EBA club dominates at the BBC Rally.

[Revtro]

The GLB/EBA guys that also participate on BBC fished BBC's annual Michigan Rally on Saturday.  It was a dominating performance thanks mostly to Mark Hill and Mike McGrane.  The team of Hill/McGrane won the event with 16+ which was a good weight considering the horrible conditions we had to fish that day.  The fishing was OFF to say the least.  The boat traffic was the worst I had seen all year.  It was like a 2nd Jobbie Nooner going on out there.  It was absolutely insane.  I have never seen anything like this before in September. 

Third Place was taken by Jack Cahn and his son Jeffery with 10+.  Jeffery got 2 of the 4 they weighed and he had a really great time that day and was extremely proud of their big fish for the day.  Great job Jeffery!!!

Fourth Place (last money spot) was taken by myself and David Griffin with 9+.  Man, were we ever surprised 9+ got us in the money!  We thought our measly 4 bag wasn't much more than a colossal waste of gas.

The Big Fish of the tourney was taken by Mike McGrane I believe, which rounded out a really good performance by the guys in the club. 

The best part of the whole day was that our guys did well WITHOUT even sharing any info before the tournament.  Each team did well on their own merit which says a lot about the talent level of some of our guys.  That's the really great part about EBA; we all become better anglers by learning from each other rather than competing against each other in our events. 

I had commented to David as we started fishing our first spot, that "I bet Mark and Mike win this thing".  So I wasn't surprised at all that they won.  Every season I learn something from Mark especially.  It's awesome to have such a seasoned veteran in the club to learn from.  He is truly an exceptional angler. 

Great job EBA!

Ok, now about our day.
Our day started off on the Mile Roads because I had caught some good fish there the previous week.  Well, it just goes to show you what a week and some really bad weather can do.  We got 2 fish, nothing big.  I then broke off on what seemed like a really good fish.  My UNI-UNI knot broke and I lost the leader and everything.  (Next season, NO LEADERS.  I'm gonna fish straight floro because I can't stand breaking a knot in a tourney.) 

We then moved to another spot on the Southern Mile Roads.  Nothing but mud there, so we didn't fish it more than 5 minutes.

We then made a move to some offshore humps near the shipping channel where the water was much clearer and there was some current.  Nobody home.  That was another area where there were strong numbers of fish less than 2 weeks ago. 

Starting to get a little worried, we made a move to the South Shore.  The water quality there wasn't perfect, but not that bad.  We had a couple of feet of visibility which is usually ok for the South Shore.  We fished it for an hour with no results.

Ok, so now we're getting really worried.  So we made our next move to a main lake area with a good amount of structure.  We hooked up with a couple of small fish and managed a 14.125" keeper.  After an hour or so of that nonsense, we moved again to the Middle Channel.  We fished a small spot that usually holds one average Smallie, but we broke off what looked like a decent fish and never got another bite.  Grr.

Now we're getting desperate.  With only 3 in the livewell, we made a run up to the North Channel.  We didn't want to do it, but in desperation we hoped there might be some water clarity deep and maybe we could manage 2 fish in 2+ hours.  Our biggest fish of the day came out of 35 feet deep, a 3.7 if I recall.  That gave us 4 in the livewell which is all we'd end up with.

We made 3 more moves in the last hour and couldn't manage another keeper.  We stopped near the ramp for 7 minutes before we had to head in to the launch.  We felt pretty bad about our day until we saw all the other weights.  We quickly realized that our bag was actually fairly respectable considering the tough bite and rough conditions.  Getting paid was a good feeling since we burned up so much gas running all over the dang lake. 

It could have been a better day, but in retrospect, it could have been a whole lot worse.  It got a little dangerous at times with the sheer number of insane recreational boaters out there buzzing within a boat length of us at WOT while we were trying to hold on a spot.  So we're glad to come home alive.    (Thank you Lord!)

[dartag]

whats the BBC?

[Revtro]

Sorry for all the acronyms.  BassBoatCentral.  I should stop PDQ with all the acronyms.  Oops, there I go again.  Thanks for the 411 about the post.  Oops, there I go again.  Grr.  I'll get on that ASAP.  L8R G8R.  TTYL