Tournament recap - This past weekend, I fished the two-day Presque Isle Smallmouth Slam tournament in the PA BASS Nation series. I started out decently on Day 1 ...more with a respectable limit that put me in 6th place going into the second day. On Day 2, a guy who watched me catch 12 fish out of a spot, beat me to that same spot the next morning, leaving me to pull together a smaller limit by traveling about 6-7 miles in my kayak all over the Bay. I finished 10th overall, which was good enough to qualify me for the state championship with the series in October.
In hindsight, the big lake, Lake Erie, produced bigger fish than PIB this weekend. In the Bay, the fish were staging on beds, and the larger females were not biting. On the main lake, the fish were still pre-spawn, with some big females feeding up prior to the spawn. I caught numbers (25 fish in two days), but not the right sized bass. I can’t complain about a 10th place finish. It did end my undefeated streak of tournaments on Presque Isle. I had entered four tournaments in two years at PIB and had won all four. 4 out of 5 ain’t bad (sounds like a Meatloaf song), and a top-10 finish is certainly not a disappointing finish.