Day 2 was a bit different as the wind completely switched from W to E.... It wasn't blowing hard but it made our drifting a little more challenging. Again, our first spot produced a 4lbs that was lost on the first jump... Seems like I have to lose at least one good fish every tournament and I was hoping that was the last lost fish of the day.
Our 2nd spot did not produce a single fish but we didn't let it affect us because we had plenty of other areas to check out and we were keeping our best area for later. I went back to my deep water weedline and we managed to catch 1 or 2 fish in the 2.5lbs range. At that point the Berkley B1 boat came and exchanged our observer for a camera man for the rest of the day. I tried to not being affected by the camera but Bar and I got a little distracted.... We had never been filmed before and even if we tried to ignore him, it still felt different then usual. We moved to a plan "B" spot that had produced well in practice and I hooked into an 7-8lbs drum that almost gave me a hard attack. For a few seconds Bar and I thought we had a enormous smallie on the line but soon got very disappointed when it finally came to the surface.
We had kept our best drift from day 1 for last and it was a big mistake.... Doug Brownridge and Dave Chong were on it when we got there I knew it had been hit hard and properly.... Those guys are some of the top bass anglers in Canada but we gave it a shot anyways. We still caught 1 or 2 fish on it that help us a little bit but we had only around 15lbs and were desperatly trying to get rid of a 2.7lbs.
We were running out of time and had to make a big decision... I looked at Bar and said : "Where can we get a big fish". We had the same spot in mind so we left our main area for this spot which was closer to the weigh-in. In the first pass Bar caught a 3+ and we were finally able to get rid of that smaller fish. According to Bar, we had a little over 16lbs and not a lot of time to get back to the weigh-in... We were also concerned with the NE winds that can make the lake very nasty. To our surprise the lake was fairly calm for the basscat but apparently very rough for the camera man that had never been in a bassboat before. We must of passed over 10 boats on the way back and got back to the dock with about 30 mins to spare.
The drive by weigh-in was simply amazing.... It was so nice to see our families and friends in the crowd cheering for us as well as the bass fishing fans that came to see the show. The weights were coming in slowly and most of them were not very big... We were almost at the stage when we heard it took about 34lbs to be in the hot seat. I knew we had no chance to win it with the big teams coming behind us but I started believing we had a chance at a top 10.
We weighed our fish for a total of 16.58lbs which was good enough for 6th place overall!! Our day 2 weight was enough to bump us one spot higher in the standings and put a HUGE smile on our face. We had officially surpassed our expectations with a top 10 in the biggest bass fishing tournament in Canada. Needless to say were happy about our result.... Talk about a way to end the 2010 tournament season. Bar and I have been looking up to people like Bob and Wayne Izumi, Mike Desforges, Dave Chong, J-M Landry, Gary Gaussiran, Mark Currie, Charles Sim to name a few and to be able to beat some of them in the most important event of the year on a body of water they know very well is beyond satisfying. We knew we couldn't bring bags in the 25lbs range but we were very confident to be able to bring 16 to 18lbs any day of the week and we did.
Congratulations to Jacques and Stéphane Chopin for their impressive win. I had Mark Currie to win it and he came in 2nd place less then a pound from 1st place.
Thanks to Ben Woo, Mike Boudreau and their team for putting together such a quality event that some qualified just as good or better then FLW and B.A.S.S events in the US.
Also, big thanks to my sponsors especially St.Croix rods for giving the opportunity to fish with higher quality rods. They have played a major role in my success his year. My favorite rod for this body of water is by far the Legend Tournament Bass - Tube model. I will be looking at getting a similar rod but in the Legend Extreme series for next season.
Few pictures of day 2 :
