Fish-Hawk.Net

Well as promised and as reminded by Fish-Hawk FB I said I was going to post a report on my awesome experience participating in the MS Bassin tourney 2016. Well as usual Matt and the gang ran an amazing event and as far as I am aware there was no glitches or hiccups had except I guess for one boat getting rear ended by another boat at the end of the day. Anyway this was my 4th time at this event and to say it was my best one yet is an understatement. To put this year in context the previous 3 years combined was a total weight of just over 12lbs. This year alone myself and new member Bassterpeice Theatre weighed in over 12lbs of fish and finished in a respectable 5th place, just 1lbs shy of making the money. We took what we had learned last year with this body of water ( Rideau and myself don't ever see eye to eye )and worked the weed edges around the channel and also tried to get as close to shore as we could but sometimes it was impossible with the floating mats everywhere. Lure for the day was never changed up much with both of us using a black or dark coloured wacky worm for majority of the day and almost all of the fish. Late in the afternoon I switched up to a 1oz jig as recommended by some guy named RJ and it produced for the first time for me and got us a few fish to cull with. Morning looked like this:

It is tough getting up at 4am to fish a tournament but these blasts offs make it all worth while. Being team # 48 allowed us to watch this great thing happen and boy does the water get choppy when 47 other boats zing off in full throttle to get to their spots. To be honest with all of you it felt weird throwing the boat into full throttle just to shut it down 10 seconds later when we hit spot #1..lol




So 7:10am and we were in spot # 1 and first cast I get a hit. Bring in fish #1 at 7:11am and we are on the board with 1.4lbs. Fish # 2-4 came in the next 20 minutes and we were already at around 5lbs which is 1lbs short of our total last year. Jamie hits a few guys in the next hour and we have a 5 fish limit in the first hour with just over 6lbs of fish...pretty small 5 fish limit but the pressure was off and we were culling for the rest of the day. Now when culling you should always throw out the smallest weight and when you don't keep track of what fish are what by a colour code system or some other system it makes for a lot of playing around grabbing bass and weighing them to see what to throw out so before 10am we figured out a system where anything over 2lbs was in the front live well and all others in the back. Next time we will get a better system going though. So speed ahead to 11am and Jamie has picked up his socks from me carrying the load and has bagged two nice 3lbers and a few 2lbers basically culling all the fish I caught out of the boat.
The afternoon slowed down a wee bit and we tried to upgrade one last bass to get us close to 13lbs but it never happened. All bass were smaller than what we had already so we ended the day there, happy and excited to see what the outcome was.
By end of day we had a pretty decent bag of 12+lbs of bass in the boat and we were thinking top 15 for sure. Well we headed back in early for weigh in as the boat was taking on water somehow and we didn't want to sink the boat. As we waited for weigh in to open we started hearing rumblings of teams having a tough day and some not weighing in at all. So now we were getting excited...really excited..maybe a top 10 which for us amateurs would be an amazing finish. See what people don't realize is we are the typical weekend warriors that fish as much as family life can give us and maybe enter 1-2 tourneys a year just for fun and to see what they are like so finishing anywhere near the top in this throng of pro's and semi pro's was a dream come true for us both.
Well final weigh in completed and we were in heaven with our placing. 5th place out of 50 teams.....not to shabby. Best part was my entire goal was to at least beat Team Dufour and that we did.

Anyway to end this awesome rant of a post we came out with an amazing new rod supplied by the awesome Paddletails and Ed. Thanks again Ed for that great prize.

Here are some more pics of the day and our end of day pics.
Again awesome day and we will be back next year for a top three finish!!! lol

Jamie with one of the nice fish of the day


Need to work on the two fist pose James!!


Now this is a two fister pose!!


Picture of the boats all parked for final prizes


And finally the proof of our finish...The leaderboard shot!!


Well that's it..quick and dirty...Hope you all enjoyed it and till next year when our next goal is top 3 finish!! High hopes for us but hell why not!

Such a great report it almost feels like I was there! Congrats on the day, sounds like it was a blast!

Congrats to you guys, you’ve figure it out on what was a tough day’s fishing.

Great to see you figure it out Pete!

It's a great tournament that I look forward too every year.

Awesome! Can't wait for next year.

I've got a musky I caught on Video that I'll eventually post up.

Pete, great report.
Those small fish you caught early in the AM.
You weren't using them as bait later in the day were you? J/K.
Been there, fished the MS a few times. great group and a FUN tournament.
I've stepped aside to allow newer people to get in and enjoy what this is all about.
Question though, this is a CHARITY tournament, has anybody ever donated their winnings to such a Great Cause?....MS.
This is what I always thought it was all about.

almontefisher wrote: Well final weigh in completed and we were in heaven with our placing. 5th place out of 50 teams.....not to shabby. Best part was my entire goal was to at least beat Team Dufour and that we did.

Great write up. Team Dufour was very happy to see you finish the way you did.

We'll be looking for you next year ... and we promise to show no mercy. LOL

StarTzar wrote:

almontefisher wrote: Well final weigh in completed and we were in heaven with our placing. 5th place out of 50 teams.....not to shabby. Best part was my entire goal was to at least beat Team Dufour and that we did.

Great write up. Team Dufour was very happy to see you finish the way you did.

We'll be looking for you next year ... and we promise to show no mercy. LOL

Hope you put on a good show next year Frank....looking forward to it!!