Here I will share some fishing tips, report on what's hot and where, and blog about my fishing.  Check in often.

September 3 - Didn't get home from work til 10.  Hate that.  Good thing I had pretty much everything ready to go last night.  It only took a half hour or so to be ready to pull out.  Don went down to Patoka today and got us a room for a couple nights before we can check into out tournament hotel Sunday.  He will start practicing tomorrow, but I have to fish Coldwater in the morning before I drive own there.  Tomorrow will be a very long day.  Almost 500 miles to drive after I fish the tournament.  I hope to be down there by 10 or so, but that ught be stretching it.  I probably won't be back on til Sunday, so I'll talk to y'all then. Wish us luck.

September 2 - I got a call from the Bassmaster tournament director today and got to have a couple of nice conversations with him.  Apparently after the last tournament, someone sent him this website and he read the blog.  So we got to discuss some of the happenings of day two in Detroit.  The weather is not conducive to going to the lake and getting in the water to find my leak.  So, I'll try to figure it out in the garage.  Water is definitely coming out the bottom of the livewell.  I'm guessing it is around the drain.  I can't see into where it is coming from.  It feels quite spongy around where I think the drain goes in.  Not sure why.  It should all be fiberglass.  But it sure sounded like like a lot more water on the lake than I am seing now, so who knows I guess.  No resolution.  I did move some wires around, assuming a wire was getting on top of the float switch and keeping it from turning on.  So, we'll see about that, too I guess.  The livewell pump issue has to be a switch problem.  The pump runs just fine, but only when the timer tells it to.  It will not run on constant at all. I tried a different switch, but the same thing happens.  I have no clue what's wrong with that either now.  Hopefully, everything works well enough to get me through until I can get done with these tournaments and really tear stuff apart.  Got the truck and boat pretty much packed and ready to go Saturday morning for another week.

September 1 - Oh my gosh, is it really September?  That sucks!  Keith and I went to Coldwater tonight to check it out.  I haven't been there since some were still bedding.  And last time I was there during the summer, it looked like pea soup due to the algae bloom.  No algae bloom this time, but it was off colored slightly.  Fishing was quite slow for Coldwater.  I got us started with a largemouth that weighed 5-1.  Biggest one I've caught all year.  Of course it has to be in practice.  Keith took a picture of it on his phone, but when we went to send it, we discovered you apparently have to save it after you take it, cuz there were no pictures.  I guess that makes it just another fish story, without pictures.  I only caught one keeper smallmouth and Keith didn't catch any keepers all night.  Not looking so forward to Saturday now.  I filled up the livewells to try to figure out where the water is coming from.  I couldn't see anything, but I could hear water running in from somewhere. I guess I'll have to take it to the lake tomorrow and get in the water to try to figure it out.  To top it off, one of my fill pumps quit working on constant.  It works on timer, but not constant all of a sudden.  Another project I guess.  So tomorrow's plan is to find and fix my problems, and get ready to hit the road again Saturday.

August 31 - September starts tomorrow.  Not a fan at all.  Talked to Chuck today, and found Mr. spot stealer and his partner that he took him to got a bunch of bigguns off the spot I wanted to fish, but they were on.  Including one over 5.  Thank you very much.  Still not very happy and think that's kinda BS.  So was the big wave he gave me when I left the spot and let them have it to themselves.  Dropped Kenny's prop off so he can press another bushing into it, so someone can spin it now.  Put the boat back together and it's all ready to go.  As of now, Keith and I plan on going to Coldwater tomorrow night to practice for Saturday's last Weekend Warrior tournament of the year.  And I'll see if I can figure out my two problems.  Til next month.......

August 30 - Got some of the truck unloaded and opened the boat all up to make sure everything is good and dry.  I am going to pull it outside when I go to work in the morning, so it can sit in the sun and wind all day.  Found out it took about 16.5 pounds to be top 6 yesterday and about 14.5 to make top 12.  That's brutal for St Clair. 

August 29 - Tournament day.  We started out with a 40 mile run to fish near Elizabeth Park at the south end of the Detroit River.  We started fishing and Skip Johnson showed up soon.  Anytime you are fishing and Skip shows up, you must be on the right track.  We get no bites, Skip gets no bites, so Skip heads another 30 miles into Erie and we head back to St Clair.  Go to spot number two, and there is a boat on it.  Guess who?  Yep, Mr I didn't practice, but I'm taking your spot anyway.  Not happy.  So we go to spot 3.  I get 4 there.  All on a drop shot goby.  My partner asks me what all the water is from in the boat.  The boat is so full of water, it is on the carpet in the bottom of the boat.  Two problems exist.  The fact water is getting in the boat, and the auto bilge is not kicking on.  Somehting else to try to fix at home next week, I guess.  Up the river we go to a 5 minute spot.  No one home, of course.  Spot 5 is just way too muddy to fish.  Since I hate fishing areas, rather than spots, I have saved that for a last resort.  Now we are at the last resort.  We go to where they were Thursday.  One big sheephead is all we caught there.  Run around up by the ramp some and find nothing but mud, try spinnerbait, but come up empty.  Just before we pulled back into the ramp, I had my partner dig my fish out and throw them back.  No sense putting them through a weigh in for nothing.  My partner never caught a fish all day.  It sucked.  Par for the course.  Said some goodbyes and hit the road.

August 28 - Last day of practice.  Kind of excited.  Definitely gonna get on 'em today.  After the obligatory Tim Horton coffee stop for Chuck, we are off to the lake.  Another beautiful morning.  We headed down the west shore to the south shore and start across.  The plan is to just fish our way to the east.  First spot and what do we find........MUD!  Can you believe it?  Every stinking place on this entire lake is mud.  So we just kept going east and never ran out of mud.  So we headed north to get offshore and fish the Bell Hump.  Not only are the rocks all covered with grass now, the whole hump is covered with mud.  We head back west and stop at a middle of nowhere spot I had marked from before.  We both got one under 2 pounds there.  That was it for the day.  No more fish.  But while we were there, a BFL boat came up to us and started fishing about 30 feet from us.  No kidding.  Oh well, when he found out we weren't catching anything, he left.  Just as he was starting to leave is when I caught mine.  I made sure he saw it.  We looked for some new stuff, and found some cool stuff, but didn't get any bites.  We ended up rechecking some first day stuff to see if maybe they showed up, but they didn't.  One thing I hate about fishing here is it is so much area fishing and not spot fishing.  You can literally make a drift for 10 miles and catch them randomly anywhere.  I hate that.  I want to fish a spot, or drift a spot.  Some kind of structure that holds them.  They can just roam a 10,000 acre grassy area, with no rhyme or reason to where they are or when.  I hate that.  We finally gave up about 2 and went to lunch.  Even that was really bad.  We did revisit the one place I caught most of my fish Wednesday, just to say we caught some and make sure they are still there.  The mud is, but we never got a bite.  So now the one spot I had is in doubt.  When we got back to the ramp and loaded up, I noticed my one tail light has been bashed in.  The light itself is OK, bit the steel that holds there surely is not.  Why not?!?  Why should the tournament week (that is now 2 weeks) from hell ever end?  We get back to Chuck's and I fix the trailer, and take the rub rail out to make sure all the screws are tight.  Then I tie some stuff on for morning.  By now it is time to go to the ramp for the meeting.  Good to see some friends that I don't see often.  I draw boat 3 and am fishing with Mike Smith, who couldn't make it to the mandatory meeting.  No biggie, I know Mike and we'll have some fun for sure.  Before we leave, Chuck's friend Dennis comes and asks Chuck for 3 waypoints.  One I didn't bother to fish because of the mud, and the other 2 are where I caught my fish yesterday.  Even better.  My one spot has no fish, and Dennis is taking the other 2.  Sweet deal!  Oh well.  We'll still have fun trying I guess.  Time to hit the couch and watch the Lions.  Night y'all.  Be home tomorrow.

August 27 - Dead calm this morning.  Perfect for running across the lake to check out  a bunch of stuff.  We got to the lake, donned all the clothes we had, cuz it was cold (like see your breath cold), and away we went.  Still dead calm.  Well, the air was dead calm.  The water surely wasn't.  The farther we went, the bigger the waves got.  Sound familiar?  No idea why.  It was calm last night, it was calm all night, it is calm now, but the waves are still really big.  I'm so sick and tired of this crap over here.  One of these times, I will come over and the weather will be nice, and the fish will cooperate.  One of these times.  We started out by making a 20 mile run to an area that is kinda like a huge 10-12 foot flat that has scattered weed patches on a mostly sand bottom.  Great stuff and have caught them there before.  On the way, we ran through some dirty water.  Why it was dirty, I have no idea, because there really is no reason for it to be dirty.  Then a little clean water, but as we got close to our spot, MUD!!!!  Why in the world this place is mud is beyond me.  We are miles from shore in 12 feet of water.  It was so muddy, we never even fished.  We ran around the area a little to some other stuff and found nothing but mud.  In fact, every single spot we stopped today was dirty.  We did not find a single spot that had clean water.  And guess what is the key to catching fish over here.  Yep, clean water.  They don't eat in mud.  We eventually made it to a "spot" and got a couple off it.  Not the kind I will need, but bites none the less.  Yesterday, I basically fished areas, but this is a very well defined spot.  Fished a whole bunch more areas, and got nothing but mud.  We caught a couple little ones here and there, but otherwise nothing but mud.  We eventually made our way to another "spot" and got a couple more there.  Again not what I need, but fish.  We finally said enough of the lake and headed up the river.  What did we find up the river.......mud.  No kidding.  Several spots were so muddy up the river, we didn't even bother fishing them.  Again, I have no idea why every single bit of water here is so muddy.  I hate it.  We did stop at one "spot" and Chuck caught a decent one.  It had one following it as well that looked a little bit bigger than it was.  So we got three spots that yielded a limit between them.  Certainly not what I need, maybe 12 pounds.  I am still saying I will need 19 to be in the top 6 Sunday.  We ran nearly 100 miles today, all over the north half of the lake and part of the river, and have almost nothing to show for it.  Tomorrow, we are going to the south half of the lake.  I sure hope it is much cleaner down there.  If not, fishing will be tough Sunday, and my 19 pound prediction will be way off.  The BFL is tomorrow on the Detroit River, so hopefully they won't come and take everything that I have found so far.  I only saw one bass boat yesterday, and maybe 8 or so today, so hopefully they will stay away from my stuff.   I have lots of stuff on teh south shore, so hopefully the water will be clean and the fish will be eating.  Apparently, this will be in bold print forever now.

August 26 - Up and at  'em early.  Chuck's house is about 7 miles from the lake, but I think I can hear waves crashing from here.  I know I can hear the wind blowing the trees around already.  Why not?!?  Chuck is off to his tournament, and I headed for St Clair.  Dave met me at the ramp and away we go.  Rainsuit on, hood pulled up, and gloves on.  Yep it is the dog days of summer alright.  We started out close to the ramp due to the insane wind and waves.  Since it was a west wind, the waves weren't as big as they could have been, but they were still too big for my liking.  We didn't get anything at the first few spots.  Waves continuously poured over the back of the boat while we fished.  The bilge pump was running and I asked Dave if he turned it on.  He said no.  So it came on by itself.  Um, OK.  Apparently, I must have done something with the wiring for the switch and just don't remember, because it worked all day.  A lot!  We made a move, I grabbed the net off the trolling motor pedal.  One of my cranking rods apparently had some sort of invisible connection to it, because it made a very brief leap about 1/8 inch higher than the gunwale, and straight sideways into the lake.  And it must now be made of concrete, because it was gone in 1/367th of a second.  Awesome!!!!!  Apparently the tournament week from hell doesn't realize this a new week.  Move on.  Finally hooked up on a crankbait when I pulled it out of some weeds.  The fish jumped and spit the bait.  At least we saw one finally.  Then I caught a couple of great big drum on a drop shot.  I had a couple somethings on for a minute on a tube, but they came off.  Finally got to a spot that had a few.  We each caught a few keepers on the first drift, so we moved just a little and caught a few more.  Now I have a spot that at least a few live I know.  Best one was 4, maybe just a tad under.  Hit a few more spots and caught one here and one there, but no more concentrations of fish.  All of Dave's fish came on a drop shot, and all my bass came on a tube.  All my sheephead came on a drop shot.  We made another move and I hooked up.  It didn't take long to tell I didn't have a bass again.  I already got two really big sheephead, and apparently this was gonna be another one.  I got it up and it dwarfed any sheephead I have ever seen.  It weighed in at 17-4.  Yes, that is seventeen pounds and 4 ounces.  One fish.  Holy big one batman.  Another bass here and one there type stuff.  My bass limit went 15 pounds, but my 3 drum went over 30.  I think I see another website coming.  You guessed it.  www.sheepheadinwitheric.com.  What do you think?  The wind eventually laid down a little and it was actually quite pleasant by the end of the day and I was down to shorts and t-shirt.   The weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow, so the plan is to do a bunch of running around and check out a bunch of stuff that we hope will hold some bigguns.  Time for this crap to turn around and have a good day for once, hopefully.  And I still can't get this to not be bold type.

August 25 - It has been a few days, but I told you it would be.  Today I left work and headed for Detroit.  I still needed to get the parts for my next round of projects I wanted to do the boat, and I am quite low on oil, so I decided to stop at Wonderland on the way to Detroit.  I stopped and got 8 empty oil jugs filled up, and all the parts I needed.  My next stop was Chuck's house.  I got there about 5:30 and it was time to get to work.  My boat has been here since Saturday.  Since then, Chuck has gone around and tightened everything, emptied the compartments and got everything all dried out, and it looks like he even cleaned it and vacuumed the carpet.  No wonder I think he is such an awesome person.  I took the batteries and Power Pole pump out so I could switch the float switch for the bilge pumps.  I like them to automatically come on when the water gets in there, and the old switch was wearing out.  Got the switch changed, but it wouldn't work.  Then I realized I was missing a wire.  There used to be an orange wire with a tag on it that said "AUTO BILGE" that I couldn't find.   We looked all over the stinking place in there and couldn't find that wire.  I finally gave up and accepted the fact that I would not have auto bilge for the time being.  I put everything back together.   Then I went up front to install the RAM on the trolling motor.  That went off without too much of a hitch.  I'll add pictures later.  The last thing we did was replace the bounce buster.  Well, not really replace it, but moved it (which meant cutting it shorter and changing the angle) and replaced the rubber thing that goes on the bottom.  Again, no problems.  I put a post on www.greatlakesbass.com today that said I had an open seat tomorrow if anyone wanted to go along, and Dave Borsa is going to fish with me tomorrow.  I don't know Dave, but we'll have fun anyway.  Chuck is fishing the NBAA Division Championship tomorrow with his grandson Chance while I practice St Clair.  I can't this to not be bold for some reason, either.

August 20 - Day 2.  My partner today is Tom Rizzo from Pennsylvania.  Tom won the Champlain event, and did pretty well yesterday.  Hopefully we can get him some good ones today and keep him fishing.  The weather is supposed to pretty good, so we are gonna go back out to Erie to try to get the big ones going off the spot I found Wednesday.  Tom wanted to meet at the ramp, so I said I would be there about 6.  Blast off starts at 6:30 again, and we are boat 117 today.  I had my alarm set for 5:30, but my phone rang at 5.  It was Tom letting me know he was at the ramp waiting. OK, I'll be getting up in a half hour and be there in about an hour.  See ya then.  We meet and launch and when our number is called, head for Erie.  Not a very nice ride. After the way this week has gone, who would be surprised about that.  We make it and end up having to use 2 drift socks and half ounce jigs to get our tubes down.  It was a pretty small spot we were fishing, so many drifts were made.  But we were catching fish.  Mostly giant, giant sheephead, but we each got a smallie as well.  We both made a comment or two about how it seemed to be calming down.  The wind was dying, but it takes hours for the waves to settle.  We eventually ran farther out into Erie to fish by the helicopter pad.  In addition to more monster sheephead, we each caught more smallies.  It continues to calm down out there. To the point there was no wind at all.  You could now use a half ounce jig for an anchor it was so calm.  About 1:00, the wind started blowing.  Just like someone flipped a switch, it started howling.  Whitecaps started in about 15 minutes after it started.  Kinda funny how it takes hours for the waves to calm down, but 15 minutes to get really big.  Another funny thing, is how it was bad running out there, calm while out there, and bad when it was time to run back.  We decided to stop back at spot number one to try that again.  Not for long though, cuz it was rough, let me tell ya.  We decided it would be a good idea to head back, because we figured it would take an hour to get back.  Before we left, I put plugs in the livewell overflow holes, and filled the livewells to overflowing capacity, then turned on the recirc pumps.  This way, every time we hit a "bump", water could not go out the overflow hole, and the fish could not slosh around in a half full livewell and get beat up.  We left, it took an hour.  We went back to the tire wall right by the ramp. Usually lots of retreads there.  When we stop, Tom checks on the fish and there is no water in the livewell, and all the fish are dead.  I thought about it for a minute, and discovered even though my thought process was solid, I did what was probably the stupidest thing ever done by a fisherman.  The valve in the livewell was still pulled, so it was in pumpout mode, and not recirc.  So when we took off, my nice full livewells quickly emptied.  Why not? Why should the week form hell hange now?  We each had 3.  That meant Tom had a limit of dead fish.  State law and tournament rules say you can't cull a dead fish.  So technically, he had his limit and could not replace any of them.  He caught one at the tire wall and tossed a dead one back.  Then another.  Now what do I do.  He has violated both state and tournament rules.  If I don't report him, I am violating tournament rules, and subject to disqualification.  I just let it go, and never said anything about it.  He ended up having a decent weight and I had just shy of 10 pounds, I think, after penalties.  So not only can't I catch them, I kill the ones I do.  Wow did I feel pretty good about myself.  Once we pulled out, the weigh in got fun again, like it's suposed to be.  I was getting the boat ready to come, and a boy and his dad came up to me.  He was carrying a hat and a sharpie, and his dad asked him if he was going to ask for my autograph.  Even though it was a Ranger hat, I gladly signed it.  Just a little bit bigger than all the "real pros" that had already signed it.  It was one thing when all the people at the St Louis Fishing Derby asked me to sign things, but this was at a Bassmaster tournament, and I was asked for an autograph.  Hopefuly just one of many future requests.   I talked with him and his dad for a few minutes and gave some high fives.  During the conversation, his dad thought he had fished with me before.  He told me his name, and sure enough.  I had him as a co-angler years ago.  That made the whole thing even cooler.  I walked back up to the weigh in for a few minutes, then hit the road.  I didn't head straight home though. I took the boat to Chuck's house and left it there.  Since I am going back Wednesday, and have no tournaments between now and then, why drag it all the way home and all the way back.  So I got to Chuck's, took a shower and we went to dinner.  I have to pick up a few things before I go back, because there are a few things I need to do to it when I get there.  I need to install a new float switch for the bilge pumps.  Apparently the one in there now just isn't working anymore.  I am going to put a RAM mount on the motor end of my trolling motor. My buddy Gary from Quebec showed me what he did to his to keep it from bouncing around in the rough water, and it is a great idea.  So great, I'm doing it to mine now.  I'll have to post a picture when it's done, cuz it's too complicated for me to explain and make sense.  I have to secure my rear GPS puck better, and one other thing that I can't remember.  Good thing I wrote it all down on the lake while I was noticing things.  I will definitely have to go around and put a wrench on everything and make sure it is tight.  I also think something is letting water in the boat that shouldn't be, cuz when I did turn the bilge pump on, there was always a ton of water in the boat, even when there weren't waves washing over the boat every 15 seconds.  I'm guessing it is livewell related, so when I get in there to replace that float switch, I'll check that out, too.  I looked at the results before I left Chuck's.  There were only 6 or 7 non-locals in the 30 that made the cut.  I almost made it, but just missed it by 110 spots.  Oh well.  These tournaments are so cool and so much fun to fish, I kind of wish I hadn't decided to skip Chesapeake Bay.  It's not too late, but I am not changing my mind.  I will be back Wednesday afternoon for the TBF State Championship (for next year's Divisional) on Lake St Clair. Can't wait. After how this week has gone, it has to get better.  I have to play baseball doubleheaders Satuday and Sunday, so probably no updating for a few days, unless something exciting happens. So until next time.... 

August 19 - Bassmaster Motor City Shootout day 1.  It was dead calm yesterday, no wind overnight of course, and today's forecast is for light and variable winds then west 5-10 mph.  Perfect.  Mark met me here at the hotel, and away we went.  No issues with launching, etc.  Our number was called and away we went, heading for the spot in the pictures below.  The farther we went, the rougher it got.  And the bigger the waves. What the heck.  How does a day of no wind make such big waves. Well, it was sure blowing out there.  We got set up and started fishing.  All you heard was waves crashing and the trolling motor blowing out.  I lost one on a tube, then broke one off on a drop shot.  Another boat showed up to join us.  Nothing happening there, so we went crashing around the lake looking for them.  Mark caught a rockstar.  Imagine that, with me.  I'm not saying the lake was rough, but once as I was idling getting ready to take of, a wave came over the side of the boat.  The bilge pumps got quite a workout today.  We gave up on the lake altogether and went to the river. We ran around and finally each caght a bass.  Both dinks.  We ended up on a spot where we each got a keeper.  Mark lost 2 other keepers.  So we each ended up going in with one.  By this time, I was so frustrated, I would have given all my stuff away and quit fishing forever.  The tournament from hell just won't die.  Motor trouble 2 days and weather issues 4 out of 5 days.  Now no fish.  Forget this crap.  I give up and just wanna leave.  We get in and park and get our bags and fill them.  I get to the tanks and Bill is there watching. How cool is that!  That was so cool that Bill came down to the weigh in.  Too bad I did so poorly, and had nothing to show him.  Well before I left the weigh in, I was over it.  The camraderie and all that goes with it at these tour events does that too me.  My day 2 partner won the Champlain tournament, and did pretty well today.  Hope we can get him some good ones tomorrow.  Back to the hotel and dinner is a priority.  I got my rods ready for morning, then off to dinner.  I went with Terry Melvin from Lunch Money Lures and Stetson Blaylock, a full time FLW pro from Arkansas.  That was a total fiasco and one continuous laugh.  We never got our food at the first place, then got the wrong odrder (that we got to go and took back to eat).  So we laughed some more as we ate the wrong food, in the dark, on my boat.  What a day.  I'm due in at 4 tomorrow. I will hit the road right after I weigh in.  Unless I get about 32 pounds tomorrow and make the cut.  I have to drop the boat off at Chuck's then I'll be on the way home.  It will be late tomorrow when I get home, and I have to play baseball Saturday and Sunday, so I'm not sure when I'll be able to update.

August 18 - Practice day 4.  CJ, my day 1 partner at Champlain, met me at the hotel to fish with me today.  The wind was supposed to be light and it was a short practice day, so I wanted to get out there as early as possible.  We got to the ramp well before daylight.  We waited a little bit, but I had to go.  It was still dark enough when we went that I had to wear my helmet to see because it has a clear lense.  We ran about 15 miles out into Lake Erie to start checking some spots.  CJ caught this one to get us started.  About 4 1/2 or so.


Then I caught this one 5 minutes later.  Bigger than CJ's. 


That's all I needed to see.  We're outta here.  We ran down the north shore, checking a bunch of different spots, but only caught one here, one there, and nothing over 3 pounds.  Tons of hawg sheephead though.   Yoo bad they don't count.  Due to registration being from 1-4, we had to quit fishing way too early.  Oh well, at least I have somplace to start now.  There might be a whole mess of them giants there, or maybe we caught the only two.  We'll know tomorrow.  At the meeting, I drew boat 64 and am fishing with fellow Michigander Mark Frickman.  Went and had dinner and got my stuff all ready to go for morning.  I have to be in at 3:15 tomorrow.  I'll let you all know how it goes.

August 17 - Practice day 3.  Got to the ramp and ready to go, and it was dead calm.  So I decided to go to Erie instead of the river.  I donned my rainsuit and life jacket and zoomed down the river.  For about 30 seconds.  Motor overheated running wide open.  Shut it off and trolled to a dock and sat there until it cooled off enough to run.  Back to the ramp.  I walked over to the service area to see if the Yamaha guy was there yet.  He had just got there and had to put a new gearcase on J Todd's boat.  I loaded mine up and took it over there.  He took the poppit valve out and it had some grass and a pebble in it.  Cleaned it out, put it back together and away I went.  Ran great and good water pressure as long as I kept it under 5000 rpm.  As soon as it hit 5 grand, the water pressure quickly went back towards zero.  Back on the trailer, and back to the trailer.  He took some more stuff apart and found that I was missing 2 water jacket bolts, and the rest were loose.  Fixed again and try again.  Good to go now, except when the jackplate is all the way down, I can't run wide open.  It looks like the plate is causing too much turbulance.  That shouldn't be a problem though, because if it is rough enough to have the jackplate all the way down, I'm pretty sure I ain't runnin' wide open anyways.  Back to the service guys.  Many of the companies have service trucks and trailers at these tournaments.  They are there to help us with pretty much anthing we need.  So far, Ranger, Nitro, Triton, Yamaha, Evinrude, Mercury, and Humminbird/Minnkota are here.  There are a goup of friends that meet up at the tournaments, a lot like us.  When the Evinrude guy didn't have anyone waiting, he was helping the Yamaha guy, etc.  There's no way enough can be said about these guys and the job they do for us.  I finally got on the water a little after noon.  I went south to check some old stuff.  Where I wanted to start was too rough and I never made it there.  Imagine that.  Have you heard that before?  Checked some other old stuff for the rest of the day in the river and caught 3 dinks.  The wind is supposed to die a little tonight, so I plan to be zooming across Erie at daylight.  No time to look for anything, so I'll just checking old rockpiles.  So far, this has been the tournament from hell.  Hopefully, it will turn into one of those victories that starts with a horrible practice story. 

August 16 - Practice day 2.  I got up early and trailered up to Lake St Clair.  The wind isn't supposed to let up anytime soon, so I'm guessing Erie will not be a factor.  The wind is supposed to blow again today, so I thought maybe I could beat the wind and get some fishing in.  Wrong!  I thought I would head for some middle of the lake weeds, but gave up and turned around long before I got there.  I fished around some mile road stuff, but very quickly decided that was also unfishable.  I ran down the west shore and fished a few places right against the bank, then ran across the mouth to the south shore.  The very little bit of that that was fishable, was horribly off colored.  I gave up on St Clair and had another bright idea. I have some stuff south on Erie along the west shore.  So I trailered down there.  Even though it was against the shoreline, basically, it was still too rough to fish.  And pure mud to boot.  So, in two days of practice, I've had one bite, and it just took my bait.  On the greatest fishery in the world.  Tomorrow, I'm gonna spend the day in the river.  I have to find some fish to catch and it looks like it will not be in a lake.  At least there was no mechanical problems today.
 
August 15 - Practice day 1 at the Detroit River Bassmaster Tour event.  All of what follows is true and not fabricated just to make you laugh at me.  Promise.  When I checked in last night, the girl at the desk told me my room was on a hallway where the whole hallway was reserved for a private party, so it might be kind of loud.  Great!  They only woke me up about 4 times, and going back to slep wasn't easy, of course.  I got up about 7.  There were beads hanging on my door, and a chick passed out (or dead maybe.  I didn't check.  My truck was parked the other way).  I had a bunch of stuff I needed to do to the boat and tackle, etc, before I took off.  One of the things I had to do was make ropes for my drift socks.  I had two of the nice, woven, stretchy ones.  However, apparently this spring, when I got my oil jugs filled, they had some difficulty getting the caps back on the right jugs or something.  At Champlain, I discovered my boat tub had about 3 inches of Yamalube in the bottom of it.  So, most everything in it was ruined, including my drift sock thingys.  The nice ones like I had were too expensive at Bass Pro yesteray, so I got some rope and clips to make them.  It was sunny and dead calm though.  The weather dude said winds south at 5 and waves 1 foot.  So I didn't bother with the ropes and didn't even put the drift socks in the boat.  I get everything done and off I go.  First stop is boat gas.  There is a sign on the pump that says to prepay inside to get the discount. I said forget that and left.  Next gas station, same thing.  Apparently, you get a ten cent penalty for not paying cash at all the gas stations around here.  I finally gave up and got gas.  I launched at Elizabeth Park and took off.  The ride wasn't too bad, but I was taking it easy, too.  The waves seemed to get kinda big going across the shipping channel.  That's the norm with a south wind.  But they kept getting bigger the farther I went.  I stopped a couple of areas and fished a little, but mostly just drug stuff around while I put line on some rods and stuff. I kept going, but I gave up and turned around before I made it toanything good.  It sure wasn't getting any better.  I fished a few old spots in the river, then spun a hub.  Kenny put a new hub in that 4 blade he wanted me to try, so I put it on yesterday, and it spun again today.  So, I started idling back to the ramp.  I was trying to tuck behind land whenever I could to hide from the current to make going against it easier.  In many places in these two rivers, the current is quite similar to a flushing toilet.  I apparently picked up a slug of weed, because the motor overheated.  So, now I am on the trolling motor trying to get back.  I did that until the motor finally cooled off enough to run again.  But now the prop was so bad, I was going slower with just the big motor than I was with just the trolling motor.  So I used both, and went faster than ever.  2.6 or so.  Smokin!  I finally made it back.  I had rubber all over my prop shaft and the prop was like rubberbanded on when I took it off.  Hope it was all just out of that hub and everything else is OK.  Since I didn't fish much at all today, there isn't much to get ready for tomorrow.  So, I took a little nap, then walked to Millie's for dinner.  But it's not Millie's anymore, nor is it any good anymore.  I only ate half my sandwich it was so bad.  Went back to the hotel, made my drift sock ropes, covered the boat and called it a day.  I went back down to the boat one last time and ended up being gone forever.  First, Swindle hollered at me, so I hung out with him a bit, then Roumbanis, then Chris Lane, then Hewkin, then Chris and Lyle from West Virginia, Kyle from Ft Wayne, etc.  It was dark before I made it back to the room.  Not sleepy at all now, either.  Chris says it is supposed to blow even harder tomorrow, so I think I will trailer up to St Clair and fish there tomorrow.  Hope the day goes better than today.  Sweet dreams.           

August 14 - Woke up to rain about 15 mintes before the alarm was to go off.  But it was done before it went off.  Got up and headed for the Pine River for a Weekend Warrior tournament.  It started raining again a little just before we started.  All but 1 boat went under the bridge.  We started out fishing the ridge itself, and it started pouring and blowing.  Sheets of water.  Caught a couple little ones and it stoped raining.  We decided to join the party under the bridge.  We had no specific spots we wanted to fish, so we just picked a spot and started fishing.  And it was stupid.  About 70 fish later, we moved across the river. Caught a few more there, then went back to the first bank and caught some more.  Back under the bridge.  We fished around the bridge then went up the river fishing lily and weed clumps.  No big ones, so we went back to the first bank again and caught some more.  Then we tried a new spot, but couldn't cull there either.  We went back under the bridge and fished around it for the last few minutes, but no culling.  I have no idea how many keepers we caught ( not very many), but we had to catch close to 100 fish today.  Like I said, it was stupid.  Our biggest 5 went almost 10.5 and our big one was almost 3.5.  Both were heavyweights today.  After the tournament, we grabbed some lunch and I hit the road.  I stopped at Bass Pro, then spent a couple hours with Chuck.  I made it to my hotel about 9.  It sure is nice driving about 20 hours less that it was to Champlain.  So I will spend the next week fishing the next Bassmaster tournament on the Detroit River.  I'll keep you posted.
 
August 13 - All I did tonight was finish getting the boat ready and truck packed for next week.  Tomorrow we are using Keith's boat at the Pine River, so I packed mine for Erie.  It's all ready to go and I packed a little box for tomorrow.  The truck's all packed, the boat's covered and ready.  Just gotta get up and take off in the morning. Can't wait.  I hope to catch somewhere around 900 smallmouth in the next 8 days.

August 12 - Back to Hardy tonight for the next Castaway.  Hopefully it will be better than it was Saturday.  We really need to catch them tonight to keep our lead.  First place only gets a plaque, but it's the principle of winning.  I had decided that our plan was to run up the river to hit a couple of spots, then just go fishing.  Keith and I talked last night and decided that's what we'd do.  So we blast off and run down the river to Brower Park.  Why, hell I don't know, but we did.  I lost a fish, then had it again, and lost it again.  Had to have been a smallmouth.  Then Keith lost one too.  No more bites there, so we went across to some high banks that were in the shade.  I finally caught a largemouth on the outside grassline.  Then we went into a little cut.  I was pulling my bait out of the water and I saw there was something on it.  I looked close and saw it was a largemouth hanging on it.  You wouldn't think you would have to look close to see that you have a fish, and furthermore, what it was.  That little dude was hanging on for dear life.  I was throwing a senko with the yellow tip.  He had almost the whole yellow part (about 3/8 inch) in his mouth.  After being laughed at he finally let go.  We took a picture of him, gave a brief lecture about little man syndrome, and let him go.  All 2 inches of him.  About 8:30, we went back to Brower Park. I caught a pike and Keith caught another largemouth.  Now we have 2 at least.  We were out of time, so back we went.  No one was bringing fish it looked like.  Must be tough all over tonight.  By the time I got the fish out of the boat and back down to the weighin, it was prety much over.  Our pike got the critter pot. Our 2 for alomst 4 3/4 pounds got 2nd place.  We were the only team with 2.  One team got a three fish limit and they won.  28 boats in the club and 13 fish caught.  Gotta love Hardy.  We are still in front by 2 1/2 pounds. We only have a three fish limit, but that is still very overcomeable.  Bad news is I don't get to fish next wek to try to hold that lead.  I will be at the Bassmaster tournament.  We are in the classic by 9 1/2 pounds, so our spot there is pretty safe.  So I will be "fishing" for two championships next week without being at either of them.  Hopefully I can win without being there.  We'll see.
 
August 11 - Tonight was supposed to be the last 10-10 tournament, but Scott texted and called about 11 or so and said it was cancelled due to weather.  They are going to fish next week instead.  Ugh!   Two nights in a row.  First because of my apparent mistake, and now because of the stinking weather. Amber was going to be my partner for that tonight, so maybe it getting cancelled was the best thing for me anyway.  LOL  So, I changed plans, including dinner and working on the boat to get ready for next week.  After I changed all my plans, Scott called back and said we were gonna fish now.  The radar showed the band that alreeady went through, but then there was nothing as far as Vegas on radar.  I decided not to go, since I had already rearranged my plans for the evening, and Amber had already gotten everything for dinner.  So after watching the Tigers and taking a quick nap after work, into the garage I went.  I spent about 3 hours getting rods around for next week, swapping some reels around and putting some extra combos together, sorting tackle, taking out what I won't use on Erie an putting in what I will, etc.  Amber was out there with me the whole time.  She was making the boat look all pretty while I was working on all of the important stuff.  She did an awesome job and the boat looks great.  While we were in the garage, it started raining again.  Apparently something came together, cuz there was nothing earlier anywhere on radar.  Guess Scott was right and should have left it cancelled.  I hope he didn't change it back just for me, and then I didn't go.  Sorry Scott.  Still getting lots of feedback on the Hookin Up Heroes event.  Can't wait for the next one.  Back to Hardy tomorrow night for the next Castaway tournament.  We are in first by 4 pounds, so assuming we can catch a limit each of the next two tournaments, hopefully we'll be able to hang on. 

August 10 - I checked the livewell pump, and all seems well.  Maybe I won't need a new one after all.  I went over to Superior Boat and Motor to get the screens and have them get me a new trim tab and parts on the way.  I stopped for my lucky haircut at Shampoo and Clipper Company on the way home.  I had to get home to get the screens replaced, test the pump, and get everything all put back together.  Hopefully all in time to get a nap before heading to Coldwater Lake for the last Tuesday Night Singles tournament.   I have a little bit of a lead, but can be beat, so this is a big tournament.  I got the screens switched out, the pump is working fine, everything is all put back together.  Things are looking good.  Brad left me a message that the tournament wasn't tonight, but was next week.  WHAT????  Not sure what that is all about, but I am extraordinarily unhappy.  I better just leave it at that.  I can;t fish next week becasue I'l be gone.  So since everyone but Brad was going to Coldwater tonight, they all decided to go to Halls Lake instead to have a little tournament.  I decided not to go.  My attitude might cause problems tonight.  So, I got all of the pictures up from the Hookin Up Heroes event from Saturday, got the truck mostly packed for the next Bassmaster, and worked on tackle for that tournament as well.  I went back through the Singles results, and according to standard mathematics, Brad can tie me for the season if he wins and has big bass.  No one else can catch me, even though I can't fish.  So maybe I will win the way no one likes to win.  We'll see I guess.

August 9 - On a mission tonight to either figure out why the recirc pump isn't working, or get a new one.  Also need new screens for inside the livewell, since the fish have destroyed mine, and knocked one completely off.  I took the pump out, after unhooking every wire in the boat and removing two batteries and the Power Pole pump, and discovered the impeller wasn't turning much, and none at all with any resistance.  That won't pump much water I bet.  Guess I get a new one tonight.  Off to Big Rapids.  Two hours later, I am home with nothing except a belly full of Taco Bell.  Kind of a wasted trip.  So I look at the pump some more, and discover the shaft is spinning like it shoud, the impeller just is slipping badly.  Kind of like when you spin a hub on a prop.  So I superglued it and put it ack on there.  Ill let it sit and check it in the morning.  I also discoverd my trim tab, the bolt,and the rubber thing on top are all gone now.  Ugh! 

August 8 - No fishing today, gotta play baseball.

August 7 - Today is the Hookin Up Heroes event at Hardy.  I got a phone call before I even got out of bed asking if we still needed boats.  You bet we do.  There are still guys looking to help out.  What an awesome start to the day.  I started out the day with a trip to the car wash to get some of the gunk off the truck and boat.  Then I stopped into Tamarack Sports, who was gracious enough to donate a big bag of baits for me to be able to give to the Veterans today, as well as the boaters, so everyone would have plenty of baits to catch'em on today.  I got to the Newaygo State Park, and found the park entrance road lined with American flags.  I haven't even made it in yet, and I have goose bumps.  I found the area where they are setting up, and met Ron Monroe.  He's the guy who I talked to yesterday, and who put this whole thing together.  They are setting up the stage and stuff, and there are already lots of Veterans there, ready to go fishing.  More people keep showing up.  I got to see some people I haven't seen in years.  Registration was done and a brief rules meeting followed.  Each Veteran was given an inflatable life vest, as well as towels, carabiners, compasses, a t-shirt, and the tackle I brought.  Rally cool stuff.  Then we were paired up with our Veterans.  In the meantime, there are lots of guys talking about areas they are going to fish, how thery are going to fish, etc.  All just to make sure everyone is on fish, and all the Veterans have a good chance to catch some.  These are guys who frequently are fishing against each other, now giving up their spots to others.  These guys are just amazing people.  My partners for the day were Marine Chuck Rathbun (Retired 1988) and 24 year old Marine Kyle Earl.  Kyle was blown up October 16, 2006 in Iraq near the Syrian border, by an IED.  He is completely missing his right hand, and has little below the elbow except part of the bone and skin around it.  His body is riddled with scars form that day.  His spirit is not!!!!  We started by me saying how tough fishing would be today, but no matter how bad the fishing was, and whether we won or lost, no one would have more fun trying than we would.  I wasn't here just to go fishing, or to go a good deed.  I was here to make new friends for life.  Chuck and Kyle put their stuff in the boat, and piled in.  I only have 2 seats in my boat, so I put a life jacket between the seats, and that is where Kyle sat.  We were one of the last boats to launch.  While I was waiting our turn in line, my rearview mirror revealed two warriors, who had never met each other, quickly becoming friends and reminiscing and telling stories.  More goose bumps.  When it was our turn, I just let the boat slide off the trailer and they held it at the dock.  There was gonna be no shortage of humor in my boat today.  They were giving me crap about hurrying up.  Earlier, when I asked Kyle where his other hand went, he told me he donated it to science.  I got back and there was a film crew on the dock with some sort of contraption in my boat.  I got out on the dock and I saw what it was.  They had a transfer system for disabled people to have a much easier time getting from a dock into a boat.  Pretty cool.  They wanted to use my boat and my partners to make a video and film a commercial about their product, as well as seek our input.  So that was going well, and about 1230, here comes Jerry Rood back into the launch area.  I though Uh Oh, something's wrong.  Not really, he just asked me what was going on, because everyone was sitting out in the lake waiting for me to come out to blast them off.  We had a bit of a laugh, and I told Jerry to send them fishing.  The film crew got what they wanted and then interviewd me on camera for the event, then we went fishing.  We lost about 45 minutes of our fishing time, but we didn't care one bit.  As for the fishing part, it was about what I expected.  We ended up catching two keepers.   One largemouth and one smallmouth.  We talked a lot, laughed a lot more, and made friends for life.  Every time we went by a boat, Kyle would wave at them with his short arm, just to laugh at people's response.  Every time we would get in some rough water, poor Kyle was bouncing all over the place, grinning ear to ear.  Chuck asked me once if I had ever had my entire boat out of the water before that.  good stuff, great fun.  Even though I caught both of our fish, I told them they could decide who we were gonna say caught the largemouth, and who caught the smallmouth.  They decided Kyle caught the smallmouth, and Chuck caught the largemouth.  This day had absolutely nothing to do with me.  It was all about them.  And they were each gonna have fish to take up on stage, and weigh, and show off to everyone, and take pictures.  Did we lie, yep.  Do I feel bad about it, nope.  Am I a liar, I hope not.  Do I think anyone else lied too, I sure hope they did today.  Kyle zings that bait around, reels it in, ties knots, nets fish, and everything else any of us, at least as good as we do it, with only one hand.  What he lacks in body parts, he surely makes up for in spirit.  We got back to the ramp, and the talk was poor fishing by everyone.  I ended up weighing the fish.  Mo and his partners won with just over 5 pounds.  Tom Rice and his partner had 4 something, and my guys had just shy of 4 pounds for third place.  Kyle won a night's lodging and a guided river salmon trip and Chuck won a two day guided hunt.  Kyle also ended up with a skydiving trip and a tattoo gift certificate.  I think he was most excited about that.  He was telling me what his next tattoo was gonna be, and now it's time to get it.  He'll have to tell you about it, beacuse I better not.  LOL  The Newaygo American Legion had donated food for everyone when we came in.  The weather was beautiful, the food was great, it just couldn't get any better than this.   Huge kudos go out to Jerry Rood, Tryce Warner, Mo Shiniver, Carl Losinger, Tom Rice, Chris Mieras, Brian Purwin, Roger Eastman Jr, Tim Johns, and all the others who brought boats today to take our heroes and new friends fishing.  I apologize for forgetting some of you.  Although it was a long day, I can't imagine a better way to have spent it.  I truly feel I am a better person for being able to participate in this event today.  To be able to spend a day surrounded by true American Heroes.  America thanks you all, and God Bles You All!  I certainly made new friends for life, and you guys can be on my team anytime, no matter what we are doing.

I have lots of pictures, and will try to get them put up soon.  They will be on the home page when I get them up.

August 6 - I got a call today from Ron Monroe from the DNR.  It is regarding the Hooked Up Heros event tomorrow on Hardy.  They are desperately short of boats.  If you or anyone you know can come out and take a Veteran fishing, please call Ron at 231-590-2376 or even myself at 616-318-9814.  Let's not leave these guys on the bank, and show them what bass fisherman are all about and how much they care.  It is at Newaygo State Park.  Park entrance will be covered, and there will be no other fees associated with the event.  Registration will be at 11, and the fishing will be form 12-5.  Please help.

August 5 - Mecosta tonight for the next Castaway tournament.  We debated on two strategies.  Lately the big sacks have been coming from Round and Blue.  And everywhere, they have been coming from deeper water.  So we can do that, or go against the grain and stay in Mecosta and fish shallow.  We went wth plan B.  Cabbabge and docks were the plan.  Keith lost a real nice one in the cabbage and I caught some shorts and one keeper.  We moved and I got a nice one next to a pontoon.  Then another under another pontoon.  We fished around and caught a few more and culled a couple of times.  We went to Round lake and Keith lost what he said was the biggest fish he has hooked this year.  Not sure why, but every single good fish he hooks jumps and spits his bait halfway to the boat.  I mean every single one.  All year long, every single one.  He is very frustrated, and I have no idea why it happens.  He uses really good rods, reels, line, hooks, etc, so it can't be an equipment thing.  And it happens no matter what rod he is using at the time.  We ended up with just shy of 7 3/4 for our 3.  The Wards had a 5 1/2 and one that looked real close to 5.  Their third one was a peanut, and they still had 12 pounds.  Doug said they lost one as big or bigger than their middle one.  Now that's a sack of fish.  Way to go guys.  Keith says we are now in the lead for the club with 2 tournaments left.  We'll see if we can keep it there. 

August 4 - Jeff Cox called me today to ask if I could participate in the Hooked Up Heros event Saturday at Hardy.  Heck yeah, I'll spend the day taking some heros fishing.  If you can, you should too.  It is at Newaygo State Park.  Registration is at 11, and the fishing will be 12-5. 

August 3 - At Rainbow tonight for the next to last of the singles tournaments.  Everyplace has been fishing tough lately, and talk at the ramp was that this place would, too.  I started out right by the ramp, and worked my way south to the docks.  I got 2 keepers pretty quick.  I then went across to the west side to fish those docks and look for the escapee from Saturday morning.  No keepers and no escapee.  I fished all the way around the north part of the lake.  Then I ran down to the south end of the lake.  I got one nice one down there, then fished up the west shore of the south part.  I ended the night fishing through the narrows towards the reeds.  I got one more keeper was all.  I finished with just 4 for 7 pounds.  That was good enough for 3rd.  Rainbow only gave up 2 limits tongiht.  Unbelievable how tough fishing has gotten everywhere now.  The year started out so good with so many big sacks has done a 180 for sure. The port side recirc pump is not working again.  UHG!!  Guess I'll have to tear it apart again.  I went to the lake early to try to figure out the squealing noise in the motor.  I took the cowling off and couldn't get it to make any noise.  I put the cowling on and it made the noise.  I did find two little things broken on the inside of the cowling.  I'll have to epoxy those.  Maybe there are the source of the noise.  Who knows.  Just some maintenance tomorrow, no fishing again til Thursday for the Castaway at Mecosta.

August 2 - Well, Scott talked me into fishing the Case of the Mondays tournament on Tamarack tonight.  One thing you can always be assured of when we fish together, we'll have a lot of fun.  And we did.  So much fun that we could hear other boats laughing at us.  Fishing wasn't all that great for Tamarack.  We started out by the Nitro dock then fished that shoreline back towards the ramp.  I finally got a good one out of the lily pads near the ramp.  We kept going down the east shoreline and I got another one just south of the ramp.  All the rest of our fish came down the east shoreline ehe island and the shore.  We caught fish on senkos, worms, beavers, and topwater I think.  Scott did catch a keeper, but it just didn't have what it took to make it in the bag.  We figured we had a little over 10 pounds.  We were the second ones to weigh in, and in 2nd place with almost 11 pounds.  After the third boat weighed in, we were in 3rd place.  4th boat, 4th place, etc.  I think we ended up 5th out of 13 boats.  Good group and fun times fishing this group.  Rainow tomorrow for singles.

July 31 - Yep, going to Rainbow for the Lake Street Station tournament.  The weather is gloomy, but not too bad.  I put my rain bibs on before we started, but ended up never putting my jacket on.  We started throwing topwater, and each got one, but that was it.  We ended up throwing spooks, buzzbaits, spinnerbaits, senkos, and I can't remember what all, all over the lake.  We were culling by about 7:30.  We contiured to cull until about 9:30.  Then Matt caught another one that would cull. He weighed it and put it on the cull float.  I notice out of the corner of my eye he is leaning over the side of the boat with a fish.  Makes sense, we are culling again, and he is letting the little one go.  Then he says "Uh Eric, that fish just took your float'  I turn around to see my float swimming away. We chased it around for about 10 minutes, trying to snag the float or wire.  No luck.  Eventually, it got deep enough and murky enough that I couldn't see it anymore.  Matt thought the fish was dead, because it was bleeding and gil hooked. So he was rinsing it off before putting it in the livewell.  SURPRISE!!!!  It was apparently very not dead.  We went back to the area a few times, hoping to see the float again, but we never did.  We ended up weighing in 2 fish that were smaller than the escapee.  AAAGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!  We ended up tieing for 2nd with 12.6.  We tied for big bas with 3.5.  Luckily, they used big bass to break big sack tie and big sack to break big bass tie.  So we ended up with 2nd and big bass.  This is only the 2nd one of these I could make this year, and I can't make any more.  Too bad, because these are fun tournaments and a good group of guys to fish with.  If you haven't tried them, you should check them out.

We grabbed some lunch, then off to Tamarack.  I have heard reports of the weeds being thinner than normal all the way to absolutely no weeds at all.  Scott and I are fishing the Case of the Mondays there Monday, so I had to stop and check it out.  The weeds are definitely thinner than normal.  There are large areas that usually have weeds that have none.  The weeds that are still there are considerably thinner than normal.  There are no mats.  The water is much clearer than normal also.  There are still some fish though.  Hopefully we can sack up a bunch of big fatties Monday.

Tomorrow is baseball day, so no fishing tomorrow.  Tomorrow also starts August, which really sucks.

July 30 - After a long workday, all I did when I got home was get my rods ready for morning.  Matt is meeting me here and we are going to go to Rainbow I think.

July 29 - Mike called me today and reminded me Lake Street Station is on Rainbow Saturday.  That's in addition to 10-10 being on Mecosta.  Hmm, decisions, decisions.  Anyone want to go fishing Saturday morning?  Both only go til noon, and are $40 or $50 a boat.  If you wanna fish one or the other, get ahold of me and let me know. I need a partner.

Big Lake for the next Castaway tournament tonight.  We got up there and I had a feeling I would not get a bite tonight.  So I had a mission to prove myself wrong.  And I did.  I caught one.  And Keith caught one.  We fished from zero feet to 25 feet, top to bottom, and didn't catch squat.  Keith's came from the edge of some shallow weeds and mine was under a toon.  Really not much else to report for tonight.  Happy Birthday to Jason Courtright, who had big bass and won tonight.

July 28 - Work night.  Took two of the batteries out of the back as well as the Power Pole pump, so I could access the two recirc pumps that weren't working in New York.  Put some water in the livewells to see what was up.  Nothing.  One was running, but so weakly, it wouldn't pump water.  I pulled it out.  It ran great upside down, but ran poorly when I turned it over.  Thankfully, the boat has always been right side up, so that means the pump has to be also.  o that won't work.  It is an original pump.  So given the fact that it has been through roughly 250 tournaments, it might be time for retirement.  Last time I had to replace a cartridge, I got extras just for days like this.  So I replaced it.  Good to go.  I turned the other one on and it wasn't really running at all.  I pulled up on the cartridge a little and it sounded like it was grinding up a sasquatch, hacked up a hairball, and ran great.  I'm guessing a pice of something, like I crawdad claw, made it through the screen and was stuck in the impeller.  I took it out anway to check it out.  It was now clean and ran great.  This was one I had already replaced.  Put it all back together and this one works like new now, too.  Put everything back together and the batteries and pump back, and we're good to go back here.  Now for the front.  I spent the next way too long laying on my belly stuck as far into the rod locker as I could fit.  I got the other wire finally, cut and stripped the ends of both wires, and reconnected them.  Sounds simple, but it was a long, uncomfortable, very sweaty task.  But everythng works like it is supposed to again.  Front and back.  We're back in the game.  I still had Matt's prop he let me borrow when Duck Lake destroyed mine, so I took that back to him and we had dinner with him and the kids.  Then we went down to Black Creek Propeller to give Kenny the one with the spun hub that he let me take to see how it would run on my boat.  So now my boat is back in working order and everything I had has been returned to its rightful owner.  We get to go back to Big Lake tomorrow for the next Castaway tournament.  We are only .6 pounds out of first now, after starting out 21st.  Keith really wants to win that deal again this year, so hopefully I can contribute to his cause and we can win again.

July 27 - Back to the tournament grind tonight with a singles tourney on the Pine River.  I have to admit that I have absolutely no interest in going fishing tonight.  I'm guessing I'm just mentally exhausted still from the Champlain trip.  But I have to go, since this is a points thing.  Took a nap, and put some stuff back in the boat.  Didn't really put it all back together, just put some tackle, a few rods, and the stuff to make it legal in it.  The garage still looks like a tackle store.  Got to the lake, put it in the water, and nothing up front would work.  Perfect!  Take the bow console apart and find all the connections to be good.  Check the back and find all the connections to be good.  The factory wires weren't long enough to go all the way to the front, so I had to add wire.  That connection is in the front of the rod locker that I store the paddle in, along with life jacket, helmet, lights, etc.  Well, when I was putting the paddle back, it kept getting hung up on wires and stuff.  I felt around and sure enough, I ripped one of the connections apart.  Right at the very end of arm's reach toward the bow from the rod locker.  No way I can fix it on the river.  Not that big of a deal, it just means I can't go to any of the spots I wanted to fish tonight.  So they all take off, and I just spend the night junk fishing around the ramp.  I got 3 keepers and 2 more that I decided not to try squeeking out come weigh in time.  No one else had more than 3, but mine were the third biggest sack of 3.  Just a fantastic night all around.  NOT!!!  So tomorrow, I have to fix the front wiring, along with the livewell pumps in the back.    

July 26 - Spent the afternoon cleaning out the truck.  The boat is all dries out and ready to put back together, but I haven't touched the truck.  One of the jugs of oil I had in my boat tub in teh back leaked.  So teh tub is full of oil, and so is everythign that was in it.  most all that got thrown away.  The rest I'm trying to salvage.  We'll see how that goes.  I can;t believe i actually fit that much stuff in one truck.  but ti is all cleaned out and put away now.  Time to put some new plugs in the Harley and go for a ride. 

July 25 - No fishing today, just playing baseball.

July 24 - Lots more driving, and lots of time to think about my last week, while I listen to podcasts of varying fishing shows tha Amber put on her Ipod for me.  Looking back, it is very difficult to beat guys that some have fished dozens of tournaments on a body of water, and very difficult to beat "big name pros" that are given tons of host spots by locals that all hope "their pro" does well so they can take credit for thier success.  But next time I will not be teh guy that got no local help and had never been there before.  Even though I was that guy, I still beat mulitple BASS and FLW tour pros.  I beat past BASSMaster Classic champs as well as past Forest Wood Cup champs.  And lots of them beat me too.  I made it home about 24 hours after leaving Plattsburg.  The drive is horrible.  I completely emptied teh boat and left all of teh compartments open, figuring as much as it was in the rain and big water, there was water places I didn;t want it. 

July 23 - Day two.  Once again, my partner met me at the hotel.  We loaded up and headed to the ramp.  We just chatted on the way because it took us about an hour to make the 3 mile trip and get launched.  I told him he could expect 3 things today.  One is he would have a lot of fun.  Two, he would probably think I was  little wacko.  Three, at the end of the day, he would would look back and think "Wow, that was awesome.  I sure hope I get to fish with you again some day."  We were boat 161 and made it over to the official launch area at boat 179 or something.  So we had to wait 2 boats and launch at the end of our flight.  No big deal.  We took off and the wind was already blowing.  Not horrible, but enough to make you take your time and alter your routes to get behind whatever land you could to get out of the waves.  We ran to the inland sea to fish around some islands.  I never made it to the inland sea during practice, so I was going to run completely new water.  Before we left, I looked at the map, and looked on my GPS and said "Yep, that looks like a good spot."  my partner today did pretty well yesterday and was still in the hunt, so I really wanted to make sure I got him some good fish today.  We fished around a couple of islands, making drifts with the wind, and had no problem getting limits.  I was getting mine on a smallie beaver.  I looked on my GPS and found an offshore hump.  So we went to try that.  The bigger ones were there.  We caught a few of them, but the wind was blowing so hard, it was nearly impossible to fish it.  I had to throw a marker buoy to use as a reference point, because the wind was moving you so much, you just couldn't use just the GPS to stay in the right area.  I would catch a fish, weigh it and cull, and be 150 yards away from the buoy.  It was that bad.  We found another spot on the GPS to try, so away we went.  The spot we left wasn't super protected, but it was better than the new spot.  The waves were really big there.  I was getting nervous about the ride back.  Really nervous.  We fished for awhile, and eventually made the decision to head back.  The inland sea was pretty bad.  We had to go straight into big waves.  We hit a few times harder than I like to, but we eventually made it to the guts.  Once we got out of the guts, we had to run down and across the main lake a few miles.  We stayed tight to shore going down for a little protection, but had to cross eventually.  Holy giant waves batman.  Biggest I've ever been in by far.  Once, I was actually driving the boat up a hill.  Not joking, I was driving up a hill.  It wasn't as bad as it could have been since we were now kinda running across them, rather than against them.  There was the occasional rogue wave, which was even bigger than then normal humongous waves.  I went up one of them, nearly vertical it seemed, and the bottom dropped out just as we hit the peak.  So my boat is now pointing straight up with nothing but air under it and water waiting several feet below.   That kinda scared me.  I was afraid we would land motor first, water would come up and fill the boat, and we would just keep going down.  About the time the motor got to the water, I hammered it.  I looked back and water only came up about a foot or so onto the back deck, and we kept right on going.  Whew!.  We made it back in about an hour.  My partner had a nice limit again today.  There was nowhere you could fish around the launch at all that wasn't gettin crushed by the giant waves.  Since he had good fish, we went ahead and checked in early.  I had 10 something, he had 8 something.  He was in 8th when he weighed in.  While on stage, he mentioned the promises I made him, and told everyone I definitely kept them.  We laughed so much all day, and just had an absolute ball.  We Bajaed back to the ramp, loaded up and I went to his hotel.  He unloaded his stuff, I gave him the drop shot bait I was using right off my pole, and a couple bags of some custom made senkos type baits that he had never seen anything like.  Duh, that's why they are custom made.  I gave the boat the once over, and only found one of the screws that holds my trolling motor pedal to be loose.  Everything else seemed like it should be.  I didn't find a loose nut, bolt, or screw anywhere else.  My boat was absolutely amazing this week.  As far as I drove it, and how rough the lake was, it performed flawlessly and got us back safe and sound every day.  I love my boat.  I took a shower and put on some clean comfy clothes and headed home.  I had to stop before I got to Albany for a quick nap.  Then I drove to almost Buffalo before I stopped for teh night.

July 22 - Day one.  My partner met me here at the hotel.  I could tell yesterday we would have fun no matter what today.  Pretty typical launch process.  But then we have to do down the lake a bit to where the tournament will actually be starting and where the weigh in will be.  I have always liked how BASS does the take off.  When it is time for the tournaments to start, boat number one goes through boat check.  That includes checking livewells, lights, life jakets, verifying boat number and getting your key fob, then checking the kill switch.  Then they are off and running.  Boat 2 is right behind them, etc.  We were boat 40. Last boat in the 2nd flight, and had to be back at 2:20.  When I saw there were 10 flights yesterday, I really wanted to be in that 10th flight for the extra 3 hours of fishing time they would have today.  We headed south and the lake was flat.  Our first stop was just over 50 miles (straight line) south.  We made it (including the big no wake zone at Crown Point) in about 50 minutes.  Awesome ride.  Put the front Humminbird on, drop the trolling motor, and start casting.  About 5 casts and I have number 1 in the box. About 3 casts later, I have number 2.  I am thinking "Holy Crap, we are gonna get 'em today. Finally, all the hard work and time I have spent practicing up here has paid off."  Believing big time in karma, I chose to keep that thought to myself.  I didn't share my thoughts with CJ.  And just that fast, they were all done.  No more bites.  After washing baits for awhile, we ran down the lake a little farther, but found it to be all muddy. Apparently the storms and tornados made it muddy.  Partner got one down by the cable ferry.  We eventually went back to the first spot and we each got another one there.  We eventually gave up and went across the lake to Girards Bay.  I got one more there.  CJ managed to catch trophy sized perch, sunfish, and crappie today, in addition to his bass.  I was on the monster pickerel all day.  I mean some world class size pickerel.  So disapponting time after time when I got them up and saw they weren't bass.  We decided to head back and fish one of my smallmouth spots by the ramp.  We should be able to finish out our limits there pretty easy.  We ned to get gas before we run back though.  I go to where Timmy Horton told me to get gas.  I couldn't find it.  I looked up the name of it on my phone, and found it was 15 miles behind me now.  Crap!  I don't want to run back down 15 miles to get gas.  That will shoot our day.  I remembered seeing a bunch of boats parked in this one area, so I decided to go check to see if they had gas. I saw the big "GAS" sign before we got to it.  Thank God!  It was exactly how Timmy described it, he just had the wrong name.  Good thing for him, because he would have been driving back to Alabama with a limp.  Got gas and headed back.  The lake wasn't very pleasant, but we made it with about 30 minutes to fish.  Gonna catch a few smalmouth and call it a day. Except I took all my smallmouth stuff out of the boat last night, to save weight and space making the long run.  I did have my beavers, so I tied one on and threw it out.  It never made it to the bottom.  That's what I expected.  It was too little, and it came off.  Never got another bite.  Checked in and weighed 8 1/2 pounds.  Yay for me.  The weigh in is a little different, but really cool.  You get a bag and bring your fish up.  Then at the beginning of the tank line, you put your fish into a mesh bag and put them in the tanks.  You don't have to carry any water and the fish are always in fresh, moving, oxygenated water.  The other diference is the big screen, hi def, plasma tv on the side of the trailer with continuously updated standings.  By the time I made it back to my boat, I had two messages about my day.  So that means at least two of you were watching the weigh in on www.bassmaster.com today.  The interest you guys show and the support you guys give me is amazing.  You have no idea how much it means to me.  Boated back to the launch, took CJ back to his truck, unhooked the boat, and went back to see more of the weigh in.  Ish was leading wih just over 20.  After that, the weights weren't real impressive.  Until the later flights started checing in.  Word was the bite really turned on down south about 1.  Remember me saying I wanted that 3 hours of extra fishing time.  It sounds like that made all the diference.  Oh well.  Since I have nothing to fish for tomrrow, I am not going to make a big run.  I drove 123 miles today.  Just going to go fishng, have some fun, and catch some fish.  I told the hotel I wouldn't be coming back tomorrow. So the truck is all packed, and I will be heading for Michigan as soon as I am done weighing in tomrrow.  So I should be home sometime Saturday.  Probably won't update tomorrow as I'll be on the road. So Ill catch y'all up this weekend.

July 21 - Back up and at 'em at 4 this morning and was on my first spot by 6.  I went back to exand the area I got the big one on day 2.  I fished the area for an hour with only one little bass and lots of pike.  So I moved to recheck the smallmouth stuff, because I'm not smart enough to give up on them.  First spot, nice one on right away.  Feels heavy, pulling hard, all the good stuff.  Right before it gets close enough to see it, it comes off.  That's OK, I'll see what else is here.  Good start.  I proceeded to load the boat.............with rockstars. No more bass.  I dropped the camera down and didn't see any bass.  Pretty much the same story at spot number two, without the bass part.  Got a couple little ones on spot 3, along with the customary rockbass.  The wind is howling again today.  I think the driest part of the boat might be the trolling motor prop, because it was out of the water the most.  I headed for the really deep rocks I found to try them.  It was too windy to fish here the day I found them.  It sure wan't pleasant fishing them today, but I could.  This spot looks amazing.  There is a ledge from 40 up to 36 that starts the rocks.  The rocks are scattered all the way to the weeds, about 13 feet.  Drop the camera and it looks just as good down there as it does up here.  First pass, nothing.  Second pass, nothing, Third pass, nothing.  Fourth pass, one dink at 30 feet.  Fifth pass, same thing.  Guess this up north stuff just isn't meant to be for me.  I didn't even make it the other spot that had dozens of rock piles.  I guess I will heed the advice a wise mean gave me before I left home.  Matt said "Go south, young man."  I went back and loaded up. Today has to be a short day, because registration starts at 1.  I get gas, get back and mess with my batteries.  This morning, one of the banks on the charger said I had a bad conection.  I messed with it and found a fuse almost broken.  I left my voltmeter on my workbench when I left home, so I borrowed Scalish's.  That battery reads 0.00 volts.  That's not enough to help run a 36 volt system.  Crap.  Another guy walks out of the hotel and asks what county we are in, because there is a tornado warning.  Double crap.  Off to Wally World I go to get fuses and a battery.  I still have rods laying everywhere, bad battery, broken fuse, and nothing ready for tomorrow yet.  Good news is my lowr uit fluid still lookslike new.  I was worried bout it after the fluid coming out around the propshaft.  Walmart has nothing I need.  Radio shack doesn't either.  No tornado yet, just rain.  Advance Auto Parts has the fuses, but only as part of an assortment pack.  Good enough.  They test the battery, and the machine keeps telling them they have to hook the battery up to test it.  Aparrently one of the terminals came disconnected inside the battery.  That would explain 0 volts and my trolling motor dying quicker than I thought it should.  So I get a battery and fuses and away I go.  It is now 2.  I go to the civic center to register while I am out.  Forget that, line is too long.  Ike and Swindle offered to let me cut, but that was still too long.  Back to the boat and get the new battery in and charger hooked back up in the rain. Still no tornado, but it is really starting to thunder and lightning. I threw the rods in the back of the truck.  Hopefully, it is a fast tornado and I can get my stuff done after the meeting tonight.  Gonna get a shower and change, then head back over to register and do the meeting.  Whatever they were grilling us smelled really good, too, and I'm getting hungry.  Still raining.

Got signed in and they had a spread prepared that would make any 4th of July cookout jealous.  Burgers, dogs, subs, ribs, chips, all kinds of salads, tons of desserts, water, tea, lemonade, pop, you name it.  It was awesome.  Chummed around and BS'd waiting for the meeting to start.  It quit raining and got really sunny for awhile.  Some dude had a UHaul trailer out front selling fishing stuff. I looked aroud, but nothing I really needed.  The meeting and pairings was pretty much the same as all the rest of them.  Except they told us that anyone born after 1973 has to have a boater safety certificate to operate a boat in Vermont.  That's me.  Oops. Never heard that before.  Guess I'm a violator. Pretty sure I'm not getting a class tonight.  I drew boat 40 and am fishing with a guy from Ohio.  I guess I will run south, since that's really all I have going.  John Hempel told me to come to his room to talk about some spots.  I did, and we went out to his boat, in the rain, and looked at his GPS to show me some spots that he caught some. That is pretty cool of him to do.  Not that it surprises me of John, beacause he is just one of the all around good guys in fishing and in life.  I hope he gets a fat sack of smallmouth up north tomorrow.  I still have nothing ready for tomorrow.  And it's still reaining.  I have resolved myself to getting out the rainsuit and doing it in the rain.  By the time I got back to my hotel (about 600 feet) it was barely sprinkling and quickly stopped altgether.  I got my rods out of the truck and opened one of my storage compartents to find it half full of water.  Apprently, the bilge never kicked on, and the boat filled with rain and tornado water.  I picked out all the boxes of stuff that have hooks in them to try to dry them out.  I got my rods all rigged and ready to go, then put them back in the truck.  I put all the wet boxes in the bathroom with the heat blowing on them to hopefully dry them.  So now it's time to call it a day and see what happens tomorrow.  Good night y'all.  

July 20 - Yep, I really did get up at 4 and took off.  85 miles later, I was at the ramp.  There were a couple trailers already there. While I was getting the boat ready, some nut job comes flying down the road and into he ramp.  We talk a few minutes and he says "Hi" to all of you.  The nutjob is Iaconelli.  I run around checking several diferent areas working my way south.  Now I am already 70 miles south of the takeoff, and I am working farther south???? Maybe Ike's not the only nutjob.  There are tons of boats down here.  Every edge and break has a boat on it.  We're talking an hour and a half run in perfect weather, and here are 100 boats down here.  Maybe we're all nutjobs.  Like I said the other day, just one of the guys now.  I caught fish on spinnerbait, chatterbait, senko, brush hawg, and swim jig.  I can catch 'em, just not the size I need here.  I ran into the nutjob a few more times out there.  Very entertaining to fish around for sure.  This is near where I started my first day here and didn't catch much.  Now having a better understanding of the lake and its fish, I decided to revisit some of those first day spots I dismissed as being fishless.  I'm glad I did.  The first spot I stopped the first day has some bigguns living there.  I caught a nice one on a spinnerbait, so I switched to a swim jig and caught another one on that.  And another big one was following that one.  So that is 3 big ones in one spot in 5 mintes.  Enough for me, outta here.  Ran around a bunch of other spots, but not much more success.  But at least I know where I can go have a chance to catch some competitive fish.  Pretty pumped about that.  Tomorrow brings another 4 AM getup.  I am going to trailer back up north to revisit the stuff from day 2.  I want to try to expand the area I got the big one up there and check out the spots I think should hold the smallies, but I couldn't fishdue to the wind.  So I will find more good ones tomorrow, 100 miles away from the ones I found today. That'll create a dilemma. Night y'all. 

July 19 - I laid down a little before 8 last night, and apparently fell right to sleep.  Never finished the conversations I was having, never set the alarm, nothing.  Woke up at 5:30 to rain.  Turned on the news and lots more is coming.  A little news, a little Sportscenter, a shower, some breakfast, and some shopping maybe.  The rain hopefuly won't last long.  If it does, I guess I'll get wet. 

I went out about 10 or so.  The weather dude said slight NE breeze 5 mph.  So I launched right in Plattsburg at the ramp we are going to use for the tournament. I figured I would run around the mid sction of the lake and find some stuff close to the ramp hopefully.  Well, me and the weather dude have a bit of a disagreement.  I don't think a big wind blowing straight up the lake from the south making great big waves is quite what he described.  So my plans changed when I saw how rough it was.  I went south where it was a little bit protected. I found some rocks in about 20 FOW.  I threw out a darter and was tieing on a tube, but there was a fish on the darter before I got that far.  Guess how big......yep, same as always.  Dink after dink after dink.  I ran a little farther south and rode around some reef.  It was just sand, except for the half dozen rockpiles I found on the side of it.  20-26 FOW isolated rock piles.. Bingo, motherlode of smallies.  Not!  Not one bite on any of them. I loaded back up and trailered south to launch farther down to check out some stuff that I thought I could fish in this wind.  Found some really good looking stuff, but same ole story.  I did meet a couple guys from WV and had a great BS session with them at the ramp. Tomorrow, the alarm is going off at 4, so I can trailer down to Ticoneroga. I want to get there at a decent time to start, because the sun rises at 5:20 something here.   

July 18 - Today I go north and try the upper end of the lake.  I trailered up and across into Vermont and launched near Missiquoi Bay.  I started out on a smallmouth looking spot that was anoter bluff bank with rocky bottom.  It was too windy to really fish it.  I moved across the bay to a weedy reef and caught a few.  Lots of pike and a couple bass.  The second one was near 5.  Good enough for me.  Through Quebec back to America.  Tried a big bridge causeway, and that was lousy with pike also.  I went to a spot south of the bridge, kinda in the middle of nowhere, that was supposed to have some rocks on it.  I found the rocks, and found some smallmouth.  Lots of them.  Keepers too. Problem is they are really little.  I was headed to another smallmouth spot to check out and I had to go through a narrowed down passage.  The wind was howling through it, so I stopped to fish it.  There were lots of fish there, too, but again, all really little.  I eventually made it where I was going, and found it to look very fishy.  Scattered rocks from 12 feet to 40 feet.  Fished a little, but too windy again to develop the spot the way I wanted.  Then I put it back on the trailer and came back to New York to try another area.  Supposed to be more rocks. I found some.  Wind still howling.  Caught a couple, but too windy again to work the way I wanted to.  I decided to idle around and see what all might be there.  I found dozens of rock piles in this area.  I will definitely have to come back up here and check this out more, too.  I did get one OK one, but not hat I need here.  Gotta find the bigguns.  Finally gave up about 6 and headed back.  This place is so big, it takes at least an hour to get to any ramp you might wanna use.  The weather is supposed to be yucky tomorrow, so not sure what I'm gonna do.  But I now have a few places I'm sure I can catch a limit, and I know what kind of stuff the largemouth live in, so it was definitely a productive day and we're getting closer. 

July 17 -  My first day ever on Lake Champlain.  I had a great day.  A great day driving the boat and eliminating water.  I trailered about an hour and a half south and fished a little over 20 miles of the lake own there.  And eliminated every bit of it.  I plan one more day even farther south, probably Monday.  This place is beautiful though, that's for sure.  The New York side is all mountains.  Some places has bluff walls several hundred feet high and continue several hundred feet below the surface of the lake. Very pretty.  I was in 232 feet of water 1 fet off the wall.  The lake is actually pretty clear.  I like that.  I found several places that sure looked like they should be loaded up, but weren't.  4 more days to figure something out.  I took the scenic route back to Plattsburg, taking a state road a ways, rather than expressway all the way. Neat, but there was no strech of road straight and flat the entire way.  Every inch was a hill and/or a curve.  Great for the Harley, not so much for pulling the boat.  It was like stepping back in time.  Little villages with old small houses.  Little mom and pop shops and garages in each town.  I even saw an old lady mowing with a rotary mower, instead of one with a motor.  I might not have caught or found what I hoped to today, but it amazing just having the oportunity to be here and fish the Bassmaster events this year.  Win, lose, or draw, I will go home happy I was here.  Tomorrow, I am going to trailer up north somewhere and try up there.  Have to go look at the maps to decide where to launch and where to fish.  I'll report back tomorrow night.

July 16 - I drove til 1:30.  I stopped just outside Buffalo to sleep.  I got up at 4:30 and continued.  This drive is torture.  I got on 90 about 8:30 last night and stayed on the same road until I was in Albany, NY 14 1/2 hours later.  I got gas 3 times and stopped to sleep 3 times all on the same road.  And spent about $41 in toll fees, too.  My goal was to make Plattsburg by 2.  I wanted to catch the Stren weigh in today, just to kinda see what's goin on and to see what the weights are.  Just over 900 miles (about 500 of them in the rain) later, I pulled into the weighin at 1:50.  Two guys have 38 pounds after two days and it takes about 34 to make the top 10 cut.  Got to talk to some guys I haven't seen in awhile.  I think 4 of the top ten are full time pros.  I know 2 more are local Champlain specialists.  Not sure about the rest.  About 30% of the Elite Series pros will be fishing this week.  So I get to beat some of them again this week.  I need to realize that I am just one of the guys now, not little ole Eric that wants to fish these tournaments.  I am here, just like they are.  Found my hotel, went to Dicks and Gander (didn't get anything either place), walked to a restaurant for Dinner, updated this, and now it's bedtime.  Tomorrow, I am going to trailer down south and launch at Crown Point to check it out down there.  I'll let you all know how I do tomorrow night when I get back to the room.  Thanks for reading.  

July 15 - I stopped and had dinner with Chuck tonight, and gave him his new crankin rod.  Otherwise, all I did was stare out the windshield.  It was one year ago today that we found dad sitting in his chair, all tipped back watching Sportscenter dead.  Still miss him a lot.  

July 14 - Well I think we're ready to go.  The set screw I got for the hub seemed like I could screw it all the way through into the hub itself, so I ended up putting the old one back in, because I just wasn;t comfortable with it.  I got the relay block all sealed up the best I could with some weird rubbery, stretchy tape from AutoValue.  The jackplate still works.  No one around here has a thrust washer, but the one I had in my boat tool box seems to work.  I went to the lake and everything seems OK.  So, the boat is ready to go, the truck is all packed, and I guess I'm ready to head for New York.  A good nights sleep and a few hours at the office are all that stand in my way now.  Just driving tomorrow, so probably won't get on to update.  But I sure will when I get to New York tomorrow.  Can't wait.

July 13 - Repair day.  Jerry came over to help.  I started with the last hub I couldn't get the set screw out of yesterday.  And still couldn't today.  Spray, twist, grunt, hammer, squirt, repeat.  It finally decided to give up and come out.  I will have to get a new set screw though, because that one has a slightly larger allen size now.  It will work just fine, but I am worried about the next time I want to take it out.  Got the oil all changed and good to go.  Next for the jackplate.  Cleaned the relays and box they go in with baking soda, rinsed them, dried them, put new relays in and nothing changed.  But if I bypassed the relays and put the wires directly on the battery, it worked.  At least it isn't the actuator.  So, I start peeling the goop they seal them with off to check out the connections on the bottom on the box.  Jerry takes over and accidenatlly pulls a wire out of where a wire shouldn't be pulled out of.  That wire had some yucky corrosion on it.  We replaced the connector, put it back, and it works.  Wow, two for two.  Tomorrow, I'll have to get some stuff to seal it all up with.  Next we go to the lake to try out the other prop Kenny wanted me to try.  It was pretty much the same as the one of Matt's I have borrowed.  Until the hub spun.   I was there testing the lower unit to see if it would leak or not.  So when I'm going across the lake and suddenly stop going and the motor revs, big time pucker factor.  But I quickly figured it must have been the hub, so I idled back to the ramp.  Pulled it out and verified it was the hub, not the lower unit.  Whew!  I decided to try the other ones I had in the truck to see how they would perform.  Until I got to the truck, and there weren't any there.  I took them out and left them on the garage floor.  Oh well.  Get home and take the prop off to check for leaks and find none.  Check the fluid inside and it looks like new.  Holy cow, three for three.  I took that one tire back off to get that set screw out of the hub to take it to get a new one tomorrow.  Got the truck all cleaned out from last weekend's trip, and Keith's tent put back together and ready for its return.  Pretty good night  guess.  Tomorrow I have to take this prop back to Kenny at Black Creek Propeller and get some forward thrust washers from him, get my lucky haircut from Brenda at Shampoo & Clipper Company, get boat reday to go, and pack.  Hope I can get it all done.  Scott from Wonderland Marine West let me know the date was wrong on the tournament page for the Wonderland Open.  that is now fixed.  Thanks for letting me know Scott.  Check it out and get with Scott if you need anything boat related.

July 12 - Gonna try to get stuff fixed and ready for New York tonight.  I started with the jackplate.  I can't make it work.  I tried cleaning connections, I tried switching relays, I replaced relays, etc, and it just does the same ole thing.  Great!  I guess I will take it off tomorrow and put the old manual one back on to get me through.  That's a bit of a task, and not ideal, but it will certainly get the job done.  I also wanted to change the hub oil on the trailer.  It has been a couple of years and I have had no issues, but this is a good time to change it anyway.  Except I can't get any of the plug set screw things out.  So I start soaking all of them with penetrating oil.  Now I'll cahnge the lower unit fluid.  I haven't changed it since the season started, so now is a good time for that, too.  The stuff I drained looked OK, so I squirted some new stuff in the top just to hopefully get anything left flushed out the bottom.  I started to fill it, but ran out of fluid.  Figures.  So on the Harley and to town I go to get more.  And that's running like crap for some reason.  Only running on one cylinder most of the time.  I'll deal with that later.  I got back and I filled 'er up, and had oil coming out around the propshaft.  I'm not sure if that is a normal relief type thing in case there is too much fluid or too much pressure, or if something else is catastrophically wrong.  I've never seen that before, and since it is mine and I live at Tragedy Acres, I'm guessing it is catastrophic.  I'll have to make some phone calls tomorrow.  I finally got 3 of the 4 plugs out of the hubs and got them flushed out and new oil in them.  The oil that came out was black and smelled terrible.  They never heated up or anything, so maybe that's normal, too.  I gave up and went to bed after getting those 3 done.  I did clean up my rims while I was waiting for the penetrating oil to penetrate, too.  So tomorrow, I'd like to finish that last hub and swap jackplates, but who knows.  I have to do some checking on the lower unit thing and go from there I guess.  I'm sure there will be more great news to report tomorrow. 

July 11 - Today wrapped up one of the better weekends I can remember.  Spent 3 days at a campground full of other tournament fisherman, most of which were already good friends, and some that are now that I didn't know before.  The weather was perfect for tenting the whole time, too.  Today, I also proved the ole "a blind squirrel even finds a nut once in awhile" theory to be fact.  I drew boat 6.  Pretty good start, since I now have a decent chance at being one of the frontrunners in the race to White Lake.  We blast off at 6:30 and the ride across Muskegon was pretty uneventful.  Lake Michigan wasn't bad.  I went a little over 30 on the way up.  Got to White and went to the other end to fish in the no wake zone.  Lots of familiar faces fishing around, but no one catching anything.  That lasted about 45 minutes and I gave up.  I know there are tons of fish and big fish there, but I don't know when or if they will decide to eat.  So I went to the big flat.  I noticed my jackplate was all the way up, but I tried to lower it all the way down before I left Muskegon.  Apparently, something quit working and it didn't go down.  And it still wouldn't go down.  Just clicked when I hit the down, and did nothing when I hit the up switch.  Most people were fishing the flat father west than I was.  I found some sandy bare spots that  liked the looks of, so that's where I fished.  I got one keeper there.  I had figured on going to the docks about 10, but ended up going before that.  I got one on a dock right away.  I was almost to the good docks that I was looking foward to, and here comes Gipson, just finishing up on them.  That's a bummer.  So I went to fish some in the SW corner and caught 2 more there on docks.  Got a couple more on the north side of the channel on docks, too.  So I now have a limt, but one is very short, and one is very, very short.  The one I was quite worried about shrinking during the ride back, and the other one I was just worried about shrinking.  Rick wanted to fish the White Lake channel so we stopped and fished there.  And I'm glad we did.  Rick hooked, but lost a smallmouth, then I caught a largemouth over 4.  Out goes the peanut, and in goes the fattie.  Now I have five that go no problem.  Time to run back.  My jackplate is still up, and the lake is kinda nasty.  Great comination.  We went about 25 or so on the way back and I stopped 4 times to check my fish and refill the livewells.  We fished the Muskegon channel a bit, then by the ramp a bit, before checking in.  I wanted to check my little one to make sure he was still good.  The fish measuring guy was there and I was looking and working and working to get him to go.  He told me he had to do it, and that made me a little nervous.  You can make any close fish either make it or not make it, depending on how hard you want it to go or how hard you want it to not go.  I was trying to convince myself it would go, when the TBF President walked over, looked at it, and said "It goes".  Whew, huge relief.  I put it in the bag and practically ran to the scales.  My 5 weighed 12.75.  Given how tough it had been, I thought that might have a chance at making the state team.  Snyder was right behind me with 14 something, and Fowler had just shy of 13, so maybe not.  Went and got the boat ready to go home, and tore down the camp site and packed the truck.  After an extensive BS session with Derek and Reault and whoever else walked by, the weigh in was apparently over.  Jeff was calling everyone over pretty soon.  He announced the results.  Don won and I took 6th.  So we will both be going to the Divisional in September representing Michigan.  I made 3 trips over there to practice 4 days and apparently it paid off.  I never expected to make the team, let alone be top 6.  But I did, so here's to me!!  Kenny from Black Creek Propeller called and said he had a prop he wanted me to try, so I stopped an picked that up on the way home.  No fishing before leaving for Champlain Thursday, but I have to test this prop, hopefully fix the jackplate, and a ton of other stuff to get the truck and boat ready for the trip.

July 10 - I was wrong.  White is not better than Muskegon today.  I got two bites, and I think Tim got 2 bites.  That's it.  All day, that's it.  I went to the weighins for both SPI and Shoreline today.  Muskegon took 13 something and White took 19 something.  The guys that had 19 had 3 5 pounders and 2 dead 2 pounders.  Amazing.  I'm gonna go back to White tomorrow for the tournament, and hope for the best, I guess.  I drew boat 6 and get to fish with Rick Roberts again.  We fished together at St Clair last year.  Rick is a good fisherman, and a great guy, so we will have a good time for sure. 

July 9 - I met Tim at Muskegon today.  We fished around Muskegon until about 8.  Our best 5 might have been 9 pounds.  Not real exciting.  We got them a few different places a few diferent ways.  Nothing spectacular.  Maybe 2 1/4 was the biggest.  I got mine on a worm and grub, while Tim got his on a beaver.  We are gonna try White tomorrow, because it has to be better than Muskegon.  Not to mention the fact that White continually puts out big sacks day after day, tournament after tournament.

July  8 - No matter how bad I want them to be under the docks, I just can't make them get under there.  Fished a bunch of docks tonight, and caught nothing.  Then we tried some stumps and lily pads in a big stretch between docks in Mecosta.  Keith caught a 15 incher off a stump.  Then I turned and threw into the lily pads and got one just over 3 pounds.  I threw right back in there and got one over 2.  Now we have our 3 fish limit, with a little one to get rid of hopefully.  We went into Round Lake to try some more docks.  Another one over 3 out of the fist dock.  Now we're in pretty good shape.  We go all over the lakes the rest of the night, and couldn't upgrade.  We caught more keepers, but no upgrades.  Come weigh in time, there was a team that had over 10 pounds with their 3 fish.  Problem was, 2 of them were dead.  Club rules state you can only weigh one dead fish and no dead fish can be weighed for big bass.  So there 3 fish for 10 something turned into 6 something.  Big Bummer!  Our 3 weighed about 8 1/2, which got us first place.  First Castaway tournament we won this year.   Off to Muskegon tomorrow to start practicing for the TBF State Championship.

July 7 - Tonight I went and dropped off my props to get fixed.  Kenny at Black Creek Propeller is hooking me up.  $85 to fix both of them.  He has fixed some for me before, and does an awesome job at obviously incredible prices.  After that, I went to Matt's house to pick up another of his props he is letting me try.  I took my Champlain maps for Matt to look at and show me some stuff, since he lived in New York.  Mecosta tomorrow night for the next Castaway. 

July 6 - Tonight is the night I have been eagerly awaiting for a week.  We get to go back to Duck Lake for the Tuesday Night Singles tournament.  Only 4 of us weren't smart enough to stay home or go fishing somewhere else.  The other 3 started out in "the deep hole".  That is where I was going to start also, but I didn't think there was room, so I went dock knocking for awhile frst.  I got one under a dock.  I fished every dock in the lake and caught one.  Then I went froggin and never even got a blow up.  I fished around theh canals a little with nothing.  About 8:30, I went and joined the party in the deep hole.  The deep hole looks great.  It is about 8 or 9 feet deep and has scattered cabbage.  Everyone is talking to everyone and word is Brad and Kevin have zero, and Josh has one that might go.  I catch another one, so I now have 2.  That sounds pretty good.  Then Brad caught one.  No more action.  When it was time to go in, my truck and trailer were sitting on the ramp.  I drove up, my trailer backed in, I drove on, and we pulled out.  Mike and family were there and he got my truck for me.  That was pretty awesome.  Thanks Mike.  The weigh in was kind of anticlimactic.  I had the 2, Josh and Brad each had the one.  Brad's and my "big one" were the same, so we split big bass money and points.  Tonight, I chose not to bother with pictures, becasue there wasn't anyting to take pictures of.  Tomorrow night 10-10 Bassbusters is having a tournament on Chippewa, but I am going to stay home, and try to get my truck and boat back to liveable condition after the weekend.  Also gonna try to get my 2 bent props to the prop shop tomorrow, and get some tackle that I am now low on or out of altogether. 

July 5 - Today is the rescheduled Rainbow tournament for the Weekend Warriors.  This is usually pretty fun, because the fish usually cooperate well, and are pretty big. Not so much today.  We started out in the south end throwing spooks and frogs and worms.  Nothing doing, so we made our way into the bay down there. Caught a small limit in their pretty quick.  Came out and fished up the west shoreline a little, but nothing doing there either.  At least not shallow.  We fished our way back through the narrows and stayed on the west side.  Tried the shallows and around some docks, but no bites.  We worked out a little deeper, throwing grubs and worms, and caught a couple that helped a little bit.  We went back shallow after the sun came up, and Mike caught a real nice one on a spook, in the sunshine, late morning. Really!  That was the end of our upgrading.  We basically fished around the lake again, thowing jerkbaits and tried the deeper south on the south end wih crankbaits, but nothing doing.  I figured we had a little over 11 pounds.  That would lget you about last place every time here.  Talk at the weigh in was all about how tough it was.  They apparently werent kidding.  12 something won it, we took 3rd with about 11 1/2.  We were kinda disappointed when we came in, but I guess we didn't do that bad after all.  When I was driving home, I realized I forgot all about getting pictures.  Oops.  Duck Lake tomorrow for the Tuesday Night Singles tournament.  Can't wait to revisit the weed infested, prop destroying, fishless, garhole.  I had to add some steering fluid to the boat tonight, and also got all the GPS units up to speed with each other and good to go. 

July 4 - Happy Independence Day Everyone.  Happy Birthday America.  Here's to another 234 years of freedom.  Thanks to all who helped make the last 234 possible.  Going to the 4th of July parade today in Crystal.

July 3 - No fishing today, because of the all star festivities.  That went pretty well.  I went 5 for 7 with a home run and 10 RBIs in the All Star Game.  Yep, gotta brag a little.  Fools just kept throwing me fastballs.  Its nice to be able to throw 87, but that just isn't enough to get by me.  Maybe you should throw me more offspeed stuff next time.  We had a ball playing, and then had an awesome cookout afterwards.  Taking an ambulance to the light parade tonight in Crystal.

July 2 - Brad confirmed today that the Weekend Warrior tournament originally scheduled for July 10 will be July 5.  The lake will still be Rainbow.  I also found out today that Jerry Rood will be holding an open at Tamarack tomorrow from 6-11.  $30 a boat, I guess.  Come one, come all.  I would love to fish that, but I have the home run derby and all star game for the baseball league I play in tomorrow.  Had I known Jerry was going to have this tournament, I might have declined to play baseball.  No fishing now til Monday. Gonna work on stuff for Champlain tonight, I guess, while I watch some fishing on TV. 

July 1 - Here's the story for Hardy tonight.  Me, one bite, a pike.  Keith, one bite, a rockstar.  End of story, thanks for asking.  On another note though, it looks like Brad will be moving the Weekend Warrior tournament crrently scheduled for July 10th on Rainbow Lake to Monday July 5th.  It will stll be on Rainbow.  I'll post the confirmation when I have it, and I'll post something on the home page.  Stay tuned.

June 30 - Today, Matt and I are off to Muskegon to check it out for the upcoming TBF.  I have pretty much zero experience on these west side lakes, so this is like going to a brand new lake.  Kind of exciting.  Until I got there.  We started out looking for the finger looking things across from the ramp.  We found those and idled around for awhile checking it out.  We decided to come back and actually fish it later, but never made it.  While we were there, a bunch of boats started zooming all over the place.  While on the fingers, we noticed a bunch of sailboat masts sticking up in the woods.  We figured they must be in the water, so we went looking.  We found a little channel that led back to 2 different marinas.  Lily pads and boats galore.  We didn't fish, but did drive around and look.  Then we ran down the lake into the snug harbor area.  Again, we just looked around and didn't fish.  I wanted to see the lake before deciding where to focus my efforts.  From there, we went out into the channel to look around.  Didn't see much, but we stopped and fished by the Coast Guard station for a bit, with no bites.  We came back into the lake and saw another marina so we went up into that.  That looks really cool, and I bet is just full of fish in the spring.  I caught one dink.  We came out of that and went to the mooring area in the SW corner of the lake and looked around some more.  We started to head up the south side and I saw this baby blue colored boat.  It was just south of the Milwaukee Clipper in one of the little bays in the main lake I wanted to look at.  I thought it was Don.  I figured he was in the tournament, so we went across the lake to go check out Bear Lake, and left it alone for now.  There were a few boats fishing the channel, but not one boat in Bear Lake itself.  Lots of docks to fish in there, but they must not be very good, I'm thinking.  As we were coming back out into Muskegon, I hear someone say "Hey Eric"  I saw the boat, but wasn't paying attention to who was in the back of it.  It was Don.  I guess that wasn't his boat where I wanted to go check.  We chatted for a second, and then went back over to where I left alone, and the boat was gone.  I did catch a nice fat one there.  Probably not the quality I will need for the tournament, but a nice fish none the less.  Left there and went and fished around the car ferry marina, with nothing happening.  Had time to check one more marina before quitting time.  We get into the marina, and there's Don again.  We cruised through that and looked around.  We decided to get back and get out of the way before the tournament boats were all coming in.  We watched most of the weigh in before we left.  There were a few 11 pound sacks and a couple 3 pound fish brought it.  Not exactly what I was expecting from what I was hearing about the weights over here.  Plan to come back Monday and look around some more.  Lots more lake to see, and then start fishing the fishy looking places.  Hardy tomorrow for the next Castaway tournament.

June 29 - Duck Lake here we come.  Lauch and see clear, shallow water.  And that's all I saw.  What a garhole!!!  It took me 3/4 of the lake to get on plane and overheated the motor trying.  The deepest place I found was in the channel where the ramp is.....about 2 1/2 feet.  Caught about 15 7 inchers.  Did I mention this place is a garhole.  Weeds to the surface everywhere.  Not only are there not any keeper sized fish to be caught, this place eats props, too.  I pulled out to find my prop destroyed.  Who knows what all it hit or how many times.  I probably won't even start the big motor here Tuesday, just because I'm afraid of what other damage will be done if I do.  Garhole, garhole, garhole!!!

June 28 - I didn't go fishing today, so I could get caught up on the home stuff I have been neglecting because of fishing.  I'll make up for it starting tomorrow.  The first and most important thing I did was install a new transducer for my 898.  Got that all done and it works great.  I ran the wires a little different so I didn't have to worry about them getting pinched anywhere, too.  Tomorrow, the plan is to go to Duck lake to check that out for next week's singles tournament.

June 27 - No fishing today.  Good thing, too.  The boat would have sank in the rain if it wasn't in the garage.  Monsoon after monsoon came through today.  Even my baseball games got rained out.

June 26 - Guess I shouldn't have looked so forward to fishing with Tim again.  I started fishing at 7, and he showed up about 1030.  Oops.  I knew almost nothing about White Lake, so I started by running the lake and looking at it.  I noticed most all the boats fishing were either in the no wake zone or on the big flat.  I started out fishing the weed flat just inside the channel.  Then I moved to a bank where the deep water went right tight to shore and got a couple there, then went to another similar spot and got another.  I went to a marina and got another one before Tim got there.  Then we went to the flat and fished around without much going on.  Actually, the rest of the day not much went on.  We went and checked out the SPI weigh in and they all said the bite was done by 930 or so.  16 something won that and there were only 2 4 pound fish weighed in.  Kinda slow from what I hear about White Lake.  After the weigh in, we went back out to keep looking.  We went all over the lake, checking out a whole bunch of stuff on the side imager.  We found some really cool stuff, only to then discover every single thing we found was marked on the map loaded into my Lowrance units.  Duh!  We ended back on the flat, and caught 3 or 4 more there.  I spent about 10 1/2 hours on White Lake today trying to find something.  I have some ideas, and a little confidence I can catch a few, but sure not what I need yet.  I am going to try to get to Muskegon to check that out one night this week.   

June 25 - Got the new battery today, so I got that installed and everything hooked back up tonight.  I also spent about an hour in the boat taking care of all the used baits that have piled up and the huge collection of rods that have collected on the deck.  Now all the baits are where they belong and all the rods are in their sleeves and in the rod locker.  It actually resembles a boat again, rather than an exploded tackle store.
Tomorrow is day number 1 of getting ready for the TBF State Fish Off.  I am going to White to check it out.  Tim is going to meet me there.  Looking forward to that.

June 24 - Time to get back on track tonight.  All 30 of us in the Castaway club are going to fish 204 acre Big Lake.  Yep, all 204 acres.  Now you know why they call it Big Lake.  I haven't been there since last year sometime, so we are just going in blind and going fishing.  We started out running straight across the lake to start on some docks.  I go to dock number 1.  Nothing but land to the left, and a few docks to the right.  I fish dock number one, and another guy in the tournament pulls up on dock number 2.  Really?!?  I wonder where he thought I was going to go from dock number 1.  I had two choices.  Onto land and into the woods, or where he was at.  Nice move jerk.  I know the guy, and I know he isn't any good at fishing docks, so I thought about just following him around and catching them under the docks he just fished.  But he was going way too slow, so I had to go somewhere else and fish.  He ended up not even sticking around for the weighin by the way.  I fished docks pretty much all the way around the lake and only had one.  At one point, we saw a nice fish boil in some pads.  Keith threw at it, then he saw it was a dogfish.  I spied another dogfish at the same time.  He told me to catch it.  Hell no!  This is a bass tournament.  Then he reminded me of the critter pot this group does.  OK, fine, so I caught it.  I came to a lily pad lined channel that I hadn't been in before, so I went in and checked it out. I got the other 2 in there to finish out our limit.  By the end of the night, my cranking battery was dead again.  After it went dead fishing before, I checked everything I could, and it is just plain bad.  Every time I wanted to move, I had to jump it. That sucks.  More money to spend.  Not sure where our 5 something limit landed us in the standings, but we were out of the money.  But, that dogfish did win the critter pot.  So we still took home more money than we spent.  Got home and took the cranking battery out of the boat so I can get a new one and install it tomorrow.

June 23 - What a stormy morning.  But now that it is nice.  I hadn't planned on fishing tonight, and the weather forecast convinced me for sure.  But now it is nice.  What to do, what to do.  10-10 Bassbusters are up to Stevenson, but that is forever far away, and I don't even remember how to get there.  The Northern Tournament Trail Association is on Crystal.  That's it, I'll go to Crystal.  I never do well there.  I'm always looking to improve myself, and what better way to than to go fish a tournament there when I don't have to.  Catch some, build  some confidence, feel good about myself, and have some fun.  I called Mike and he was silly enough to say he'd fish with me.  I got Brenda to fit me in for a lucky haircut, and I was all set.  We got to the lake, and the wind was blowing.  I mean THE WIND WAS BLOWING.  Crystal Lake was covered with whitecaps.  Boats were coming completely out of the water running across it, the waves were so big.  We started on the east end, right in the teeth of the wind.  I figured the wind would have some blown down there right against the color line and smallies would be pushed right against the end of the rocks in front of the beach.  40 minutes or so of trying jerkbaiting and spinnerbaiting proved me wrong.  Of course it was impossible to fish anything effectively in that wind.  We decided to try some docks.  We went to the sailboat club and started fishing back towards the ramp.  We did catch 4 or five little ones under docks.  Mike was on a mad bite with a spook near the bank.  He was catching fish shorter and lighter than his spook.  We ended up the night out in front of the ramp plying around, but got no bites.  Long story short, Crystal is still Crystal, and I learned nothing.  So much for the lucky haircut.  So much for catching some, getting some confidence, and feeling good about myself.  Good news is we didn't have to worry about drying out the net, because we never got it wet.  Jerry and Tom had 5 for 8 pounds.  No one else had 5, and only one other boat had 4.  4 pounds was in the money.  The NTTA website is www.northerntournamenttrail.com.  Good tournament, good guys, fun times for sure.  I hope to fish with them more.  Tomorrow night we are off to Big Lake to see if we can find 3 bigguns to take to the Castaway weigh in.

June 22 - Tonight was an event of frustration.  Having not slept 3 out of 4 nights, and having 2 really, really, long days at work this week, I really wasn't real interested in fishing tonight.  But we were at Townline for the singles tournament.  It was nice and sunny, but really windy.  I figured I'd run the same stuff I did last Sunday when I got 15 1/2 out here.  Given the wind, I thought I'd get some on a jerkbait.  I did.  One 7 incher.  I tried some docks for awhile, since it was nice and sunny, but nothing doing there either.  I still had nothing after an hour.  So I went back to the area I caught most of them last time.  I eventually got a couple.  There were a few docks close by, so I decided to give them a try.  I skipped my bait under a boat and something ate it.  I set the hook, but didn't move it at all.  It decided to go the other way, and there was nothing I was gonna do about it.  It took drag to the bank, then decided to go to my left, so it took some drag that way, out from under the boat and under the dock around some poles, then took some more drag under the boat on the other side of the dock.  That still wasn't enough, so it went out the other side of the dock, and under that boat.  More drag taken and it was somewhere in open water on the other side of the boat on the other side of the dock.  I thought maybe I hooked a giant beaver or something.  Then it came up and jumped.  Only bass do that.  My bait came out luckily, but I didn't get to see it, becasue it was on the other side of two boats and a dock now.  I hae no idea how big it was, but I am positive I haven't seen a bass as big as this one was yet this year.  Oh well.  Given how I felt coming into the night, it didn't even bother me that I lost it.  I went to the west end and didn't do anything down there.  Back to the area I caught the two keepers, and back to the docks I lost the big one.   I did manage 2 more.  I tried the area west of the island a few minutes, then the docks by the beach, all to no avail.  I ended up with ony 4 fish.  Josh had 12 1/4, and Scott had one just shy of 4 pounds.  My 4 weighed 7 somehting, which still got me 2nd.  Tough night I guess, cuz 7 usually wouldn't even get you last this year.  Very frustrated by the time I quit, and very disappointed in not getting 5, but still left happy with 2nd.  Supposed to be nasty weather tomorrow, but up to Big Lake for Castaway Thursday. 

June 21 - Bruce sent me a picture of John with a big ole musky he caught, so I put that up on the home page.  Joe sent me some info about an open he's having at Webber Dam on July 3.  So that and the Middle of the Mitten tournament on the Pine River are now on the tournament page.  Check them out.

June 20 - Back to Tamarack today for the rescheduled Weekend Warrior tournament.  This is the 4th tournament I've fished here in the last week or so.  You'd think I would figure something out eventually.  Not today though.  We spent the entire day throwing plastics around th edges of the weed mats.  Once the sun came up good, we tried under some docks, but nothing doing.  We scrounged up 12 1/4 pounds.  Keith had to drop me off at 1130, so I could go play baseball, so I missed the last part of the tournament and all of the weigh in.  Our sack got us third I guess.  You often hear people talking about catching small fish.  Sometimes they even talk about catching a fish smaller than the bait they were using.  I not only did that today, I took a picture to prove it.  Here it is.  Go ahead, be jealous of my mad skills. 


No fishing now til Tuesday for the singles tournament on Townline.

June 19 - The big fish and big bag parade continued today.  Since the Tamarack Weekend Warrior tournament was moved from today to tomorrow, today opened up.  So Mike and I went to fish the Lake Street Station tournament on Cowden Lake.   I always like to support those who support bass fishing.  I mentioned before that I was there Wednesday, they had just sprayed.  Well it worked.  We started out in the SW corner where there were some real nice weeds and a bunch of cabbage.  Not anymore.  All the weeds are laying flat on the bottom.  That's no good.  Mike caught a couple on topwater, and I caught one on a worm.  The weather wasn't very nice.  Cloudy, windy, and threatening looking.  We just went fishing and fished the entire lake, most of it at least twice.  Fishing was very slow for us until about 1145 when the sun finally came out.  We had mananged a very small limit by then.  We went shallow and got 3 that really helped us out, once the sun came out.  We culled up to to just shy of 12 pounds for the day.  I told Mike we could get 13 going in, but that was when the weather dude was still saying it was going to be a nice day.  If we had another half hour or hour, I'm sure we could have.  Oh well, better luck next time.  Our day eventually turned from frustrating to satisfying.  We ended up 3rd, so we took home some nice cash.  Big fish was over 4 again, and the winners had over 16 pounds.  I sure hope this continues.  Tomorrow, we are off to Tamarack.  Maybe it will be my turn to catch a big fish and fat sack.

June 18 - All I did tonight was get stuff ready for the Lake Street Station tournament on Cowden in the morning.  Hopefully the nasty weather either misses us, or is long gone before I get up.  After we are done fishing that, I plan to hop on the Harley and ride over to Muskegon to find the ramp and check out the BBT weigh in. Gotta start my research for the TBF State Fishoff in a few weeks.

This is Father's Day Weekend.  Please make sure your dad knows how you feel about him.  Last year on Father's Day, I had a doubleheader.  My dad came and watched me play that day.  I took him to dinner after the game.  I never got to see him again.  And I still miss "da old fart."  If you have your dad still, please make it count. 


June 17 - Tonight we went up to the Martiny Chain for the Castaway tournament.  We were launching at Schooltz's Landing.  I had only been there by water before, so it took a little investigating as to its whereabouts by roads.  At first glance, it doesn't seem to be much, but what it lacked in appearance, it made up for with personality.  It is a rather large campground, in addition to the camp store and ramp. The guy that owns the place was grilling burgers and hot dogs for everyone, as well as had chips and salads to go with it.  That was cool.  I sat down to eat and was told how horrible the fishing here is, and it wouldn't surprise this guy (who was also in the rournament) if one fish won it.  Although the ramp isn't the nicest I've used, it is laid out nice, with a drive around the store and back right in.  We drew the magic number 9 (out of ten, as we have every tournament this year so far)  All the boats launched without incident and then went to Boom Lake to blastoff.  It seemed like a few more boats went right than left, so we went left.  I'm not sure of the names of the lakes, but we ended up fishing in the opening past the DNR ramp, whatever it's called.  We fished a dropoff and the weed edges that went with it.  We caught 2 solid keepers and a maybe.  We ran around a little bit, trying a sunken island and some other drops, but ended up back at the first one.  W caught another solid keeper, so we didn't have to worry about the peanut in there swimming around.  We ended up catching one more keeper, so we got to cull one more time.  The night went by really fast and it was time to head back before we knew it.  Getting out was a little slow for my liking, but it was also without incident.  The weigh in was pretty unremarkable, but there was a very nice crowd.  Word was going around of a giant.  They were right.  A couple young guys that are at every tournament and always giving it their all had a whopper.  So congrats to the team of Butts and Carman for catching a 4.47 pounder.  Not only did that get them big bass, it also got them 4th place on the night.  Our 3 weighed just shy of 7 pounds which was 2nd.  Guess who won.  Yep, the guy who was telling me how tough this place was.  Their 3 weighed 8 something.  Yep, another 8 pound bag, and another giant for big bass.  There were only 3 teams that brought in 3 fish limits tonight, and only 4 caught more than one fish.  I guess he was right,  It is kinda tough out here.  In two weeks, we moved from 21st to 3rd, so we're heading in the right direction.

June 16 - Well, the ominous clouds and occasional sprinkles influenced my decision to go 70 miles to practice Muskegon.  The 20 MPH west winds absolutely made my decision for me.  I didn't go.  I decided to go check out Cowden insteasd.  Mike and I are going to fish the Lake Street Station tournament there Saturday morning.  I was just there last week, but I figured stuff would change by now.  I got there to find the everpresent yellow papers stapled to everything.  Great!  All 7 weeds in the lake got sprayed for the last two days.  That'll sure help.  Not.  Anyway, Matt and I went fishing.  I took the camera to look at some of the deeper stuff.  Nothing.  I saw nothing spectacular at all.  Not much for weeds, fish, or anything else really.  We caught a few here and there, but no concentration of fish and nothing big at all.  We were on the north end getting close to the ramp when I spied something.  I said "Hey look at that"  Matt says (with his awwwwsum Texas drawl) "Oh is thayat a bayid?"  "Nope"  "Oh are those rawcks?"  "Nope"  "Oh my gawd, that's a catfeesh!"  "Yep, drop your jig down there"  Well, he did.  I saw it turn and start to swim away and Matt the hook so hard, he could have pulled an oil rig right off the bottom of the sea.  Several minutes and many laughs later, this was the result. 


That was pretty cool and made the whole trip worth it.  20 pounds 7 oz.  Nice fish Matt.  Guess I better look into another website.  www.catfishingwitheric.com  How's that sound?  Tomorrow, Keith and I will be trying to catch a few up to Martiny for the Castaway tournament.

June 15 - Three tournaments, one boat, one spot, over 15 pounds every time.  For the third night in a row, Don got over 15 pounds from the same hole on Tamarack.  Last night he had 15 pounds in the livewell in 15 minutes.  A little slower tonight, but the result was the same in the end.  Dustin had a nice bag for 2nd, and Brad had 11 something for 3rd. I started out right by the ramp and fished the scattered weed clumps all night down the east shore.  I struggled to get them.  I only caught the 5 decent keepers I weighed in. ThH weather was pretty terrible again tonight, which made it almost impossible to see the weeds. I wanted to fish the edges of them, but it was hard.  I tried a couple docks when I was close to them , and dumped what seemed to be a big one under one of them.  Maybe I can catch it Sunday, since we get to go back to Tamarack again Sunday.  I have the pictures from tonight uploaded onto the home page.  I left the paper with the results in the truck, so I'll put them on the forum and and update the standings in the morning.  Tomorrow I think I am going to go to Muskegon to practice for the TBF State Champioship instead of fish Mecosta.    

June 14 - Back to Tamarack tonight for the Case of the Mondays tournament. 2nd time here in less than a week.  And we'll be back tomorrow and Sunday as well.  Oh boy!  Fishing with Scott tonight for the first time this year.  We started out fishing some weed edges and got one pretty quick.  Then it got real slow.  We moved all over fishing the weed edges.  Or what we thought were weed edges, cuz a lot of places it really wasn't, once you could actually see the weeds.  It was a pretty nasty night, with a bunch of wind and some rain, and all the fun stuff like that.  We did end up catching 6 fish, all on soft plastics of some sort, and all came around the weed edges. Mostly down the north shore.  We ended up with 12.66, which got us 3rd.  Don had over 15 again, after doing it Thursday as well.  Big bass was over 4, so the parade of big fish and big weights continues like it has all year.  I get to try it again tomorrow night for the Tuesday Night Singles tournament.  I hope the weather is a little nicer for sure.

I got all of the St Louis Fishing Derby pictures up on the St Louis Fishing Derby page of the website.  Check it out.  I also got the pictures from the TBF State Junior Fishoff that the Dietz brothers fished last Saturday, as well as the pictures from the Townline Weekend Wariors tournament from Sunday. They are all on the home page.

June 13 - Today's fishing adventure actually started last night when Keith called me to say he was sick and couldn't fish today.  I made a few calls, and eventually suckered Mike into fishing with me.  We were off to Townline for the Weekend Warriors tournament.  It was beautifal at the house, but it didn't take long for me to put on the raingear to stay warm once we started fishing.  We started out in front of the church camp just fishing around.  I got one, and Mike got a 2 1/2 on a spook.  We eventually made a move down the lake to a little inside corner between two points.  By about 8:00, we had over 15 pounds off that spot.  Nice!  We moved around a little, and eventually made our way back to that spot.  After going over 3 hours without culling, Mike caught one that helped out a few ounces.  That was our bag.  I couldn;t even tell you how many fish we caught today.  It was crazy. We went in a few minutes early to load up, because I had to leave.  I had our fish ready to weigh as they were getting the scales out.  We weighed them, took some pictures, and off I went.  Mike was kind enough to take my boat to the lake and home for me.  I had to play baseball at 1, so that made me unable to stay for the weigh in or talk to anyone.  Mike told me we won, with just over 15 1/2.  So that's cool.  Kevin joined a very elite group of anglers today.  Only him and I have ever weighd in over 15 pounds in one of these tournaments........and got beat.  He had over fifteen today, and had big bass again.  That dude's a stud this year.  Unless Chris is catching them all.  Mike also took pictures for me, but the camera is in the garage in the boat, and I'm not, so I'll have to get those up tomorrow hopefully.

I added a page for the St Louis Fishing Derby tonight as well.  I have the story up there, but I haven't got the pictures up yet.  Maybe tomorow.

June 12 - I spent the day today in St Louis for the Annual St Louis Fishing Derby.  I am going to dedicate a page of this website to that event.  I will put a full story on that page as well as all of the pictures I have from the event.  The day was absolutely amazing.  All I can say.  Duran Martinez of AM Outdoors was also there today and he has some pictures up on his Facebook page already.  Go check them out.  Hopefully I can get the story and pictures up tomorrow night.  We are on Townline tomorrow for a Weekend Warriors tournament, then off to play a couple of baseball games.

June 11 - No fishing related activities today, but I did get to talk to Chuck.  Yesterday, he took his grandson Chance to his first tournament.  They fished an NBAA at Woodland Lake down by Howell.  They marked up a map together, picked some spots together, then fished the tournament together.  They accompshed all of thier goals they had set for the tournament.  They not only caught fish, but keeper fish to be able to take to the weigh in, and beat Dennis.  Chance caught quite a few fish, and surely had the time of his life, being able to fish a bass tournament with Grandpap and take their fish to the weigh in.  Sounds like a dream day. Here's a picture of Chance with a whopper he caught. A future superstar for sure.  How cool is this!!!


Tomorrow is the St Louis Fishing Derby.  It looks like the weather will cooperate.  Come join us and help set a record.  Lots of fish, fun, friends, and food.

June 10 - Tonight we are off to Mecosta for the 2nd Castaway tournament.  I've only been up here when the smallies were bedding, so we really had no plan. We started out on a little flat and around some docks.  Finally got one by a dock, and a bunch of shorts all over the place.  Oh yeah, dont forget the abundance of rockstars.  I think all of our keepers came by docks.  We caught plenty of dinks just about everywhere we put a bait.  Our 3 fish limit weighed 6.98.  Good enough for 4th out of 30 boats. Acceptable, I guess.  Weights this year continue to be way up.  It took over 9 pounds to win tonight.  Last year there was one 8 pound bag all year.  There have been 5 already this year in just two tournaments.  Mike called and said it took 15 something to win the NBAA at Tamarack tonight also, so big weights are everyhere.  Hopefully it will continue all year.  No fishing tomorrow.  Saturday is the St Louis Fishing Derby.  Up to 500 people, mostly kids, will be there looking for the big one.  Come and join us for lots of fish, fun, friends, and food.  I'll be there hopefully helping the kids catch a few fish.  I'll have the boat too, so they can check that out and get some cool pictures. 

June 9 - Holy wind batman!!!!  We gathered in the parking lot at the Tamarack ramp for the 10-10 Bassbusters tournament tonight.  Chad said the weather dude said it was supposed to blow 30.  He wasn't kidding.  You couldn't wear a hat.  I was sitting in the boat tying on stuff and my shirt kept blowing up around my head due to the wind.  It was crazy.  So I had no idea what I was gonna do, but the wind help me decide a little.  I'm going to fish where the wind is blocked a little.  So we spent most of the night trying different areas less windy.  I still can't believe all the weeds in this place.  We just poked around the weed edges and lily pads all night.  We did try some of the open areas, but didn't catch much.  At the end of the night, we had caught about a dozen keepers.  And many 6 or 7 inchers.  The future of Tamarack is bright with all those peanuts out there swimming around.  Our biggest 5 went 12 something, which was the heavy sack.  We missed big bass by .02, so we got 2nd big bass.  Brad & family came tonight.  What that means is Brad brought the ringers. Braley and Rachel sure keep Brad busy netting fish.  They ended up 2nd and had big bass.  Then Braley won the rod at the weigh in.  He was super excited and it was really cool to see him with that big fish at the weigh in.  You can find all the details at www.1010bassbusters.com and pictures on the home page.   All in all, I left kinda disappointed, but at least I finally won again after 8 days of not winning.  All of our fish were caught on baits that came from Tamarack Sports in Lakeview.  Stop in and get everything you need to beat me (including advice from Keith) there at Tamarack Sports.  Tomorrow night us and 29 boats full of our closest friends will be at Mecosta for the Castaway club. 

June 8 - Back to Cowden for Tuesday Night Singles.  Weather is horrible, and looking worse.  It actually settled own a little before we started and wasn't even raining.  Just really cold and really windy.  Seemed like it would be perfect for a jerkbait bite on the north shore.  I headed for the bed fish, and 3 others went where I thought there would be a jerkbait bite.  I got the bed fish on the first cast to it. I couldn't see the fish due to the weather, but I could see the bed, and judging by its reaction last night, if I was within 10 feet of it, it would eat it.  It did.  I fished around the docks right there for a bit, but nothing.  Not exactly dock fishing weather, and very tough with the waves and wind to put it there anyway.  I gave up and went to the SE corner and started fishing the soulth end in the deeper weeds.  I basically spent the rest of the night trying them deeper weeds.  I tried jerking some, but never got bit.  I finished my limit in the deep weeds, mostly on the edges of them.  After awhile, it started raining to go with the cold and wind.  It was nasty.  It finally calmed down and I started throwing a G-Splash over top of the weeds back in the SE corner.  Culled one time on that, then it was time to go in.  My limit weighed 10 something and got me 2nd for the night.  Again, not the weight I was hoping for, but I have to be happy with being in the money.  Had 2nd big bass also, with one just over 3.  As tough as fishing seemed to be all spring and as many tournaments as there are these days, the weights have been the best I remember for the most part this year.  It's taken over 13 to win both singles tournaments to far.  That's good.  Tamarack tomorrow night. Oh boy, can't wait for that one.

June 7 - Decisions, decisions.  Practice Cowden and Tamarack or fish the Case of the Mondays tournament at Big Whitefish.  Well, that was easy, Big Whitefish here I come.  I talked to my partner to be on the way home and we decide to practice instead.  So off to Cowden we go.  What a beautiful night.  Tuesday Night Singles is there tomorrow night and I haven't been there at all, so this will help.  The water was very clear.  I've never seen it this clear here.  Just started right at the ramp going clockwise and looking in the shallow water to see what's goin on.  There was an old man in a speed boat that pulled in rigt behind us.  He launched the boat and immediately started pulling skiers.  3 of them to be exact, at once.  On 37 acre Cowden Lake. Really??!??  That went on for a long time, frequently going to a house on the north end to switch skiers.  That made teh lake nice and calm and easy to see.  NOT!  When we got to that house, there were 31 people there in the skiing party. No kidding.  Anyways, about half way down the east bank, I saw one on a bed, and got a couple under docks.  When we started, we bent the hooks over so there was no way a fish could get the point and hook itself.  I didn't want to catch any, just get bit and see where they were.  That didn't work.  I caught 4 anyway, trying not to catch any.  There were fish under a couple docks by the bed fish as well. I hooked one and two more came out with it trying to take the bait from it.  Excellent.  We went the rest of the way aroud the lake and there wasn't much of anything going on on the shoreline.  So we went out a little deeper and rode around the lake looking at the weeds and seeing what all was where.  There were weeds in the corners of the south end, but not really much else.  So the plan is to go to the bed fish, fish the docks around there, then go fish the deeper weeds.  Off to Tamarack  we go.  The water on Tamarack was also very clear.  Totally unusual for Tamarack.  And the weeds are everywhere.  Not so unusual.  Like almost unfishable everywhere weeds.  Not even sure what to think about this.  We fished around and caught no keepers.  Lots of weeds, a couple of dinks, but no keepers.  Let without a plan for the 10-10 Bassbusters tournamet for Wednesday night.  Guess we'll just go fishing and hope for the best.

June 6 -  Even though I planned to go fishing today, I never did. The weather was just too questionable, and I didn't want to go bad enough to fish in crappy weather.  So I was lazy, or as I like to put it, recovered form last week and prepared for this week.  Nope, I was lazy.  I did go out in the garage and work on the boat a little.  The bow eye had come loose, so I took apart the front console and removed it, so I could tightened that up and made it unable to loosen again.  I had a bit of a gremlin in the front tilt trim switch up there, too, but I kicked him out of the boat.  So all is good with the boat once again.  I got a flier for a tournament up on Smallwood Lake this month, so I added that to the bottom of the tournament page.  Last weekend, with the onset of tournament season, I removed all the old pictures off the home page, and started filling it with tournament pictures.  If there was a picture on there that you liked or would like a copy of, let me know and I will be happy to send it to you. 

June 5 - KV Without the D is on a roll.  Kevin Vogt smashed them again today.  He and Chris Holiday had 14 1/2 pounds today on Wixom Lake for the 2nd Weekend Warriors tournament.  If he keeps catching them like this, someone will have to remind him he is not KVD.  Along with the fat sack, they also had one just shy of 4 pounds for big bass.  This is after having over 12 pounds in the Tuesday Night Singles tournament this week.  Way to go Kev.  Keith and I owe a big thanks to Jeff Strauss for not weighing his fish.  If he had, we would have finished dead last.  He said he caught 3 limits, but was just jackpotting this tournament and was sure he was out of the money, so he didn't weigh them.  So now we go in the record books as next to last.  That means in the last two tournaments, we have managed to only beat a few boats, but have been beaten by dozens.  Go us!!  Today we started out on a seawall where I saw some nice largemouth Sunday and there was a smallie on a bed.  We saw 5 nice smallies swimming along the wall, but none would eat.  We moved up the river to a small stretch of rocky bank I found that had smallies on it, but it was mud.  No bites there.  We went over to the Titabawasee side and fished a couple of little cuts.  Keith caught a smallmouth that was 14.018562 inches and weighed just about as much as the whopper I caught Thursday night.  We then went into David's Drain and caught a limit in there, including an extra one, that relieved that first smallmouth of his weigh in duties.  Keith managed to jump a nice one off at the boat, and I managed to lose a nice one at the boat for no apparent reason.  We went back to check out a fish in the first drain, but no go there.  We went back to the Tobacco arm to try the deep water weed edge just down from the DNR ramp on the other side of the river.  Yes, the one everyone fishes.  Every time I went by, there was a boat there, so I never fished it.  We went upriver a little and fished that break, including a weird little hump I found a little farther offshore that comes up to 18 from 32, but nothing doing there either.  We went back to the seawall to see if we could get some of those fish to bite.  Jeff was there, so we just went back in the cut farther to check it out for a few.  We went back out there and found a 4 plus largemouth on a bed.  It scooted off so we went a little farther down the bank to circle around and see if he would come back.  We only went about 50 feet, but saw an absolute giant sitting on the edge of the sandy drop.  I mean giant.  Keith didn't believe me that it was a bass and not a carp, until he finally got a close up of it.  It lazily moved off the drop into deeper water.  So we found close to 10 pounds of fish in about 50 feet of bank.  We turned around and the first one was back.  One cast, no bite, time to go back to the ramp.  UGH!!!  If we only had another hour, I think we could have improved drastically on our 7 something pounds.  Oh well, better luck next time.  I found out my baseball games got cancelled tomorrow, so guess What I'll do.  Yeah, I think I'll go fishing.  The results for the tournaments I have results for are now on the forum.  The same with standings.  If you have results that I haven't posted, please feel free to post them on the forum.

June 4 - No fishing today, but I want everyone to know about a couple of youth events next Saturday, June 12.  The TBF Junior State Championship is next Saturday on Pontiac Lake.  I know we have a couple of local future stars fishing it, in John and Matt Deitz from Stanwood.  I "might" have hinted a few things and spots for them to check out, and they are going to practice tomorrow.  Good luck guys.  Also next Saturday in St Louis, is the St Louis Free Fishing Derby.  There will be about 500 people fishing from the banks of the pine River in St Louis.  The event will be largely kids fishing, but adults are always welcome also.  I will be there hopefully helping a few kids catch some fish.  I'll have the boat as well, for everyone to check out and hopefully get some cool pictures.  Come out and join us if you get the chance.  Both events coincide with Michigan's Free Fishing Weekend.  That means you do not need a fishing license to fish Michigan waters that weekend.   

June 3 - A big gamble we took......and were promptly rewarded with a 21st place finish tonight at Chippewa Lake for the first Castaway tournament of the year.  Only 30 boats showed up.  Yes, that's a 3 with a zero.  When we were here last Monday practicing, I found a bunch of smallmouth beds.  Saturday they were all caught by recreational fisherman and released right before we went to them.  I gambled that they would be there, be findable, and be catchable.  These tournaments have a 3 fish limit, but 10 pounds would have been very attainable had my plan worked.  But it didn't so we weighed in almost 3 pounds of largemouth instead.  I had one that was the smallest bass I've seen since Michigan went to 14 inches.  I had to weigh that, so that's the one I picked for big bass.  1.19 pounds.  Go ahead and try to catch one smaller.  Good luck!  We caught them in a little cut on senkos.  There were tons of fryballs around, too, so apparently the spawn is done there.  Lots of fishing left, and we are only about 5.5 pounds out of the the classic right now, so that is definitely doable.  Keith has been asked to be a weigh-in guy, so I was left to load my boat myslef.  No problem, I've done it just over 1283 times.  I backed the trailer in, loaded the boat and hooked it up.  I didn't want to get in the water and the dock was too far to jump, so I got back in the boat and jumped off the gunwale down to the dock.  The dock and my shoes were both dry, but for some reason when I hit the dock, it was like ice.  My foot kept going, my left butt cheek hit the dock and I kept going right into the lake on the other side of the dock.  My left calf managed to leave some of itself attached to the dock on the way by.  I landed on my feet in the lake, but I am in the lake none the less.  And hurting pretty bad.  I'm sure it looked pretty funny, but it hurt like hell.  Perfect way to cap off a stellar night of fishing. 

June 2 - The 10-10 Bassbusters schedule kicked off tonight at Coldwater Lake.  We came up here last Monday and caught a ton of little ones and a few OK ones.  We started off on the sand hump.  We got there, and there was a tin boat with 3 old guys in it fishing when we got there.  They looked like they were bass fishing.  They quickly moved off the hump when we got there and went to the north shore.  I caught 2 smallies, and they caught what looked like a real nice bass.  I put mine in the livewell, and they put theirs in a garbage bag and stuffed it under a seat.  Really???  Yes, really!!!  I wonder what damage they did to the hump before we got there.  We saw a couple of real nice ones cruising the hump.  It was calm and the lake was slick.  Perfect for sight fishing.  We worked our way around and I spotted a bed hidden in a patch of weeds.  I could see just the fish's tail.  It looked like a pretty big tail, but I couldn't see the whole fish to tell for sure how big it was.  I didn't make a cast, but rather was moving to get in a better position to see and fish it.  Before I could accomplish that (15 secoonds), the wind started howling and the fish and the bed were never seen again.  Why??  Need magic, spontaneous wind?  Just add a white Stratos.  We worked the hump a while longer.  Then we ran down to the south east corner, where we caught some of the better fish last week and some were bedding.  When we got down there, Scott and Randy were exactly where I wanted to be and going where I wanted to go.  I sure wouldn't ever cut them off, so we went somewhere else and caught a few dinks.  We did get to see Scott catch a real nice one, though.  We eventually went back to the hump and caught one more.  Then we went to the south shore of the bay to try to find largemouth.  We caught a few of them, but nothing decent.  Thunder started rumbling, getting louder and closer.  Scott even called us said he was considering stopping the tournament.  We kept going and so did the storm.  All we ever got at the lake was thunder.  Good thing, too, becuase there was lots of evidence that it was quite a storm on the way home, including a funnel cloud being recorded.  We went back out to the hump and caught 3 out of a weed patch on the edge of the hump.  I saw a brief silver flash that looked like the side of a fish.  I told Keith what I saw and that I thought it might be a fish rolling up to pluck a crayfish.  I pitched in there and set the hook.  Our biggest fish of the night.  One more off the hump, then we ended the night in the bay north of the ramp looking for largies.  Nothing doing there.  We ended up catching 10 keepers on the night.  We just never got a big bite.  Our bag ended up weighing 10 something, which got us 3rd.  We had 3rd big bass also.  Not exactly a stellar night.  Some days you're the bug, and some days you're the windshield.  Congrats to Jason and Scott for winning and Scott and Randy for getting 2nd.    I did win a new rod at the weigh in.  Maybe I an use that to win tomorrow night's castaway tournament on Chippewa.  Here I am with my new rod.


June 1 - We're off to Bass Lake tonight for the first Tuesday Night Singles tournament.  Matt and I came down last Wednesday to check it out.  We found some pretty good fish in 3-4 feet of water on the inside edge of the sandgrass in front of Don's house and to the south around the corner to a big sandy flat and point.  My plan was to start right at the boat launch and just fish that area back and forth. I tied on a horny toad as well in case I wanted/needed to go behind the island and fish some of the slop and lily pads.  We got there and there was another tournament going on there as well.  There were 3 at Chippewa Saturday and 2 on Bass tonight.  Apparently, there are no shortage of bass tournaments this year.  They took off before we did, so there were boats most everywhere when we started.  It didn't take me long to figure out that the fish were no longer where I planned on them being.  I finally found some a little deeper.  Same areas, just out in 6-8 FOW instead of 3-4.  I caught 7 keepers tonight.  My best 5 weighed 13 something and my big bass was 3.67 I think.  Both were good enough to win.  Not by much though.  KV without the D (Kevin Vogt) had over 12 pounds and Scott Clarke caught one over 3 pounds on his last cast.  Pictures are up on the home page.  There is also a thread up on the forum about tonight's tournament, so check it out and post.  I am supposed to let everyone know the reason I won tonight and got big bass is becuase of my lucky haircut at Shampoo & Clipper Company in Lakeview.  Brenda takes all the credit for my success.  So if you want a lucky haircut too, stop in and see her.  Thanks to Stacy Watts for taking pictures at the weigh in tonight, and thanks to Don for coming over, too. 

May 31 - Happy Memorial Day everyone, and a huge Thank You to all who have served.

May 30 - I had an amazing day today.  Today was the day I was to go up to Beaverton to go fishing with Jordan Beal.  I know Jordan's mom Mary Jo from work stuff, and she has been asking me to go fishing with him for a long time.  Today was the day, and I was a little apprehensive when I got up way too early and began the hour and a half to two hour trek up there.  I got up there and met Jordan and Mary Jo at the DNR ramp on Wixom Lake.  Holy honking boats!  We ran up the Tobacco arm and checked out some stuff.  The main lake was awful rough and muddy from all the boats.  We went into the cuts and didn't find what we were looking for there either.  We eventually made it over to the Titabawasee arm.  I have been on Lake of the Ozarks and Lake St Clair plenty of times, and there are no more boats anywhere on the planet than those two lakes.  Wixom was worse today, because the lake is so small and narrow and there were thousands of boats running everywhere.  The main lake was mud on that side too, and again there wasn't anything going on in the cuts.  We have a Weekend Warriors tournament up there Saturday, so this was also to serve as a practice for that.  We caught some largemouth, some smallmouth, a ton of rockbass, and Jordan caught the longest fish of the day by far.  We found fish in about 6 different spots, so here's hoping Keith and I can catch a few next weekend.  When we got done fishing, we went to dinner with Jordan's mom and dad in Beaverton.  Then we went back to their house and spent about 2 1/2 hours just chatting and getting to know each other (and picking on May Jo, of course). 


The local paper is going to do an article about our adventure, I guess.  So all in all, it was an awesome day.  Many thanks to the Beal family for inviting me up and making me feel so welcome.  Hopefully we can do it again some day.

May 29 - Well, it's opening day 2010.  This is way more exciting than Christmas ever will be.  Keith and I are going up to Chippewa for the first Weekend Warrior tournament.  It's go time and away we go.  We get a quick limit and are culling at 6:50.  8 1/2 pounds or so off our first shallow spot. We know there are some beds in the area, but it is not light enough to see them, so we are just fishing.  We then go out to another spot to hopefully find some bedding fish that we can see.  Nope, nothing but rock bass.  We can see everything.  Bluebird skies and no wind at all.  Perfect for looking, but there just isn't much to see.  We go to check one of the offshore humps that I think gets shallow enough for them to bed on.  We ran out of gas on the way. SO we trolling lotored our way around teh lake for awhile.  We found one bed, but it was a dinky little largemouth.  Then we went to where I knew there were a bunch of smallmouth beds.  We pull up to one end of them only to meet Jeremy and a friend of his fun fishing for the same fish. But they had been through the line of them and caught 2 4s, a 3, and we watched them break off another 4. Wow!  I knew they were there, but I waited to long to go look I guess.  I did find one more on a bed and caught it on the first pitch, but that was the only smallmouth we caught.  We did end up culling one here and one there to finally end up with just shy of 12 pounds.  That was enough to win, believe it or not.  I'm guessing the weather adversely affected the fishing today, because the weights sure aren't what we expected.  Denny from Drop Shot Denny's was at the weigh in, so it was good to see him again.  Check out the pictures on the home page.  The results are on the tournament page.  Last night, Erik's brother was in an accident on the road with Erik's boat.  The motor is ruined and the boat was damaged, but salvageable.  Now Jerry and Erik are in need of a motor to be able to fish the tournaments they are signed up for.  The motor was an 18 horse.  If you have one available, let me know or call Jerry at 616-318-9887.  The Weekend Warrior schedule has been changed slightly.  The Townline and Tamarack tournaments will now be Sunday, rather than Saturday.  The schedule page has been updated. 

May 28 - In the garage tonight tieing up baits for tomorrow.   Got a senko, beaver, drop shot, topwater, jerkbait, and crankbait ready to go.  Here's to a good night sleep, and lots of bigguns tomorrow.  Good luck to everyone.  Please send me your results and pictures.  Please get on the forum and tell your tournament stories as well.

May 27 - I had to take a night off of fishing tonight, due to the Castaway meeting at 6.  I did manage to put 175 miles on the Harley though.  I did find out at the meeting that besides Weekend Warriors being on Chippewa Saturday, there is supposed to be a group from the Saginaw area bringing 20 boats or so.  The lake might be a bit crowded it sounds like.  I also found out that a bunch of kids from the Mecosta-Osceola ISD had a paper tournament on Chippewa yesterday.  There were 8 boats full of kids.  The winner had 16 something I guess.  So it sounds like the fish might be on finally.  Hope I can find a few Saturday morning. 

May 26 - Matt and I went to Bass Lake to look it over for the first Tuesday Night Singles tournament next week.  Again, I expected to find fish on beds all over the place.  Nope.  Not one.  We caught a few males, and not one of them had any marks on his tail or fins indicating they had even begun to start making beds.  There is supposed to be a full moon soon, and the water is up to almost 80, so they have to be starting soon.  I just don't get it.  Hopefully I will figure it out, or they will cooperate for me.

May 25 - Amber and I went back up to Chippewa tonight to try to find some fish for Saturday's Weekend Warriors opener.  I went all over the stinking lake, but just never really found what I was looking for.  Saw a couple little largemouths around beds, but they weren't even keepers.  Maybe with the full moon coming, they will move up and get their spawn on.  And maybe not. 

May 24 - Holy smallmouth batman.  Jerry, Erik, and I went to check out Coldwater Lake for the 10-10 Bassbusters next Wednesday.  We started out just trying to get out of the wind and caught one right away.  A few feet later there was one around a bed.  We caught a fish about every third cast for the next hour.  Then we went through a bit of a dry spell, until we got into them again.   Jerry caught his first smallmouth ever, then his first great big smallmouth, and Erik caught his biggest smallie so far as well.  Here it is.


So it was a pretty awesome night.  Just to mix it up a little, we did manage to hook a couple docks, a boatlift, and some other non-bass stuff around the lake.  For the night, we caught just shy of a bajillion smallmouth and a couple largemouth.  We were looking for some beds when Jerry caught the big ole fat female.  It was big, and pretty cool to watch.  Here she is.



May 23 - Maybe summer has finally arrived. What a nice day.  Keith brought his boat over for me to put a blinker style switch in it for his trim and jackplate.  That project went incredibly well, so we decided to go fishing.  We went up to Chippewa.  We are fishing up there Saturday, so we thought maybe we would check it out.  For those of you who know Keith and I, you know that we may not win all the time, or even catch any ish all of the time, but no one ever has more fun in the boat.  Even though this was our first time out this year, it didn't take long to see that wasn't going to be any different this year.  I was standing in the back of his boat with my bail open and my finger on the line waiting to cast.  Keith managed to hook my bait with his while making a cast and took my bait with it.  As you can imagine, that made us laugh a lot. We laughted even more when I fished my "assisted cast" back and caught one of the biggest fish of the night.  Keith then got a bite and set the hook, only to find nothing on th end anymore.  Since he wasn't using Vanish, we assumed it was a pike.  He then professed his hope that it gets a esophageal hematoma for taking his bait.  He has been watching too much TV.  We caught at least 50 fish, or "Senko slingers" as Keith was calling them.  There were tons of boats on the lake and it was quite windy.  We caught a bunch and had a bunch of fun, but never caught any good ones or learned anything that will help us Saturday.  We saw a mama loon on a nest.  I said I need to get back to posting more pictures, so I was going to start with that.  Except my camera is in my boat, and I wasn't.  Saturday is opening day.  I have tournaments on Chippewa, Bass, and Coldwater next week, so I have to check them out this week.  If you wanna go with me, let me know.

May 22 - Bob gave me another tournament to add to the tournament page today.  It will be on  Crystal Lake on June 27.  It is a charity open.  Check it out on the bottom of the tournament page.

May 21 - Today and tomorow are supposed to be really crappy weather days.  Probably no fishing until Sunday.

May 20  - Another calm, sunny day.  Went to Townline tonight to see if there were some shallow largemouth and to see if I could find any of the smallies that live there.  We never found any smallies, but there were tons of largemouth up shallow.  We found half a dozen or so that were on beds, and the rest were just shallow.  Never saw any big fish.  I'm guessing they are all males looking to make beds and looking for ladies.  It is so fun to entice them into biting.  Even though I have had the camera with me all the time, I haven't taken any pictures lately for some reason.  I'll have to get back into that.  Feel free to send me yours, too.

May 18 - Jerry, Erik, and I went up to Mecosta to look for some bedding smallies and see if I can't show them a trick or two.  We got up there about 7 or so, and there were quite a few boats out there bass fishing when we got there.  The weather was calm and partly sunny.  We could see some of the fish and some of the beds from a long ways away.  We found a few cooperative ones, but there were tons of empty beds and a few fish that had obviously been caught today and wanted nothing to do with a bait.  I caught one off a bed, immediately released it, and watched it swim right back to the bed.  That is more proof that releasing bed caught fish does no harm to the fishery or bass population.  Erik caught his customary 7 inch bass on his stupid jerkbait that he will only ever throw.  Jerry apparently wants to be a rockstar, becasue that's what he kept catching.  It was a beautiful night and we had a lot of fun.  I think we all learned a thing or two while we were out there.  Deifinitely have to do it again.

May 16 - Had to drive home today from Lake St Clair in time to play a coupleof baseball games at 1.  No fishing today.

May 15 - 2010 Spring DK Open today.  My partner is Rick Fike.  This tournament is a paper tournament where we all go fishing and basically come back in and tell everyone what we caught.  It is more less just for fun, but it is a reason to get out there none the less.  I'm a little concerned about the water color.  They have had huge storms and 40-50 mph winds out of the east all week.  That means the western side (the American side) has been pounded. This time of year, most all of the fish are on the shoreline.  I'm guessing it will be a little muddy.  I was wrong.  It was A LOT muddy.  We started out on the mile roads near Masonic, but never even stopped, due to the mud.  So we kept going south, thinking the current might clear the water up.  Wrong again.  We found nothing but mud from the Salt River all the way to the Detroit River.  We tried it here and there, but finaly gave up on the smallies and went fishing for largemouth.  We caught a few of them.  We caught them in the MacRay Harbor canals.  We eventually went back out in the lake and I did catch one smallmouth on a bright chartruese spinnerbait with bright chartreuse double willow leaf blades.  We ended up with 12-5. We didn't win, but I'm not sure where we finished, because they didn't post standings or anything like that. We had a whale of a cookout after we all came back in.  Good times and great food.  Thanks to Rick for being an awesome partner and making the day much more fun than it could have been.  Made a trip to Bass Pro to pick up a few things while I was in town tonight, too.

May 14 - After work, I made the trek across the state to Chuck's house.  Made it safe and sound.  Time for a good night's sleep, cuz we are gonna tear up the Lake St Clair smallmouth in the morning.

May 13 - Have the night free, but the storms and rain will keep me off the water tonight.  Got the truck and boat all ready to go to Chuck's as soon as I get out of work tomorrow.  For tonight's deerhuntinwitheric.com update, I saw a buck with antlers to the top of his ears tonight in the yard.  Big thick ones too.  Can't wait to see him more and watch him grow all summer.

May 11 - Off to Muskegon for a couple days to run the simulation for Advanced Disaster Life Support, so no fishing stuff.  That's OK, cuz the weather is supposed to be horrible.

May 10 - Back to Lake Mecosta.  It has been dead calm all day and bright sunshine, so this is perfect.  Get to the lake, and the wind is blowing hard enough to make finding beds nearly impossible.  Once again, I would find them as they spooked off.  Today though, I had more time, so I would move 20 feet or so away and put the power pole down and wait for them to come back.  Most of them all came back.  It was quite apparent some of them had already been introduced to a bait and a net.  Others though would bite.  It was rough enough that it was mostly fishing around the bed and feeling the bite, because I couldn't see the fish.  Jerry went with me and we had a ball.  Didn't really catch a ton, but had fun trying and got to show Jerry some things.  Once the sun went down, it really cold, but calm also.  Found a couple more.  Caught one and I was working on another.  This one was definitely one that had been caught before.  It was late enough that I wasn't gonna go looking for more, so I am gonna work this one until it gets dark or I catch it.  So I am working this smallie and I keep changing my mind if I it is catchable or not.  It bird dogs the bait once in a while, and just ignores it once in a while, and swims away once in a while.  My bait is on the edge of the bed and the fish is looing at it, and all of a sudden, a stupid pike rockets in out of nowhere and eats my bait off the edge of the bed.  I set the hook on the pike and the bass attacks the crap out of the pike.  Weird, but funny.  I hope to go back and do it again soon, but the weather is supposed to be real nasty until the weekend.  Friday night I am off to Chuck's house again.  I am gonna fish the DK Open on Saturday on Lake St Clair.  Then Chuck and I are gonna fun fish LSC after the tournament.  Hopefully I will have lots of big fish stories and pictures to share Saturday night.  The weather has been horrible there, too, and the water is all messed up, so it might be kinda tough, but we'll see.  Back home early Sunday to play a double header at 1. 

May 9 - Happy Mother's Day Everyone.  After a fishless week, I'm hoping to get back after it this week. In fact, I might go to the lake for a bit here shortly.  I got the Split Shot schedule, so that is now on the tournament page.  Check it out.

I went to Lake Mecosta and figured out Eric's Law of wind.  As soon as atmospheric air makes contact with the boat, the wind blows like hell.  No matter what is has done all day, it will blow once the garage door opens.  I wanted to go look for some bedding smallies.  I got there and the wind was just howling out of the north.  I went out on the flat in front of the ramp and found a few.  Problem was I found the beds by them spooking off, becasue the wind was so strong I couldn't find the bed until I was practically on top of it.  So I just went to the north end of the lake, because I think some bed up there also.  That will be protected since it is a north wind.  Nope!  On the north end of the lake, the wind is blowing just as hard, but out of the southwest.  Really?  Really!  Caught a few largemouth and rockbass just fishing around.  I did note areas that had beds, so I can come back tomorrow hopefully.  Had to leave early to go visit mommy for mother's day.

May 2 - Ok, they're really in trouble today.  Wake up to rain, nope, back to sleep.  Today started out pretty much like yesterday, even to the point of going for breakfast before we went fishing.  Today it was Anchor Bay, where I have had my best spring days.  We start out in front of the base.  Pretty close to shore and catch 4 in the first 5 minutes.  This is what I came over here for.  This is how it is supposed to be.  Nothing big, but we're cathing fish.  All on a Rat-L-Trap.  The wind is blowing almost striaght north, so we can drift right along the shoreline.  All is setting up to be perfect.  Nope.  4 fish firrt 5 minutes.  Barely more than 4 the rest of the day.  We went largemouth fishing again to take a break from the wind and only caught one of them apiece.  Definitely not the day we hoped for.  We only took a picture of one fish.  Here it is.


Even though the weather, size, and quantity of fish wasn't up to my standards, it was a great weekend overall.  I got to hang out with one of the coolest people on the planet for the weekend, and go fishing.  Hard to beat that.  Thanks Chuck.

No fishing related activities this week.  Office and college tomorrow, then off to the Great Lakes Homeland Security Conference Tuesday through Thrusday.  Then back to the office Friday until 7.  So, unless I need to whine about not fishing, I probably won't update this blog with anything too exciting.  Look out next weekend though.

May 1 - I can't believe it is May already.  Opening Day is 4 weeks from today.  Well, I made it to Chuck's last night after standing in line at Walmart for about 40 minutes on the way.  Wasn't happy!  The fish are in trouble today, no doubt.   I woke up to rain.  Nope, back to sleep.  I woke up to a thunderstorm.  Nope, back to sleep.  I woke up to rain again.  I give, up I get.  We get around, check the weather, and decide the best move is to go to breakfast.  I am not really a fair weather fisherman, but when it is May 1st and it is just for fun, I become one a little bit.  We get to the lake finally, and holy wind.  There were whitecaps in the mud puddles in the parking lot at the ramp.  As we are getting ready at the ramp, putting on every piece of clothing and raingear we can find, I asked Chuck when the last time I came over and we had decent weather.  His recollection is apparently the same as mine, because his response was "Never!"  Oh well, away we go anyway.  We putzed around Lake St Clair from the 400 Club all the way to Ford Cove.  We caught a few smallies, but not what we were hoping for.  It was so windy out there that we could not hear each other yelling back and forth in the boat.  I was throwing a smallie beaver and Chuck was using a tube.  Here is a smallie Chuck caught.


The Ben Trodders (bent rodders) were out in full force today.  We made a move to some shallow rocks we wanted to try, and within 30 minutes there were 6 other boats wanting to try them same shallow rocks.  Kinda funny, cuz there was no one around when we started.  Chuck must be a legend and they knew he knew where to go.  After about 4 hours, we gave up and went largemouth fishing to get out of the wind for awhile.  Here are a couple of largeheads we caught on jigs and senkos.




While we were in this little canal, there were ducks, geese and swans everywhere.  One thing that we thought was kinda weird was a mama duck standing under a boat canopy on top of the shrinkwrap.  She flew away and we saw why she was there.  She was sitting on a whole pile of eggs in a depression in the wrap.  Good luck to the rodents who try to get these.


I didn't come over here to catch largemouth though, so we went back out into the lake to try to catch smallmouth.  We did get a few more.  Here is one of them, again on a beaver.


Despite the weather, we had a great day.  We caught between 25 and 30 fish today.  Not the numbers or size I was hoping for, but tomorrow's another day.  Anchor Bay tomorrow.  We'll get 'em.  The 898 isn't working right.  The transducer seems to be messing up.  The depth just shows random numbers all over the place, and the side imaging doesn't seem to be working either.  The down scan and temp are fine though.  Weird.  Maybe tomorrow it will be all better.  Good night!

April 30 - Had a little business to take care of before I went to work this morning.  Here he is


20 1/2 pounds, 9 1/2 inch beard, 7/8 inch spurs.  Tasty!  Might have to change the name to TurkeyHuntinWithEric.com.  Off to Chuck's house for the weekend.  Look for lots of pics and stories.

April 29 - No fishing today, but I did go ID the runaway tractor.  Eric & Jerry brought their boat over for while, and we did a bit of a wiring overhaul and installed a new bilge pump and got that all wired up and ready to go.  Tomorrow after work, it is straight to Lake St Clair.

April 28 - Nice day, so let's go fishin'. Went over to Townline for a bit.  I wanted to be able to look around to see if I could find any fish shallow, maybe bedding or thinking about it. I have amazing power to control the wind I did not know I had.  Every place I went where the water was like glass, immediately became choppy with an immediate change in wind direction.  It was crazy.  I did manage to put the hook in some.  Here is a jumbo I tied into.  He was just shy of 4 pounds I think.


As soon as I get out of work Friday, I am heading to Chuck's for a weekend of Lake St Clair fishing.  Hopefully the weather holds out. There will be hundreds of bass in my boat this weekend.

April 27 - I picked up my other case for my 1197.  These things are perfect. They are Plano 4 gun handgun cases.  They are padded top and bottom, with another pad in the middle.  I just cut out the middle pad around my unit and it cannot move inside the case, but is very secure and protected.  Here they are with the units in them.


It's supposed to be nice tomorrow, so assuming I can work a normal day, I'm goin' fishin'.

April 26 - You can tell it is Monday again.  The weather is beautiful.  But no fishing again today, just work and teaching.  The weather forecast is a beautiful week, with rain and storms just in time for the weekend.
 
April 25 - Another crappy day.  No fishing today, just work. 

April 24 - Opening day of catch and release season.  Finally, after all these months of snow and ice, we can go fishing again.  Time for celebration.  How'd I celebrate?  By getting up at 4 and going to work.  Then coming home and taking a nap.  Then finising the installation of the 1197.  I said finishing the installation of the 1197.  So now, besides my money order arriving for my refund of the other one, the whole electronics issue has been put to rest.  Here it is.


I haven't heard anything yet from Tim or anyone else that fished the Castaway paper tournament today on Chippewa.  I will report what I know as soon as I know it.  More work in the morning and more rain all day, so I'm guessing no fishing tomorrow either.

April 23 - I didn't get home til 7:30, so all I wanted to do tonight was to get those wires run.  From there, the job will go very quickly.  Well, we sure wouldn't want anything to go as planned, so I discovered that my tractor had been stolen while I was gone. There are tracks in the grass where someone drove up to it and loaded it up.  I'm sure it is now at a scrap yard somewhere.  So, I never did get to work on the fishfinder tonight.  Tomorow, I'll get the bolts for the RAM mount and get the job finished.  Tomorrow is opening day, but the weather forecast is so poor this weekend, I'm pretty sure the boat will never leave the garage.

April 22 - My 1197 was in the garage when I got home.  Not much time to do anything with it, because I had to teach.  I did get it unpackaged and tried to run the GPS and transducer cables.  I had the fishtape run already, so it should be a piece of cake. Not so much.  It keeps getting hung up somwhere and won't go through.  Guess I'll to work on it tomorrow.  I did get the RAM mount ready and drilled some holes in it so I can bolt the mount to it.  I gave some more tackle away.  Gettin' down there now.

April 21 - Here's something you won't believe. I have a tracking number for my 1197, it says on time for delivery tomorrow.  No joke.  I guess we'll know more tomorrow.  Still plenty of time for problems.  Don't get to do anything else fishing related today.

April 20 -  Today is perfect for fishing.  Before I went, I made sure the 898 was good to go, but any little movement made the power go off.  I eventually had to bend the pins on the plug to make it have some resistance, becasue it slid on and off so easy and was loose enough that I could just push the cord to one side a little and it would lose power.  Once I was happy with that, away I went out on Crystal.  Saw a whole bunch of of largemouth, a few smallmouth, tons of bluegills and crappies, many dogfish, rockbass, a perch, and a bullhead.  The bass were very spooky.  Even raising my hand to cast would spook them.  The rockbass would follow anything I threw, but would bite nothing.  I couldn't even snag a dogfish.  I managed to catch one little largemouth on a little pumpkin senko on the west end, then 2 smallies and a largehead on 3 consecutive casts in the rocky area in the SE corner.  I caught one more largemouth in front of the beach also on the beaver.  Nice night, but fishing wasn't so great.  One thing that was good though, was the fact that I don't think I thought one time (and that's all I think about otherwise) about my new disease while I was fishing.  Can't wait to do it again.

April 19 - If I were going to post any pictures today, one would be of my pancreas.  The beta cells in there apparently aren't working properly, because I have Diabetes.  Yee Friggin Ha!!!  Who knows what will happen from here, or how it will effect my ability to go fishing.  Very negatively, I'm sure.  The other picture would be of the RAM mount that has been mounted on my boat forever now, waiting for me to put an 1197 on it.  I called Jeff today to have him get me one, and the only one they have is in Minnesota, and it isn't even what I want.  Surprise, surprise.  I said screw it and ordered one from BBG Marine.  I got it for the same price as Jeff could get them for, except the $7.95 I had to pay for shipping.  They tell me it will be here Thursday.

April 18 - Not much happening today.  I put all the rods back in the boat, so minus the other Humminbird, the boat is 100% ready to go.  I played around a little with my map cards today to see which ones would work in which unit, etc.  I think I got that all figured out.  I think I am going to check out the new Lakemaster Michigan Pro Map for Humminbirds.  It's only for Michigan, but it looks pretty good.  I already have a Navionics Premium East card that should cover everywhere outside of Michigan I plan to fish this year.  I also played around with the Interlink for the Humminbird Units.  Not sure what all I have to hook up, because all the diagrams I have found have all sorts of other accessories that I don't have or want.  I'll figure it out though.  I got a new schedule tonight also.  Lake Street Station in Crystal is sponsoring some tournaments this year.  They will be very similar to the Papa's Tackle Box tournaments that were held last year.  I have put that up on the Tournament page.  Check it out. 

April 17 - I got the 898 installed this morning.  Here it is.



Once that was done, I had some visitors to look through the tackle tub.  A couple of youngsers left my garage with a bunch of new tackle.  That was pretty cool.  When they left, I had to go to a Grand Rapids Bass Casters meeting in Greenville.  After a quick stop at Walmart on the way home, I got home and spent a couple more hours in the garage.  I put the finishing touches on the casting rods I modified and relabeled all the boxes that were either new or now had something different in them than the labels said they had.  Now that all teh reels have line spooled and them, I gave them all a good soaking of Reel and Line Magic.  I did some checking, shopping, and looking, and I think I am going to order another 1197 Monday.  Lots more money than the other one was going to be, but I can say I want it Monday morning and pick it up Monday night.  So, I'm thinking I am going to put that story to rest once ind for all. 

April 16 - Jeff met me in Lansing to drop off my 898, so I actually have one now.  I'll get it installed in the morning hopefully.  I called BASS today to see where I stand on the waiting list for the other two Bassmaster Northern Opens.  She told me I was in the first two now and 9th on the waiting list for the third one.  So there should be no problem getting into that one as well.  Stopped at Gander Mountain today to check out their clearance racks.  Picked up a few sinkers and bought a 4 gun pistol case for my Humminbirds to live in when they are not on the boat.  It was only 19 bucks and is hard sided with foam separating the two sides.  It will be perfect to tote them (assuming there ever actually becomes a them, rather than an it) safely when they are resting.  Spent some time shopping for electronics now that I have come to the realization that there will never be an 1197.  I worked on the picture problem, and think I have it fixed. Someone please let me know if you can see the pictures now and if it asks you for a user name and pasword.

April 15 - Happy You Worked All Year Only For The Opportunity To Pay Even More Day!  For some reason, now that I have added pictures, it is asking for the user name and password to my work computer when you try to look at the blog.  No idea why, I haven't ever even used my work computer for any of this.  But I removed all the pictures for now until I can figure it out.  The 898 has been found.  Jeff was checking into its whereabouts, and found he needed the tracking number.  He called the wife's law firm to get it, becasue that is where it was shipped from.  Rather than find a tracking number, the package was found under the secretary's desk.  So he is bringing it to me in Lansing tomorrow.  Hopefully.  I guess I'll have to install it Saturday morning.  Hopefully.
 The family member of the patient that we had all hoped accidentally grabbed the wrong boxes called back.  The boxes all had dialysis supplies in them.  That means the 1197s are gone with not a clue in the world they may have gone or how they could have gotten there.  So the guy is going to have to figure out how to get the money to refund us all this weekend.  Really sucks because I still don't have one and it will cost me several hundred dollars more to get one.  Boo!!!

April 14 - Nice Day.  Glad I'm going fishing.  The 1197 nurse can't get ahold of the patient that might have the units.  So, she is going to call the guy who hopefully got them accidentally to have him go check on her and the units.  Still no 898.  No idea?  So that all still sucks megabad.  Now for the good part.  Got to Mecosta and backed the boat right into the dock.  Thank God for rub rails.  Ok, maybe now for the good part.  It was windier than I had hoped, but a very nice day on the lake overall.  I started out by my little rocky areas I like, but no takers.  I did see one smallmouth by the second one, but no takers there either.  Then I was fishing along and caught this for the first bass of 2010.


Shortly after him, I had a nice smallie follow me in, but when I saw him and droped it back, a rockstar ate it.  I went to the leeward side for a bit to get out of the wind, and something kind of strange happened. Anyone who knows anything about me and my fishing knows there isn't a dock I don't love.  So I skip under this dock as I'm going by............and here he comes.  I say "You've got to be kiding me" out loud and set the hook.  Here he is.  First dock fish of 2010.


Not kidding.  This fish was VERY fat, like me.  I didn't weigh it, but I'm guessing close to 4.  Only fish I caugt after this was a pike over some weeds I found that had tons of bluegills over them as well.  Who knows when I'll get out again.  The weekend forecast doesn't sound too bassin friendly.  
 
April 13 - No response form the person we all hope has the 1197s yet.  No 898 today.  Going fishing tomorow no matter what.  Look out rockstars.  Let's hope for calm winds. Glued the grips on the casting rods I modified  tonight and put my rods in the boat.  Ready to go as soon as I get home tomorrow.  Gave away some more baits today.  Must be under 50 pounds left.  Guess I'll go to bed and dream about fishfinders.

April 12 - Nothing new to report on anything, really.  They were apparently unable to contact the patient that it is believed a family member of may have taken the 1197s.  The 898 still hasn't made it yet.  That is taking some of the frustration away from the 1197 situation.  I was told Easter Sunday that it was here and would be on the way.  Still not here.  Ugh!  Gave away some more tackle and a few rods tonight though.  Guess I'll go to bed.  Working on Keith's boat tomorrow night.

April 11 - Another nice, sunny day.  Keith dropped off my line last night, so today's big project was to get new line on all the rods.  Before I got started on that, my brother asked if I was gonna be home, because he and my nephew were gonna come up.  I told Brennnon (nephew) last Sunday at mom's that I would help him fill his tackle box next time he came up to my house.  Apparently he took me seriously, because him and his dad were going to make the bi-annual trip to my house.  I got new line on most of the rods and got the backing on the 8 I had left, when I decided it was time to take a break from spooling line and ride the bike to town to get gas and BS with Keith.  When I got home, my brother said he was on his way and would be here soon.  I got the other 8 rods done just as they got here.  It didn't take long for Brennon to remind me that I said I would help him fill his tackle box.  So we got the tub out of the truck and he dug in.  So we looked at tackle for a bit, walked around out back a bit, looked for some mushrooms a bit, fished in the pond for a bit, and sorted tackle some more.  I think he did OK.  What do you think? 


My brother helped him a little and took the reels I had left.  They left about 6:30 or so, so I had time to ride the bike over to Townline Lake to see what was going on.  Not much, so I walked the trail back to the spillway where the pike come up the creek to spawn to see if any were waiting for assistance to the pond side.  The trail isn't much of a trail anymore.  Any semi could drive through there now.  The banks and little hills have been dozed flat, the big trees have all been cut down, and there are posts with numbers on them like they are indicating campsaites or something all along the lake.  Are you kidding? Is there any part of nature the city dwellers won't mees up?  Today's 1197 update is a confirmation that the guy that took the boxes is a family member of a patient, so the nurse is going to call him tomorrow to have him open all the boxes he took to see what is inside them.  So hopefully we'll know more tomorrow, and hopefully the horse that is bringing my 898 from Ann Arbor will be trotting this way again tomorrow.

April 10 - Nice sunny day.  We're going fishing.  The mail lady came and went, and still no 898.  Monday Jann's Netcraft sent me a package from Ohio via USPS, and I had it Wednesday.  But it will take at least 5 days to get one from Ann Arbor?  Oh well.  Got the line I needed for the  year today form Tamarack Sports and picked up some bed bugs.  If you haven't seen the bed bug from Garneau Baits......good, please don't.  There is no way you will like them and they sure won't catch any fish this year, I'm sure. (wink wink).  Bill met me there and we were off to Lake Mecosta to look around and maybe hook some rock bass or dogfish.  Holy crap WINDY!!!!  Whitecaps everywhere.  There was no way to fish the lake.  But man you sure could throw a trap a long ways today I bet.  We went down the river towards the dam to get out of the wind and see what might be down there waiting for us.  Never saw a fish and got no bites.  Bill did show me how to throw a spinnerbait into a tree though.   Being the good student I am, after he got his out and spun the boat around, I put my bait in the same tree on my backcast.  Here I am trying to get it out. 


The wind never let up, so we just rode around so I could show him the lakes a little.  It started getting cloudy and looking kind fo ugly off to the west.  A quick check of the radar showed why.  Bunch of rain coming our way.  We called it a day, since my boat was sitting outside so I could clean the garage.  We only got a little rain before we made it home.  So, I finished cleaning the garage, and put the boat back in the side door for now. 
Still no update today yet on the 1197 status.  Hopefully good news wil be forthcoming.

Here is the Power Pole on the boat.


Here are the rods I modified.  Two spinning rods for dock skipping and a casting rod for topwater and one for jerkbaits.  They look kind of goofy with such short handles, but they sure feel good.
 

April 9 - This morning before I went to work, I cut the rods all off I wanted to modify, cleaned all the old cork off them and got them ready for new handles.  That was a bit of work.  They sure weren't gonna fall off.  The hole in the new handles was about 1/8 inch in diameter.  How in the world am I supposed to put a 1/2 inch handle in a 1/8 inch hole?  So I took the handles to the drill press and made the 1/8 inch hole 3/8 inch bigger.  Perfect.  Time to go to work, so the prepping and securing the new handles will have to wait til after work tonight.  Bill came to check out the tackle tub today and took some stuff out of it.  Down to only about 100 pounds left, so you better get your share soon. When I got home, I found a note in my mailbox that the mail lady left a package on my deck today.  I pull up and see a box there.  GUESS WHAT IT WAS!..........................The switch I ordered for Keith for his jackplate.  BUMMER!!!  I thought it was my 898. Nope. So I spent the evening making sure all my rods are ready, have hook keepers on all of them, removed the cellophane off the new ones, etc.  I did manage to decide what all line I need to order and what is going on what reel.  It was still plenty early, so I started the cleanup process  All the tools are taken care of and the garage just needs to have the drill press and work bench blown off, then the floor needs to be swept and the garage wil be back to normal.  So that's what I will do tomorrow until the mail lady brings my 898 (or at least she better bring it tomorrow).  If the weather is nice enough, Bill and I are going to go to Mecosta.  He has never been there, so we are gonna go putz around and show him the place.  Maybe we'll get into some of them GIANT rockbass that live there, too.  We'll see.  Gotta go to Tamarack Sports tomorrow to pick up my bed bugs, too.  The 1197 guy thinks he knows who took the units, so he's gonna work on it tomorrow afternoon.  Here's to a beautiful weekend.

April 8 - Jeff emailed me back and told me he just sent the 898 today.  Ugh!  He told me he would send it Monday.  Now I probably won't have it this weekend and be able to install it.  The weather is supposed to be decent this weekend, so I want to go fishing.  898 or not, I'm going fishing.  So now that I got the tackle all sorted and in boxes, it's time to relabel them all.  That worked great for about 3 boxes, and then the label maker ran out of labels.  So I started putting boxes back in the boat without labels just to see how many too many I still had.  Yep, still have too many. But I decided I will keep a big container in the back of the truck with all the stuff I want to have available, but won't fit in the boat.  That way I can grab it before I go out on the lake if I think I will want it.  The hydraulic hoses for the Power Pole are in the way of one of the tubs I had in the back of the boat, so I will have to pick and choose what I carry.  So, I took some stuff out of my compartment that has my tools and drift socks, etc in it.  Along with tackle, I will just have to keep some of that stuff in the tub as well.  When I think I might need my drift socks, I'll but them in the boat, otherwise they can stay in the tub.  Just like some of my tackle and other spare stuff I usually carry.  But until I get all of the tackle in the tub given away, it will ride around in my truck full of stuff to give away.  So if you or anyone you know might be interested in any of it, let me know.  First come, first served.  When I got done messing around with tackle and putting stuff back in the boat, I started modifying some rods.  I wanted to take two of my 7 foot casting rods and cut the handle down and out shorter grips on them for topwater and jerkbaiting.  I experimented a bit and figured out how long I want the handle and figured out how to get the handle the right length and bore.  Once I get the casting rods done, I want to do the same thing to two spinning rods for skipping docks with.  Hopefully it works and I don't mess it up.  Today's 1197 update is only that the guy who took them out the back door had to be let in the front door, because he doesn't have access and his identity is still unknown.  They guy is coming back from Texas tomorrow and will work on it some more.  I'm growing impatient.  Oh yeah, it snowed, hailed, and sleeted here today.  And is below freezing now.  Ice fishing anyone?

April 7 - Still no 898.  I emailed Jeff to see when he sent it, but got no response yet.  So, I spent the evening working on tackle and piling up the stuff to give away.  I'm not so sure how this consolidation thing is going.  Even though I am getting rid of a ton of stuff, it seems like what I want to keep in the boat is actually getting bigger.  No update on the 1197.

April 6 - Picked up new hold down things from the auto parts store this morning.  I eventually made it to the garage to continue with last night's task.  Everything worked out, all the batteries are back in, everything is hooked up, and everything works.  Once that task was completed, I began working on tackle.  Oh my gosh, I have way too much stuff, wand way more than I will ever use.  So, part of this process will be picking more stuff to give away.  I will have at least a little of just about everything that I will be parting ways with.  So, if you are interested in looking through what I have, let me know.  Hopefully, I will not only have less stuff when I am done, but fewer boxes full of stuff, too.  Making progress, hopefully more tomorrow.  No word from Jeff that he actually shipped my 898 yesterday.  I hope it's here tomorrow.

April 5 - First day of spring break.  It seems so weird going home after work, and not just going to work again after work.  But sun is shining and I'll take it.  Got a call form the 1197 guy this afternoon.  He found that the front door camera at his work is recorded, so he was sitting there watching video looking to see when and how and who took the units.  Went to Big Rapids to have my batteries tested (verified) and to look for replacements for the two I think need to be replaced.   Went to every place I thought might have batteried in Big Rapids.  Finally got 2 and came home (after stopping for ice cream of course).  Also grabbed a new battery tray from TSC, because my fourth battery was sitting in a cut-in-half battery box we fabricated when we installed it last year.  One of the batteries I replaced was a size 24 and I replaced it with a size 27.  So it wouldn't fit is the battery tray the 24 was in, nor would it fit where the other one was with the handle on it.  So I removed the handle, and "reworked" the tray a little to make it hold the battery.  Got it in there.  I just had a bungee strap holding my big cranking battery in place inside the box until now.  That worked fine, but now I have a tray, but the hook shaped hold it down things are too short.  I cut them off before, becaue they were longer than they needed to be, but with this battery, they are too short.  Oh well, I didn't really want to finish the job tonight anyway.  Got an email form the 1197 guy that said he saw a guy take the units out the fromt door on a cart.  He doesn't know who the guy is or where he is from, so that is his next step.   

April 4 - Happy Easter everyone.  Nice sunny, windy day, so before I leave for the Easter events, I pulled the boat out to let it get lots of sunshine and wind to dry all of the carpet since it is still wet from yesterday's power washing.  Finally got around to turning the pile of reels and the stack of rods leaning in the corner of the living room into usable combos.  While at my mom's I got the call that my 898 came to Jeff's house yesterday. He is taking it to the post office tomorrow, so I should have it Tuesday or Wednesday (if he actualy ships it tomorrow).  Can't wait to finally get it and get it installed.  I made a couple of stops on the way home, but apparently should have only made one.  It started raining before I got home.  Not by much and not very hard, but enough to make me mad, since I pulled the boat out and opened all the compartments before I left this morning so it could all dry out.  Oh well, it wasn't real wet, and I just took a towel and dried everything. Actually, it ended up OK, because the boat was covered with a film of dust from the ride home yesterfay, and that is now gone.  Tomorrow the plan is to take the batteries out and look for a couple of new ones. This is spring break week, so only one job all week long for a change.  So, the goal is to have the boat completely ready (minus the 1197 obviously) by the weekend.

April 3 - Maiden voyage of 2010.  The boat still floats, the motor fired after about 0.6 seconds of cranking and ran great, both Lowrances work like they are supposed to, Power Pole works like it's supposed to, but the trolling motor did nothing.  Everything looked normal at the ramp, so no idea what was up with it.  Next stop was Montcalm Auto to have the batteries all tested.  A couple are new and I think a couple may be bad, so I'll just have them all checked.  One good, one bad, one good, one says to put the leads on backwards????????  The auto dude had never seen that before, and neither had I.  Once polarity was reversed on the meter, it checked out OK. Went to the carwash and power washed the boat and the carpet.  Came home and installed the new battery charger.  I had to move the Power Pole pump and turn it a little, because the new charger (MK 460 vs MK 440) is bigger than the other one.  When I hooked the charger up to that weird battery with the trolling motor hooked up, that bank said check connection, and the TM wouldn't work. With the TM unhooked, it was OK.  I messed around with it and finally hookd the TM up to the other two deep cycle bateries and the cranking batter.  TM works great.  OK, the weird battery has to go.  Two new deep cycle batteries are in order.

April 2 - My battery charger came today before I left for work.  Now if only I could get a Humminbird.  Project for tomorrow.

April 1 -  80 degrees today.  In Michigan, no kidding.  Got another message form MinnKota.  They have shipped me a MK460 battery charger.  Tracking number and all.  That says delivery is on time and scheduled for April 2.  That's tomorrow.  Sweet.  I will be able to put my charger back in Saturday morning.  I'm really not used to having any good news to report.  The amazing weather is suposed to continue for at least one more day.  Hope to get the boat all cleaned up and water worthy (minus electronics, of course) Saturday, too.

March 31 - The weather is amazing.  Got an email form MinnKota.  They processed my order and it appears they are sending me a new MK460.  That is cool.  I sent a MK440, but it looks like they are sending me a MK460 back.  And even better, the cost is $0.00.  This can't be.  I'm sure there will be more to this story.

March 30 - Nice day!  Wandered around the pond a little looking for signs of life.  Saw nothing, but no signs of death either, so I have to believe they are still in there.  I have accepted the fact that my 1197 will never appear, so I put the boat all back together.  It has been sitting there all tore apart with holes and wires everywhere, waiting for my electronics to come, since January, I think.  And I guess it's a good thing I did, because when I came in for the night, I had a message.  All of the electronics that were ordered through the Michigan TBF had arrived.........except mine.  Are you freaking kidding me.  No seriously.  All but mine.  Imagine that.  My 1197 is somewhere in America, lost, and my 898 is the only thing that did not come.  By the time I get all of my stuff and get it installed, I will be really mad, so the fish better watch out.  It looks like one of my trolling motor batteries is junk.  I planned to replce them this spring, so it really isn't a big surprise.  I'll have to take the boat to the auto parts store to have them all load tested and go from thre, I guess.

March 29 - No real news to report.  The 1197 saga really hasn't changed.  Time to realize I ain't gettin' one.

March 28 - Today's big plan was to visit Bass Pro and to work on Chucks trolling motor and electronics.  Woke up to rain.  The only thing that interrupted our plans was a stop at Big Boy for breakfast.  Then off to BPS.  I got a few things, but nothing spectacular.  I got stuff Bill, Keith, and Jerry asked me to pick up for them.  I got some rod socks.  Back to Chuck's.  The trolling motor adapter would not work.  Despite the package, internet, and Cabelas dude all saying it would, it would not.  No matter what I tried, I could not get the 3 male triangle pins to match up with the 4 female square end.  Oh well.  So we move on to the elctronics.  I explained to him the whole netwroking thing, so we are going to check into that, and I am going to make sure all of his waypoints are showing up on both of his units now.  Once I looked at it, I see they are already networked and sharing one GPS puck.  They just don't share waypoints.  I check to see that they are both set to share, and they are.  I check software versions they are both running, and both of them have updates available.  I download the updates on my SD card, but I cannot get either of them to update for anything.  I've done this many times and never had an issue before.  But neither of these will update no matter what I do.  Very frustrating.  That's how I ended my weekend at Chuck's.  All in all, it was absolutely awesome.  Thanks a million Chuck.  Made the long drive home and tomorow starts a new week.  I hear the weather is supposed to get really nice this week.  The 1197 guy was in NC all weekend, so he couldn't look for them and nothing new with that.  I am going to put the boat back together Tuesday after work, and if they ever show up, I'll tear it back apart I guess.

March 27 -  We started the day off looking through Chuck's "junk boxes" because he thought he had some of the gobies I got from Gander Mtn.  He had tons of things that he no longer used or wanted.  I sorted through it as we looked, and decided a lot of it was worth me taking home and trying.  Then it was off to Wonderland for the open house.  Kim Stricker played some video that he has shot under water.  That was pretty cool.  Otherwise, it was very poorly attended for some reason.  Typically, this is packed, but today, there were very few people there.  Saw Mr Macbass and the next two generation of Macbassers there.  I did get nine gallons of Yamalube and a few drop shot baits, but that was it.  As we headed back to Chuck's house, we crossed US-23 (the road I knew went to Cabelas), and I asked if it was about an hour and a half down to Cabelas.  Chuck said it was only maybe 45 minutes and asked if I wanted to go.  Well DUH!  So away we went.  That place is so cool, and so big, but very disappointing really.  I got two bags of baby bass Yamamoto grubs for Mr. I don't read the blog (who we now know doesn't read the blog, because he still didn't know I had the other ones I got for him), and that was it.  Chuck did find the adapter to hook his LMS-520 to his US-2 on his MinnKota, so that is a project for tomorrow before I head home.  I did upload some new pictures tonight.  I snuck some off Chuck's computer so I could put them up.   Following breakfast in the morning, we're off to Bass Pro Shops to find what all we can't live without (and to get stuff for Keith, Jerry, and Bill).  Then back here to finish projects, watch MSU, and probably head for home after the game.  We'll see.

March 26 - Off to Chuck's for the weekend.  A weekend full of laying on the couch, watching fishing, talking fishing, shopping fishing, visiting every fishing store we can, etc.  I think I am pretty up to date on the whole bass fishing industry and rods, reels, tackle, etc.  Well, we had to start by looking through the boxes of tackle Chuck has gotten since I was here last.  I don't know how many times I said "What the hell is that?" and other phrases each time I saw some bait that I had never seen or heard of.  We eventually made it to Gander Mountain and Dick's before the mandatory steak dinner.  Got a couple little things.  Watched MSU win.  Tomorrow we're off to Wonderland's open house and who knows what else.

March 25 - Got some news about the 1197.  Total kick in the teeth.  Read this.

 I am sending this to the remaining 1197 purchasers.  I am sending this here
and not updating on BBC anymore.  No matter what I say or do I am branded a
liar and a thief on there.  Let me first say, I never or will never take any
ones money on false pretenses. 

I do have to apologize for misleading you all over the last couple of days.
When I posted that I found the packages I did get the call that they had
been located.  When I got there it was just one of them.  I figured where
the one was the rest were sure to have been.  So I went ahead and said that
I had them.  I assumed that I would find them in the and get them on their
way and take a little less of a beating on BBC. I looked all over that
warehouse looking for them and can't find them.  I even took off work today
to drive to a group of our clinics that just recently had received a
shipment of items in similar boxes and they weren't there either.  Will they
turn up; probably but that is not helping the situation right now.

I will refund everyones money.  However, I just have to figure out how I am
going to do it.  I don't have $14,000 just lying around or I would not have
even offered the deal to begin with. I know this may not mean anything to
you right now but I am going to make this right as soon as I can figure out
how. 

I am not expecting anyone to jump for joy and/or forgive me for misleading
you the last couple of days.  However, I did not mislead you all about
anything else that transpired.  There were a lot of folks that just couldn't
help to beat me up over it (right or wrong) and were not going to believe
anything I said.  It got to the point that BCS Customs was brought into it.
I am only part owner in that company not the sole owner.  It would not be
fair to put that on my other partners.  This was a private deal between me
and the rest of you involved the company was not involved except for the
intial purchase of the 1197's that I had to repay immediately.  I don't want
my partner's to pay for my stupidity in losing the packages by everyone
bashing BCS on BBC.  The reason that BCS is no longer a sponsor has nothing
to do with this deal.  Al and I had a disagreement over posts and we chose
not to sponsor anymore. 

Al just emailed me and said that he set up a private forum for all those
involved.  Although I appreciate Al's effort to try and work this out for
you (it really is a great site in some aspects) I would rather not take
anything else back to BBC.  If you want to update or anything there; it is
up to you but I will be contacting you through this email address and I ask
that you do the same.  I will not be monitoring BBC so if you contacted me
there I won't get it anyway.

Jeff

So, it looks like I may never see my unit, and he has teh money I spent to get a new unit.  Good thing I am going to Chuck's for the weekend to just chill out and talk and shop fishing.  Otherwise, I'm afraid I might be driving to Tennessee to "make a new friend".  Not happy!!!!!!  Just about as not happy about my battery charger.  When I put my 101 on, I got a 4 bank charger also.  One of the banks seemed to not be working so I tested it.  Zero amp output on that bank.  So I call the shop I got it from, and they tell me I have to deal with MinnKota directly.  So I call them, and they tell me I need to send it in for replacement.  So I pack it all up and shipped that off to Minnesota today.  Hopefully that gets back quicker than my electronice are apparently going to.

March 24 - I had a meeting in Lansing today and had to drive right by Gander Mountain to get home.  Of course I stopped.  While looking through the clearance racks, I found a bag of the Poor Boy Goby Jr that I have looking for since 2008.  I fished a two day tournament on Charlevoix in August 2008.  Never got a bite the first day.  The second day, I talked Dave Elmblad out of 3 of the baits he had that I wanted.  I went out and caught enough on day two to win the thing on those gobies.  They were apparently sold exclusively at GM and had been discontinued back then.  But I found that one bag today, and by golly it's mine now.  It is green with purple flakes.  Can't remember the name, but that's what color it is.  So if you have any, feel free to send them my way.

March 23 - Another pretty nice day.  Walked around the pond and made a few casts.  Once again, I got too cold to stay, but I was fishing none the less.  The docks are in at Crystal Lake.  I am hoping to have my boat ready to go by the end of Easter weekend.   The 1197 was supposedly put on the FedEx truck tonight at 6:43.  So, it should be here in a few days  I can't wait to get my stuff, get it installed, and get the boat ready to go.  It has been way too long.  I posted the other night that I had some rods and reels I could get rid of.  My goal is to give them to someone who is just getting into bass fishing and doesn't have a lot of equipment.  I would like it even better if I could give them to kids.  It certainly is not top of the line stuff, but works none the less, and most of the reels I was still using in tournaments last year, so it's sure not junk.  By the time I am ready to go for the season, I think I will have a bunch of tackle available, too.  So, if you or someone you know may be interested, get ahold of me.

March 22 - The 1197s have been found.  They were apparently inadvertantly taken to a supply warehouse.  Hopefully here soon.

March 21 - At least there wasn't any more snow today.  Back to the GR show for a bit this morning.  Got a rod, a feel reels, some boxes, a few baits, some glasses, etc.  Lots of good fishing BSing.  Went to West Marine to swap the RAM mount I got Thursday.  I can't believe I was going to skimp a few bucks and get a smaller RAM for my new 898.  I invest all the time, effort, and money I do in fishing, and I was going to skimp ten bucks.  Glad I got some sense.  Then the order of the day was putting Keith's power pole on his boat.  That turned out to be a little adventure.  When that boat was built, I guarantee you the thought of adding aftermartket accesories or running wires anywhere was never considered.  No worry though, 4 hours later he pulled it out of the garage happy as can be.  I went through my rods and reels last night to see exactly what I have and see what might need to find new homes.  Looks like I could part with about 9 rods and 7 reels.  The 1197 issue seems to be building. More people threatening legal action and police involvement, Al form BBC is now involved wanting to know what's going on and wanting to know how everyone paid.  One way or another, hopefully I'll have some new electronics soon.  After a very fishy last few days, there won't be much of anything happening this week.  Have to teach at the college every night, then Friday after work, I'm heading to Chuck's in Sterling Heights for another weekend full of fishy stuff and R&R.  See me at Wonderland next weekend. 
 
March 20 - What a beautiful blanket of snow I awoke to find covering everything.  NOT!!!  Oh well, shouldn't last long.  Went to the show again this morning for awhile with Mike and Keith.  I couldn't believe all of the stuff I saw today that I didn't see Thursday.  As always, we had a bunch of fun.  I got a couple things, but I am going back tomorrow, so I will do some more damage then.  When I got home, I fixed the COTM North schedule on the tournament page.  Justin told me that they switched two dates.  Scott has completed the 10-10 Bassbusters schedule, so that is on the tournament page now also.  Check it out.  Still no 1197, nor any new information. 

March 19 -  Woke up to find no ice on my pond anymore. That discovery led to a slippers and robe walk around the pond checking it out.  I was afraid of finding all of my fish dead.  My pond pump quit working a week after I installed it, so I was afraid all of the fish would have suffocated.  I only saw one dead crappie and one dead smallmouth.  I didn't see any live ones, but no dead ones, so I am considering that great news for now.  By the time I was ready to go to work, the sun had come out, so I walked around again, and saw nothing new, so no news is good news as ar as I am concerned.  I passed a FedEx truck headed towards my house just a little ways down the road when I was headed for work.  I got excited, thinking that was my 1197.  When I pulled in the driveway, I saw a box at my door.  I got real excited.  I went up to grab it.............and it was Keith's power pole adapter that was supposed to come tomorow.  Dang!!!!!!  So, I quickly grabbed a rod and headed to the pond.  I grabbed a rod that had a jig on it.  Three casts later, the wind was too cold for me to stay any longer, so I went back to the garage where it was much warmer.  Still no news on my 1197. Going back to the show with Mike and Keith for a bit in the morning, then putzing around in the garage working on fishing stuff for the rest of the day.

March 18 - Had some time to kill this afternoon, so I visited the GR Ultimate Sport Show.  Well, it was far from the ultimate, but it is always fun to hang out with some fishing buddies and talk fishing.  Found some baby bass Yamamoto grubs that I think someone I know would like to have.  I bought them all.  Guess we'll find out if he reads this or not.  Got some more Nemesis gobies and worms.  Those things are going to be killers, no doubt.  Also picked up a couple bags of the Jackall shad drop shot minnows.  I heard Dick's was having a sale, so I checked them out too, and they have Senkos 2 bags for $10.  So I got a few of them, too.  Got home from teaching, and still no 1197.  Found an email that that said FedEx is saying they have no record of ever picking up the 1197s from the shop shipping them to us.  OK, where'd they go.  They were shipped somewhere, picked up by someone, we got tracking numbers, but now they don't exist in this universe.  What in the world is going on? My boat is all tore apart waiting for this thing to get here, so I can install it.  Now it has disappeared.  Come on, I can't wait much longer, the ice is going away fast.

March 17 - Still no 1197, still bad tracking number, but the RAM mount is here.  Still no jackplate adapter either.  But the ice is still goign away, so not all is bad.

March 16 - The tracking number for my 1197 still says there is no such thing on the FedEx website.

March 15 - The nice weather continues to melt ice and make me want to go fishing.  Keith's Power Pole came today, but the jack plate adapter didn't.  Looks like I got work to do on more thatn just my boat.  My Humminbird 1197 shipped today as well.  That should be bere in a few days.  Got a RAM mount coming for it, too.  Can't wait.

March 14 - I took the rest of Mike's stuff for the Humminbird, so he could finish geting that all installed.  Then I went to Chad's to help him get his new unit installed and the other one switched around.  That process was a little more than I anticipated, but we got 'er done.  Then I came home and ran the wires and mounted my Interlink system for whenever my Humminbirds arrive.  I also downloaded an update for my Lowrance units and installed that, so now they are networked and sharing waypoints the way I want them to be.  I also got my jackplate adapter for the Power Pole installed.  I then hung the pole itself and ounted the hydraulic ram.  The wiring is all ran, and switches are installed.  I just have to get an answer to hooking up the hydraulic hoses and I think we will be ready to fill the reservoir and prime it. Can't wait.  There is a little bit of open water starting to show around the edges of the pond.  I still have not even started preparing equipment for the season.  Guess I will have to get this electronics project done and get started on that.

March 13 - Went to Bill's to

Be sure to drop me a line at eric@bassinwitheric.com and let me know you stopped by.

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