Devonian Orleans Pro-Am

[UpGrady]

This past winter I got a call from Mark Lewis about getting a team together for the Orleans Pro-Am. It made sense that it would be Mark, his brother Mike, myself and Gary Cappon as we all grew up as dockrats on the Oak working for MANY of the captains back in the 80's as well as fishing with our families. We also added our good friend Rob Martin to the mix as he has been fishing with all of us for the past 10 years. All of us have periodically fished as team members in the Niagara Pro-am and Scotty with a number of the Oak captains but finally decided to compete on our own. So, here's the low down on the weekend and hopefully so useful information:

Thursday/Friday Prefish- invovled a lot of moving around to find and pinpoint the best water within reason from port. It quickly was obvious that we had a solid steelhead bite with a few mature kings mixed in around Shadagee from the 24-27 north lines with 25-26 being the likely target area. The steelhead were jumbo size mostly in the 8-12lb class, with one about 15 on Friday. Stinger NBK's seemed to be the goto spoon and that would continue thru the weekend no matter where we put them, they produced.

Saturday- Mother nature greated us with a suckerpunch in the morning... a bit of an unexpected ENE wind blowing, little did we know it would build into solid 3-5's with some 6's in the mix, but it wouldn't matter, we setup in our target area with 2 five color and 2 ten color cores, 2 divers and 2 riggers and the chaos began. The bite was higher than we had experienced the previous two days, the ten color cores were replaced with 3 colors. We boxed out at 10am which included 3 good kings up to 20 lbs and 6 steelhead up to 11 lbs. One king was on a 5 color core, the other two on sliders on the riggers set at 30 and 40', so even the kings were very high in the water column working over small bait pods around 20-25' down. Steelhead were ripping the cores and a 50' diver. We weighed in early and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon at the dock VERY happy not to battling mother nature. The box weighed in at 95+lbs for a first day total of 215+pts and good enough for First Place. Needless to say we were psyched but wondering what the NE blow was going to do to our water....

Sunday- We left the pierhead knowing that MANY more boats would be heading west into our water and beyond, but after the blow we figured we'd need to be mobile and willing to find new water. After working over our water for a few hours, we could not find a steelhead bite and had one good king, a skippy and a nice 12lb atlantic in the box, we went searching for greener pastures. The bite never really materialized for us in different water, so around noon, with 5 point fish in the box, we worked back to our own water and rods started moving again. We would end up putting three more fish in the box in the last hour including another 16lb king and a decent steelhead. We boxed the king around 12:55 and worked back thru the waypoints but nothing else tripped. Though the last hour was great we will remember the steelhead that twisted a split ring off the spoon, dumping a pair of good kings and throwing back 2 more skippies (7 thrown back for the day) that were just under size. So, we had a good feeling but knew we needed at least two more fish to be in winning contention. Our box was just under 60 lbs giving us around 140pts for the day and a two day total of about 355 pts and good enough for a bittersweet third place finish.

All of us had a great time fishing together again and all I can say is watch out next year!!! Thanks to everyone involved in the tournament and congrats to Team Screamer and the boxes they put together both days to win it as well as Bob Cinelli on Hotline for coming close to two in a row!

[GAMBLER]

Great job Upgrady. Congrats on the 3rd place finish.

[Slimy Hooks]

Congrats to team Devonian on there 3rd place finish...

Mark Lewis and myself attended the same Captain's course and he was a very pleasant individual to be around and a all around good person...Well done guys...

[Zebedee]

[A-TOM-MIK]

Nice meeting you guys

Great Job

Tom

[larry]

Nice report and outstanding finish, congratulations. Thanks for getting our spotter in early on the first day it only got rougher

out there and he already had writers cramp from logging in all those fish. Also, thanks for providing Pat who spotted on our boat, he was a pleasure to have aboard. Hope you guys keep the team together and fish the other events as well,

[Yankee Troller]

It was nice meeting you this weekend! Nice job guys.

[Pike Hunter]

Way to go Hans! Congratulations on the 3rd place finish.

[UpGrady]

Thanks guys... likewise, it was nice to meet everyone and put names with faces as well!

Larry, it was great having Steve onboard as an observer too, he's a good person and it was very nice knowing that we did not have to worry about him in the conditions on Saturday. As for Pat, he enjoyed himself onboard despite the rest of your shady crew!!!