Stratos Regional

[McCarter]

Congrats to Jose Garza and Vic Cerabone for there 2nd place finish in the recent Stratos Championship Regional event on Lake Erie.

They weighed in 20 and change on both days and held the lead on day 2 til the bitter end when Team Trombley weighed in an impressive 22+ lb bag to claim 1st place.?

Congrats to Big GT, George Terrien and Ron Van Gordon on there 3rd place finish.  They were right behind the Garz and VC.

Congrats to the rest of the Wonderland Team as well.  They had 3 of the 5 money spots with 2nd, 3rd, and 5th place.

And Congrats to Me and Kevin for not zeroing.  We ended up with 9th place which we were both very happy with. 

PB himself

[fishon1219]

As poorboy said Congratulations to all of the members of this board who finished well in the tournament. We gave it our best shot and for our limited time on Erie we can say we did darn well. I had only been on Erie one other time in my life and that was earlier in the season in an ABA event. I followed Dartag out to his secret Honey hole in the middle of the lake in a nice 4 foot chop were we caught one fish a piece. I prepared for the Stratos tournament by taking the whole week of of work and try to find something so we didn't embarrass ourselves. Last sunday I spent the whole day practising the Colchester area and I Found one little rock pile in the middle of nowere in about 21 ft of water were I caught 2 smallies that were close to 5lbs each. The weather and wind cooperated on sunday so I spent alot of time just idling around out there and marking way points for little humps and anything else I could find and my plan was to fish each one of them thoroughly thru out my week of practise. On monday I arrived at the ramp with a very nice wind out of the south west making the ride from erie metro park back out to Colcester very fun. I was with my best buddie Mark Clark and we fished the area were I caught the 2 big ones the day before and found fish scattered all over the place. We didnt catch any big fish, but we were on a good 3lb average. I wasent able to get out on tuesday so I spent the day rigging everything up and tightening every screw in my boat from the ride the day before. Erie is very hard on an 18 footer. I went out wednesday morning and the wind was howling out of the south about 20 mph and I decided to fish the river were I cut my teeth smallmouth fishing and did manage to put together a real nice river pattern for about 15 lbs. I knew that this would not be anywere near good enough for the tournament so on thursday I headed back out into the big lake were I proceded to get tortured by a southwest wind and 3 real nasty thunderstorms that had me asking my self what the heck was I thinking and how do some of these guys fish in this stuff. I only had a 42" shaft on my trolling motor and it was out of the water more than it was in so I decided I needed a bigger one. I did manage to catch some nice fish around my rock pile and had a good game plan for the start of the tournament on friday morning. After I got off of the water I headed out to cabelas and bought me a new trolling motor with a 52" shaft because I knew in order to compete for this event I couldn't just drift over this rock pile and catch them.
Friday morning was full of excitement for Poorboy and myself not knowing what to expect. Poorboy was on a solid limit of fish all the way up the St. Clair river, but we knew withour limitations with the 18 foot Stratos and running up there and making it back on time would only allow us maybe 3 hours of fishing time, so he trusted that I found something worth fishing in Erie and that is what we did. We hit the rock pile and I caught our first fish in about 10 minuets and we fished around that pile for about an hour with out another bite. We moved around the area a little to some other way points that I gathered within trolling motor distance and I managed to get 3 more nice keepers in the boat. It was now about 10:00am and we were still looking for number 5. My back was really bothering me from a slip and fall mishap during one of the storms the day before so poorboy had to run the trolling motor for me because I just couldnt stand up and run the motor any longer. After he took the helm he put on a clinic on how to catch fish off of that on little rock pile and we had what we thought was about a 15lb limit. We head to the river with time to hit a couple of spots were I caught a few 4 lbers during the practise day and we caught a couple of keepers, but they wouldn't help us out. When we got to the weigh in they told us we were the last boat to check in, but we were not late and we had 2 minuets to spare. As we were loading our fish into our weigh in bag we were guesstimating our weight and we figured about 13 lbs. We were very disappointed. When we got to the stage we were very surprised at our total coming out to 16 and some change that day. I guess getting beat up for so long out there we were totally out of it and our sizing skills were shot. That weight put us in 17th place and only 6 lbs behind the leaders. Did we think we had a shot at winning the event after that. NOPE. But we still had a chance at making a check. ON saturday morning the wind was supposed to be out of the East at 5 to 10 and on Erie that translates to 25-30. We didnt have that bad of a ride out to our rock pile and could see some boats running farther off shore having a real ruff ride so we just hugged the shore line and kept it at about 30 and did well to our spot. I could barely move so I let Poorboy run the motor again and he went to it with a 5 fish limit in the box by 8 am. I only caught 2 keepers all day were as he caught 20. It definitely made a difference being in the front of the boat and watching the GPS and knowing exactly were that rock pile was located. We decided to start making our way back to the ramp and stopped at a spot were I caught a few practising were poorboy did it again and managed to cull out 3 of our 5 keepers. As fast as I could get in the livewell and get the smallest one out he was calling for the net with another culler. We headed back to the check in and arrived with 1 minuet to spare for that day and our total was almost 18 pounds. We ended up in 9th place with 33-10 ounces for our efforts and we were very proud of ourselves for doing so well with the competion we were against in this event. The tromblys sure put on a good show on Erie and I hope to someday be able to constantly catch a 20 lb bag out there like they can, but for just one week of practising out there ever I think we did well. On sunday I had a club tournament out there and headed back to the rock pile were I managed a 16 lb limit and my non-boater got a nice 13 lb limit as well. I ended up in 2nd for that event and finished to another guy that is tough on erie and he brought in 19 something. I am just amazed that the one little rock pile I found that is no bigger than the size of my boat held that many fish and makes me wonder how many I pasted within a few feet of that may hold 6lbers. More practise time and maybe I will be the one holding the big check on Erie one of these days.

[Vic Cerabone]

Thanks for the congrats guys.  We still owe you two a beer!  Jose and I were pleased with our finish, even though 1st would have been nice.  My season was off to tough start, but this finish, along with a 2nd in the Jan's Invitational a few weeks ago have reassured me that hard work pays off - eventually.  We made several long runs to our fish and executed perfectly.  We were tied for 2nd with Ron and George after day one, and we made couple of critical and risky decisions that gave a +20 lbs bag for a second day.  Maintaining a such a good catch for two is a step forward in our development.

I can't say enough about how FLW Outdoors ran this event.  The equipment, the tourney director, everything was awesome.  One statement that stuck in mind from the meeting:  "...you take care of your fish during the day, and we'll take came of them after that.."  How true.  The are certainly "squared away".  I've been putting off fishing the BFL in favor of team events, but next year might be the time.

Good job to everybody who fished.

Vic

Vic