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just back from a walleye fishing tournament

long few days....my first fishing tournament....wind was blowing to bad on Friday afternoon when we got there that we decided not to prefish which apparently didnt hurt us cause every one was complaining how the fishing changed like it always seems to do with walleyes anyway.....a team that went out for a ride and decided on a whim to throw in a couple poles for an hour or so came out with 30 pounds of fish in that hour brought in under 2 pounds of fish on Saturday....after getting the boat in the water and in the slip so we didnt have to worry bout putting it in in the morning we just went to the marina and started drinking with some guys we knew and waited for our wives and kids to show up.


Friday was fun had a damn good steak, sat on the deck of the marina drinking beer, BSing, and passing around a couple of fifths of home made "apple pie"(finished off three i think that night)....bout midnight a county deputy showed up on his usual rounds....happened to walk up to us on the deck and my wife saw who it was and it happened to be a guy she knew pretty well and asked him, and i quote, if she "could blow into his thingy"....he busted out in a grin....and musta been a slow night cause for grins he gave us all breathalysers just to see what we would blow cause we were curious....good sport and all but one of our buddies took the test....he had now been drinking for 17 hours solid....infact he drank another beer waiting for his turn....while waiting the 15 seconds for the results he said i bet ill blow a .2......he blew a .05 said BS! you need to recalibrate that thing....anyways the cop hung around and BSed for a half hour being a good sport about all this than continued on his patrol...all of us had cabin or campers as the Rock Creek Marina is in BFE away from everything so no worries about a DUI ticket...just had to stumble 100 yards to our beds :grin:

we were up at 5:30 Craig and i got our lunch and such down to the boat....stumbled back up the hill to the marina for home made biscuits and gravy for breakfast....went back out to the boat and were out and waiting for our signal to go at 7 happy as hell we decided to pay the $12/day for a slip instead of loading it every night.....took us 15 minutes to get to the spot we wanted to fish....got poles rigged up and in the water.....dropped the trolling motor in the water and quickly found out we should have done some prefishing....trolling motor didnt work.....damn wire came loose so while Craig was doing surgery i just kept an eye on the poles....we were drifting slowly in 25 foot of water and the end of my pole started dancing....i grabbed it set the hook and reeled in a 5 and a quarter pound walleye.....wasnt even 7:30 yet.....damn this is great.....then we found problem #2.....we were having issues with the livewell pump....wouldnt fill up the live well though we could hear the pump working....chit....sacrificed my gallon of water i had brought along and filled the livewell by hand....found out later that the pump had shifted kinking the hose between the pump and the livewell......took 5 seconds to fix once we found the problem...

called on the radio to find out where the nearest weight boat was as with issues with the live well and the fact we were only allowed to keep one fish we wanted to get it back in the water before it went belly up....nearest live boat is back at the marina....crap....so we haul arse and get it weighted(used a length conversion formula to ease stress on the fish......

headed back out and didnt catch another walleye all day....pretty sure i had another one on but it threw the hook or so we thought just before getting it up to where we could see it but when we looked at the minnow it looked like he had grabbed on to it like a pit bull 1/4 of an inch behind the stinger hook so i likely never had the hook in him.....pretty sure it was a walleye cause it was just like pulling up dead weight for the most part as they dont seem to fight much till they see the boat....later in the afternoon Craig hauled in a 29 inch northern.....not big enough to win the biggest northern pot by quite aways....wasnt all that hot but wasnt a cloud in the sky so we baked pretty good all day. finished 36 out of 62 teams on Saturday....bout where i figured we would wind up.....middle of the pack...but what surprised me is some of the ppl we were ahead of...i would have bet money on some of those we beat would have finished in the top 10 for the day.......highest weight of the day was 41.73 pounds for 5 fish...lots of ppl were skunked or had a single fish under 2 pounds and they wouldnt count any walleye under 14 inches(bout 1 pound)

docked the boat, went to the free feed, started drinking again and passed around another couple fifths of apple pie....dang thats good stuff.....while drinking beer.....got to bed a lil earlier.....saw the same deputy drive by again but he just waved and didnt stop again :grin:........

got out again this morning.....went and hit the same spot but had to drive through a bit of a rain squall not much, pushed through the other side and didnt get wet the rest of the day as we stayed on the north end of the storm....guess some farther south had some pea sized hail.....bout 9:30 Craig reeled in a 9.94 pound walleye in the boat....not his best one but very high up on the list.....kinda regret turning him loose...wish we would have kept him....would had some nice fillets.....round noon Craig reeled in a 12 inch walleye and 2 more northerns bout 24 inches long....but when we had the 10 pounder weighted we heard on the weight boats radio that someone just brought in a 42 inch northern so we just tossed them back.....nothing else was biting so we finished of today with just one qualifying fish.....

hung around for the final numbers we had a final weight of 15.2 pounds which jumped us up to 33rd place....top weight for the 2 days was 74.1 pounds, top 5 fish counted each day.....had alot of fun....might fish the Fall Classic tourny in August with Craig.....will almost certainly fish Rock Creek again next year....actually pulled in more fish than any other weekend of fishing we had done together in the last 2 years....headed to take a shower and than to bed....im wore out.....have some good pics of Saturday....but i forgot the camera at the cabin today so ill have to pull a couple so-so photos off my cell phone.....will do that tomorrow and prolly post them tomorrow night......
 
Even a bad at fishing is still better than a good day at work. - Rich
 
Poor lil' fishies. :(


:)
 
on the way in the wife took these:

can you see the critters?
93740010.jpg


how bout now?
93740008.jpg


the camp ground was full of cottontails you could get fairly close to.....the lil ones you could get with in a couple feet.
93740017.jpg

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here is the 5 and a quarter pound walleye i caught Saturday morning.....sorta crappy pics but do to the live well problems and all i wanted to get it back in the water as soon as possible so it was quick pics and tossed back in the water
93740018.jpg

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heres the lil northern Craig caught
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in the center of the photo the two black dots at the waterline are osprey.....watched two different pairs of these most of the day....unfortunately while i watched them look for fish i didnt get to see one dive...
93740023.jpg


will add the pics from Sunday as soon as i find the dang cord to connect it to the laptop
 
Wow, I totally missed the deer in the first pic. Good camouflage (sp?). My husband said, "Wow, that's a nice Walleye!". He LOVES to fish :) Thanks for sharing.
 
well if he thinks thats a nice one, wait till he sees the one on the cell phone :grin:
 
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