Tourney Results

100 teams entered the tourney which ran from 7am to 4pm. I had to get there at about 4:30 to help set up. The weather was overcast, with a wind out of the east which varied from about 5 mph to about 30 mph during the day. At 7am, it was about 48 degrees. We were boat 18 to start so we pretty much had the whole chain of lakes at our disposal. To get 100 boats started on a one-by-one basis takes about 30 minutes. The advantage of having an early start is really that you can get to your best spot first, but we have had tourneys where boat 100 was the winner so it really matters not.

We got to our spot, which is the same place we have started the last three years and had caught a 37" Musky that put us in 5th place three years earlier. We worked the shoreline on the windblown side of the lake for about an hour and didn't see much, but did see one team catch a nice 38" fish at about 8:00pm, a few minutes after we had moved off that spot. I hate when that happens. We also, talked to some friends that had lost a 40+ incher at boat side. This team was a husband and wife team, great people and a lot of fun to be around. He guides, when not running the company he owns. They worked their asses off over the week to get ready for the tourney as they were in charge of the raffle prizes. I think they got to sleep about midnight the night before the tourney and were at the tourney headquarters bright and shiny at 5am. They ended up having bad luck the whole day missing several fish.

But back to us, after watching one team catch the 38" fish, we moved on to our second spot. We spent about 30 minutes in this area. Again fishing the windblown shoreline but we didn't see anything. So we moved off this spot, only to find out that another team (another couple of friends) stuck a 40.5 incher shortly after we left, that for the time being put them in first place.

The way these tournaments are run, you get 4 points for a 30" fish and 1 point for every additional inch. Another tournament boat has to come an verify your fish and then the fish must be released.

So now we are on to our third spot. We had been fishing very shallow weeds, in approximately 4 feet of water. Most teams were fishing the deeper weed edges and breaks, but the two fish caught were in shallow water so we felt very confident that we had the right approach. As we moved through this area, my partner missed a fish that made a swipe at his bait at boatside, but he couldn't hook it. A few minutes later I hooked into a nice 36" that we quickly had verified and released. This was at 9am. We kept working that 200 yard shoreline, which was on the non-windblown side for the next couple of hours with no luck. We saw a few Muskies, but couldn't find any eaters.

We moved on to a few other spots with no luck, talked to a few friends only to find out they were not having much luck either. Musky fishing can be a brutal pursuit, you can go hours sometimes days with out seeing a fish, and then one will follow your bait to the boat, stare at it and then slowly sink into the depths only adding to your frustration. They don't call it the fish of 10,000 casts for nothing. But when one does strike, there is nothing like it when fishing.

Generally, in these tournaments catching a 36" Musky will put you somewhere in the top 10, maybe as low as 6 or 7. Not this year, one 36" fish wouldn't even make the leader board. Doubling up, which happens once or twice in each of out tourneys will normally put you in the top two or three. So we figured we were on the board and probably in the money.

At about 1pm, we moved back on the spot where we had caught the first fish. We had seen a few others while in there previously. We worked about 200 yards of that area, staying in 4-6 feet of water. Whenever another tournament boat would come by, we would move out a little deeper in order to push the other boats out and protect our area. At 2pm my partner got a strike. The fish hammered his bait and came flying out of the water, after making two jumps he was able to muscle her to the boat and told me to net her. The only problem was the fish was facing away from me and netting ass end first is usually a recipe for disaster so I waited until he got her turned and netted her up. Quick verification and release and we were sitting on two fish. No other team had doubled so we assumed we were in first place.

Then word came down that another team had caught a 49" Musky, which was the largest caught in the 10 year history of our tourneys. A 49 incher equals 23 points while two 36 inchers equal 20 points. We were unable to catch anything else during the tourney. Fortunately, we were the only team to double up and 20 points were good enough for second place. Overall, 18 Muskies over 30" were caught by 17 teams.