First Tournament of 2017
After being overseas away from the tournament scene and my boat in America for some time, I’ve finally gotten both back. This past weekend, I fished in my first tournament since coming back from Korea and being relocated to the state of Washington. I also was able to retrieve my beautiful Nitro Boat from storage back in California. Everything is starting to come together and we’re just getting started now.
I left Washington a couple weeks ago to go pick up the boat in California. The plan was to make the long drive down, sleep for a couple hours and then head back. After getting to California, it hit me, I got so sick with the flu. I went from burning up to chills and back again. Everyone at work was joking that it was because I went from the forty degree temperatures in Washington right into seventy and eighty degrees in California. It changed my plans overall and I had to stay a bit in California to get enough energy to head back to Washington. Even though it didn’t go as smoothly as planned I’m very happy to have my boat with me again.
We just finished up our first event here in Washington this past weekend at Lake Sammamish. I can’t tell you how good it felt to be back competing again. I managed to get out to prefish with a buddy from Alabama who is also stationed up here in Washington. The water was still pretty cold, but I managed to catch two nice smallies and a very nice largemouth that was over five pounds.
We got into an area that day that looked like it could hold a largemouth and I started getting excited. Not too long afterwards I missed one. I cast back out and hooked up with and caught that big largemouth. For the smallmouth, they fish for them a bit differently up here. They do a lot of dragging on the bottom which I used to do when I was working in Spain.
We fished the event this past weekend and had a great time. I had the second big bass with a 3.36 lb smallmouth bass and eighteenth place overall. I can’t even begin to tell all of you how great it felt to be back out there. I can’t wait for the next event.
I’m still looking into how to qualify for the Tour level events. I’ve continued to dig into the TBF and am getting closer to finding out a clear path in Washington. Our club actually had two guys fish Nationals through the TBF recently, but they didn’t do it solely through the club. We’ll figure it out soon.
On the sponsor front, I have a great new opportunity with American Tackle. They are a company based out of Florida that makes a variety of products including rods. They would fit well with my current reel sponsor, WaveSpin, because they use the microwave guides. Also, Vicious sent me some information about products and one the of the carpet logos has me fired up. It really would look good on the front deck of the Nitro.
I’m currently working without my tournament gear. With my family in North Carolina and our cargo being shipped there, I have yet to get it. It’s ok for now as I’m working with three rods that I had in my boat and a good assortment of lures and Seaguar line. I’m also really excited about sharing a new product that I’m sure is going to knock the socks off the fishing world. It’s definitely something that every fisherman is going to want to have. Stay tuned because we’ll be talking more about that in blogs to come.
