quickly started to gain altitude off the front deck, his reflexes kicked in and he grabbed them both all while letting go of his hat. His hat being the least if my worries, I turned around anyway because I felt bad for the guy. All day with no hat! That's sun burn you don't even want to talk about let alone wear it for the next 5 days.
So we finally get there and start fishing. Seems like he knows what he's doing. Everything is cool for the most part. I see him casting in good areas and he was covering water that I was not. Well after about 12:30 that all changed. I could tell he was getting fatigued and he kept switching baits. Tell tail sign of losing patience. Which happens to be rule number 1 in bass fishing; or fishing period for that matter. But I want to keep this guy into it. So I move to another spot and yet another spot. Neither one of us had caught a fish as of yet and the clock is nearly striking 1pm (inside marina at NLT 3pm). I started fishing a rip rap wall that housed some train tracks. about 300 yards worth. We fished the whole thing and not even a bite. At the end we can see disturbance along the bank. It was a tell tail sign that I had found feeding fish. A creek that lead under the train tracks feeding into the river had small bait fish coming out with the tide in droves. As they exited from under the bridge, it appeared all the commotion was from bass picking them off as they passed. I pulled out an ultra light combo and tied on a little tiny jerk bait that matched exactly what I saw. I casted an pulled it right into the ball of bait fish over and over. Just then I noticed the same thing beginning to happen under the bridge. It seemed that they had begun plugging them before they could even exit into the open. I trolled up into the narrow opening of the RR bridge and started casting. I have no idea what was up with these fish, but they just did not want anything to do with anything I was showing them. During all this, or most of it I should say. My partner is kind of just standing there looking around. That struck me as weird. $1,100 on the line an you just stand there and look around? Not my idea of being competitive.
Try as we did we came up short, literally. I fished another rip rap wall near Anchor Marina (the launch site) that had a deep channel running beside it. I started running a Gizzard Shad color, Strike King Red Eye Shad in a reel and pull pattern that caught me a 13.5" and 14" fish with minutes left on the clock. With the minimum size limit at 15", That's not gonna do it. The wall came to a pocket and I made note to hit the deep corner of it thinking "Okay, last cast". I don't know if it was just being hurried or what, but when I came around with that crank bait, I hit the top of the trolling motor and it just shattered the lure to pieces. That's when I knew it was over. I won't say I fished with a handicap in this tournament, but I will say "two lures are better than one" and let you figure the rest out. I think I remember saying to myself "Thank God it's over."
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