Boy, I’ve been running like crazy, but enjoying almost every minute of it… all except when I have to deal with the monopoly, lack of service, burocracy, policy laden, “act like they don’t need or want our business” type of outfit post office… enough said, I won’t go into the details here!
Anyway, my boys and I pre-fished in Portage Lake on Friday and talked to some fishermen who I know fish the lake and got some pointers on where to go for Small Mouth Bass for the tournament the next day. We hooked into a few, but did not want to beat up too many fish the day before the tourney which was a youth angler tournament put on by the local walleye association and sponsored by Lund Boats. Between my boys and I, we’ve had lots of fishing experience, but not on those waters, so we were going in a little blind. Even so, our chance to win were pretty good, since there was only 13 boats entered and a 1 in 13 chance to win a boat with motor and trailer, so I passed up a couple charter trips to take the boys out.
We caught lots of fish and after “culling” out the smaller ones, we saw that our largest one was flailing and we knew that we’d be deducted 25% on a stressed fish and a dead one did not count at all. After pumping fresh water continually for 30 minutes or so, he seemed to be coming back, so we concentrated on fishing. Soon we realized he was belly up again, so I between Stan and I we pumped his gills, gave him fresh water, cooled it with the rest of our cooler ice (the lake was 83 on the surface) and did everything except mouth to mouth to try to get him back to life. In the end, he was dead before going in to the dock for weigh-in. Stanley, who caught the fish, was in tears, but after the final tally, we found that even if counted fully, we wouldn’t have made first place. Well, it was fun and exiting anyway.
After the tourney, I took MTU student Craig and his dad, Executive VP of a printing firm, out in my Harbercraft for a little lake trout fishing. We came in with 5 lakers, one of which was a very nice and healthy 10 lbs. More on this later, as I need to get to bed now and get up at 5:30 for another day on the water.
Here are some photos:
Brian Helminen
