Last Saturday the bass club had its final tournament of the season. Going into the tourney I was still on top in the point race with a slim 2 point lead over one of the club's best Fall fishermen. Along with him were about 5 others who were within 5 points of first place.
The day didn't start off too well. My motor quit on me about half way to my first stop. It was looking like I would have to change plans and fish closer to the launch area if I couldn't get the motor working. After several tries it finally worked well enough to get me where I wanted to go. For the rest of the day I had to be careful to not push the motor past its limits. I decided to stay longer in my 3 main spots and be patient instead of running to some secondary locations and risking more mechanical problems. That made for a long day as it took me nearly the entire tournament time to catch a limit of 5. I was about a 15 minute drive down the river at my last spot with 45 minutes left. I decided to start heading back and hopefully I would have enough time to stop and try one more place before calling it a day. The motor had other plans. It never would go to full throttle when I tried to take off. I was desperately trying to call my dad, other club members, and even my mother to tell her to try to call a club member's spouse to see if she could get his cell number. Not having any luck there, I tried the motor one more time and it worked....just barely. I cruised home at 40mph and arrived with just a few minutes left before the end. I figured I had about 10 pounds and expected several of the others to have at least that and the winner to have 15 pounds or better. I was ready to accept that this year's goal was about to be lost. As it turns out I came in 3rd place with 11.10lbs, only .1lbs behind 2nd place and a little over 2lbs out of 1st place. But that was more than enough to keep me in first place for the year. Angler of the Year!
So that's the end of this year's fishing for me. My tackle box and rods are back in my closet and there won't be much to do except save up for the next 6 or 7 weeks. Then I'll be hunting innocent, defenseless waterfowl through the end of January. Then it will be back to preparing for another fishing season, putting out brush piles, saving GPS coordinates, etc. Until then I will have to think of other topics to write about. Any ideas?
