Finishing Up My First Season In Washington
The boat is almost ready and I am itching to get out there. There are just three minor things holding me back from getting it out on the water. The trolling motor is on, I just need to get the transducer hooked up. At this point I must have bought six or seven drain plugs, but every single one of them has been too big. A small but very necessary part! The third thing is just to finish the captain’s course for up here in Washington. It is a very intricate course and I have passed all the modules but left it hanging for a while. I have finished 25 of about 75 questions - it will only take about an hour to finish up, I just need to get it done!
The club is heading to Potholes Reservoir coming up here but I have a government training in Florida at the same time. It is supposed to be a good largemouth spot so it will definitely be one of the first places I fish from this new boat.
The trip down to pick up my family was cool because I took a flight. Coming back was the hardest thing I’ve ever done however. It took about forty seven hours and I never want to drive through Montana again as it must be the longest state in the U.S! The drive would have been beautiful from an RV but it was tough driving a moving van, pulling a car and trying to make the best time we could. There was one stretch of the trip that I was going down a two lane highway and there were so many deer on the road, left and right, about every 10-15 yards for a 15-20 mile stretch. While we were traveling through Minnesota, we were counting every lake we passed. The part we were going through wasn’t long, but we counted 70 lakes and rivers.
This past birthday was the busiest birthday I’ve ever had in my life. My family and I got back from North Carolina the weekend beforehand. It was so busy, I came back to about 460 emails at work so to catch up I worked on my birthday. Big thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes!
I spent a pretty good amount of time getting my gear ready for the state qualifier. I didn’t prefish the lake whatsoever, in fact, I never even saw the lake. I was trying to qualify for the state team, they only take the first 14 anglers, so for me to finish in 17th was a bittersweet end.
The weigh-in was just like what I was used to with FLW. People were everywhere; I would guess we had about 250-280 people. As we pulled up, people were waiting on the wharf waiting to see our fish. I saw this guy that looked familiar, he walked up to me and said he knew me from somewhere - it ended up being the guy that is renting me the space to store my boat. It was great to see a familiar face. Fishing is really gaining in popularity in Washington. Maybe FLW will come up here again one time. Every time Bassmaster has the top 100, there are lakes that are mentioned up here.
I went out with a vengeance for the state qualifier. Day one I went out with a guy named Wes from my club. Guys that are in the same fishing club typically are not allowed to be drawn together. I knew he was a real good fisherman and I liked the way he used his electronics. We went out and knocked them sideways. At one point I pulled out my drop shot and didn’t put it down; I had the Strike King Dream Shot rigged up. I must have caught 40 fish day one; I had a few different species mixed in like perch and rock bass. Lake Washington has some of the biggest rock bass I have ever seen.
Day two I fished with a guy I have fished with before. Our launch time was 5:45 and we ran about a half hour North to our first spot which produced a few fish, but I knew I needed more. About ten minutes before check-in we pulled up on a flat with eight minutes to check-in I set the hook on a two pounder. I didn’t want to rush the fish in, but I could see weigh-ins from the boat, I got the fish in the boat with a few minutes to spare. I had to cull. Earlier I had purposely not tagged my smallest fish so I could quickly cull it out. Apparently I had two fish with no tags and accidently threw the bigger of the two back.
I made some mistakes and a couple of mistakes caught me the state qualifier. Early on I missed a fish that could have culled, I had it at the boat but lost it. I had another one at about 11:30 that I fought for six or seven minutes and it jumped right over the net. I lost it. I have never made those mistakes before and I beat myself up a little bit.
If I weren’t so tired right now I would be out on the boat. I have spent two days in a row falling asleep in front of computer trying to do work. Normally when I do tournaments I try to schedule that Monday off to give myself a chance to recover and build back up. I came so close to qualifying for the state team. I just need to put my head down and grind it in each tournament and put it together. It was a challenge for me fishing new water and I wanted to do it as a non-boater also. Back in 2002 this is how I started - from the back of the boat. It has taken me awhile to get used to fishing up here and I look forward to getting in my own boat and figuring it out for myself.
