Where do I start? First off, I didnt really have time to blog and internet service wasnt accessible to my computer and as you will find out, my phone wasnt really an option either.
How bout with the mishaps... On monday, the monday before the tournament started, I was talking to the wife on the phone while simultaneously fishing an extremely thick matt of vegetation. Phone wedged between ear and shoulder, 8ft flipping rod in hand with a 2 oz tungsten weight and a warrior baits quiver bug at the end, between them, 65lb rope... When you get a bite with that set up, you can feel the shockwaves through your whole body and wouldnt you know it, I got bit at that very moment. The phone becomes "unwedged" and in slow motion, dropped straight into the lake... OMG! what the hell am I going to do now? A cell phone has become an extension of every day life, you might as well have removed one of my testicles at that point because I felt incomplete. The water was only about 4 foot deep and my boat hadnt moved an inch so I decided it would be a fantastic idea to strip down to my underwear and retrieve the iphone 4 from Lake Kissimmee. Now, that doesnt sound all that bad right? Except this lake is infested with gators, and some big ones too. Just a few days earlier, there was a discussion back at the hotel room between myself and my two roomates (Luke Gritter, Kyle Kempkers) about how many gators are actually in the lake. I suggested that there was probably a gator under every single vegetation matt and at the moment I was stripping down, it hadnt occured to me that a dead iphone wasnt worth getting my leg or my crank torn off. None the less, I proceeded and got the phone back. I let it sit out all day long and when the day was over, I stuck the thing in my heater vent and cranked it on the way to the Apple store at the mall. What a disappointment! I thought those guys were "geniuses", they cant fix a little water damage? What good are they? Had to buy a new phone, lost all my contacts, essentially flushed 150 bones into the lake.
As for the fishing...
I had a pretty solid practice and by the time the final few days of practice were winding down, I was feeling more and more capable of throwing down a 20 to 25lb sack of fish on the scales. I had 3 really workable patterns and they all seemed to be very consistent.
The matt fishing - for those that dont know, matts basically are small islands of vegetation just growing in random areas of the lake. There is usually about 2-4 feet of water under them and some of them are loaded with fish. The challenge becomes 3 fold. Finding the productive matts, getting through those matts and getting down to the fish, and lastly, extracting those fish out from underneath those matts. Big gear is a must, a huge flipping rod, heavy line, huge sinkers and big hooks. Most of the time, when you hook one of those fish, you wont get it out without actually going to the fish and manually removing them with your hands. You have to pull them to the top, pin them there and motor into the matt and physically remove them, otherwise, they arent coming out. Anyways, this was the best way to get big fish but it was also the least reliable and provided the least amount of bites for me but almost always, it was a 4lber or more.
Skinny dipper - No, im not talking about me and phone retrieval. This is a bait that has been pretty hot in florida for a few years. Its essentially a swim bait. It seems like a common fluke has been over used down there and the dipper has pretty much taken its place as a staple in florida lakes. It was very easy to catch 2lbrs all day long but getting quality size was few and far between, every once in awhile you would get a 3 or a 3.5 but the big ones didnt seem to want anything to do with this. Its also a bite that required fairly open and shallow water. So if the weather changed, which it did, this deal would be useless, which it turned out to be.
Swimming a jig - this was an extreme back up plan that i was only going to use if the others were not working or panic was to ensue. Why? because I felt the quality was a huge risk. I couldnt see getting enough good fish for this to be a good to pattern but if i happened to get a few big bites flipping the matts, I could always use this to fill out a limit. I also felt that if a major cold front came through, which almost always happens to me, this bit would remain regardless of the weather because I had found deeper water and deeper water fish are less effected by cold fronts.
Day 2 was even worse, we woke up to temps in the 30s and I dont know if you know this but a 45 minute boat ride at 72mph in 30 degree weather is pretty tough. This time I didnt wait until 1 oclock to hit the swim jig, I bailed at 10 and by 1 I had a solid bag of about 10lbs. The problem was that I had a major dink in the box. It was barely 12 inches, prob only weighed about 3/4 pound and it was killing my weight. I spent 2 hours trying to cull that fish but just couldnt do it. I knew I needed 12 or 13lbs to make the cut so that dink had to go and I just couldnt make it happen. When I weighed in, I was in 7th place but half the field hadnt weighed in yet and I quickly fell out of the cut mark which is top 12.
18th? I'll take it. Florida has whooped my ass for a few years now and it felt good to make a run at the title. On to the next one!
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