Oh-baby's Spring Scotty

[fishman08]

Off to St. catherine's we went to kick off the 2011 tournament season. This year we are lucky enough to have Rod (fishtails) join the team for most of our tournaments. It's amazing how well a team can run when you have 4 members with tournament experience, and it should make for a fun and very competitive 2011.

Its a pleasure to have you on board bud.

Friday- We head towards welland canal and figured we'd work towards the bar as thats where the fish had come in recent years. It didn't take long and we were into the fish, mostly lakers but a few nice kings along with a few steelies. Figuring we had a spot that we could get our limit we continued to the bar where it was laker and coho central. Water was cold and the kings just weren't there. So a quick stop to gas up in the river and off we went to towards jordan. We set-up west of jordan and had a decent picture however the west winds were quickly pushing our color and temp to the east. We would only land one beautiful salmon and call it a day around 5pm.

Saturday - Not knowing what the winds did to the color and temp over towards Jordan we made the decision to head towards the welland because we wanted to make sure we got our limit no matter the size. We set-up and noticed our picture was gone. So we slide inside hoping our fish were hiding in the brown water and that they were. We would go on to boat 5 coho's and 3 kings by 0930. At that time seeing that we had our box and 2/3 of the fleet was outside of us and struggling we left our honeyhole so they wouldn't move in on our fish. We got just west of welland when our leadcore took off, we would work that little area for an hour or so and box another 2 kings. Feeling that we officially put ourself in contention we contiue to cover water to see if we could find another honey hole for day 2 if need be but we would never get another bite for the rest of the day. We were sitting 19th after day 1 but easily with-in striking distance of the money.

Sunday- With all the good boxes coming from jordan we knew most of the boats would be fishing that way. So off to the canal we went again to work our inside waters, and hoped that the fleet would shut down the bite quickly at Jordan. When we got to our spot from the previous day our temp was gone and all we found were undersize coho's. At 800 we pulled lines and ran towards jordan. We saw 25 plus boats working the brown water inside and we tried to work the outside waters to stay from the combate trolling but the fish just weren't there so into the mess we trolled. Unfortunately after talking with a few boats that were fishing there, the morning the had ended just before we arrived. However we would grind out 7 bites. 3 would be undersized coho's and we'd head into wiegh-in with only four fish, which kept us in 19th overall.

This spring tournament is a totally different way of fishing then what we experience during the pro/am's. We learned alot and our crew performed well for being together for the first time.

Not to get into a lot of detail due to another tourny next weekend.

Lead cores worked best for us as we never really could get our riggers going well. Warrior spoons were our top baits (btw i can not say enough about the quality of the paint on these spoons). Also MC rockets with the big weenie bait rigs performed well and really surprised me with thier ability to catch fish even in the skinny waters.

[Fishtails]

Had a blast fishing with ya Matt, and I have to agree that our team worked together without a hiccup...it was a beautiful thing And to think that was only tourney #1.

Considering we had almost zero experience in that port and no intel, I am proud of our finish for our first tournament together. We have far more expierence fishing Wilson, so I think we'll make some noise More info to come after Wilson...

A few pics:

Here is Rocketman himself (Mike from MC Rockets) with a king he took while prefishing with us on Wednesday. Mike, I took some heat on the hat buddy...lol You have the right hat now . It was good having you aboard and I know Paul also mentioned that he really enjoyed meeting you as well. Rockets and Big Weenie Meat Rigs were a hot ticket for us!

See everyone in Wilson

[rocketman]

My first King of the year. Sure was nice to hear a screaming drag again. I really enjoyed meeting everyone, & I'll never forget that boat ride back to port Thur. morning with those gale force winds. Hat's off to Steve(Matts dad) for getting us back in one piece. Great job!! Good luck in the WHI. Hope Mother Nature starts to cooperate. Those new test colors should be awesome over there. Good luck.

[Fishtails]

What....you talking about these little waves Mike

We should have fished a couple more hours Thursday, the rocking of the boat was just starting to give our lures good action But seriously, Yes...Steve did a heck of a job, like there was ever any doubt

We have those test color MC Rockets locked and loaded in some new Big Weenie meat rigs Mike....salmon beware As my kid would say to the fish, there will be no mercy....only death

Notice what the laker above had for it's last supper?