I am fishing with my good bud M-A Barretti this year and today was our first tournament of the season on Lake St.Louis. We picked #50 for our starting position in the morning and had to battle the waves from all the other competitors to get to our first stop. Marc's Basscat Cougar ran TOP NOTCH through those waves and we were able to get to our first area quickly enough. I hate making excuses for losing fish but I've had terrible luck with my fluro leaders lately. Trying a new type of line today was NOT a good idea.... My leader broke on my first hook-set which was on my first cast. I grab another rod to cast again and guess what.... I break another leader on the second cast of the day to lose a second fish in less then 30 seconds of fishing. To make things worst, my partner "Bar" breaks his leader on his first fish. Leader testing was officially over for the day and decided fish straight braid from there.
As it happens so often, most of the fish we had found in practice were not where we had found them and we had to re-adjust. We found them schooling close by just a bit deeper. We caught a decent limit of smallies by noon and decided to go look for largies in the afternoon hoping to get an upgrade. The plan worked.... the only problem is that the largemouths we caught were only a few ounces heavier. We ran out of time and brought back a disappointing 14.17lbs which was good for 16th position.
Huge congrats to my buddy Remi Laurin and Julz Tremblay for their win today with an impressive 18.83lbs.
