August 22nd, 2009
We started out the day pretty well fishing for smallies off a shallow shoal.. In fact, we had 5 smallies in the livewell by 9:30 and had the rest of the day to switch them for bigger ones and maybe a few largemouths. I missed 2 smallies over 3lbs that got my really upset... and then our spot got crowed pretty quickly (the bass boat attracts all kinds of fishermen apparently) and we couldn't even fish it in the end... We even had a guy from our trail fishing 10 feet away from us!! I thought that was a bit disrespectul but it was bound to happen eventually.. They even caught a decent fish right infront of us!! At around 10:30 we decided to go see if the largies would co-operate but all my good spots were empty... Did I get there too early? Too late? Since we couldn't catch a largemouth we decided to go back to smallmouths and we managed to change a few fish but only to gain a few ounces..
At the end of the day, we get to the weight in to find out we had been DISQUALIFED because we were caught idling without our life vests.... I'm actually still a bit shocked!! Someone took a picture of us in the tournament to prove we didn't have 'em on. I found out who it was and frankly i'm not even surprised... It's amazing what some people would do to gain a spot on the final ranking of Team of the year standings. I saw people going full speed without their life vest today and others were fishing 10 feet away from me and I didn't complain to anyone... I thought this trail was mainly for fun and I had no idea some people took it this seriously. What can I say.. We did brake a rule and I respect the decision that was taken.
