My trip to the Classic - Day 3

[blakstr1]

Day 3 - Friday 2/24


Friday began with a 3:00am wake-up call so Ken (my travel partner) and I could make it to the Radisson by 4:00am as instructed for a shot at being observers for the first day of the Classic.? We met up with Rocky from the Florida BASS Federation, who instructed us on to the tournament boat staging area.? We rounded the corner into to the guarded area and the illumination of bass boat light poles and 2006 Toyota Tundra parking lights caused my eyes to squint, it was an incredible sight to behold from a dreamer?s eyes like mine.? The excitement was mounting as it seemed our chances were increasing until we arrived and saw the 75 or so people just like us that were anticipating zipping around the Kissimmee Chain O? Lakes with one of the legendary bass stars.

ESPN had an area set up serving breakfast and refreshments, we were told to meet in this area for a pre-tournament briefing.? Many of the volunteers had already claimed a truck and boat as they had been assigned to months prior, it is typical that individuals send in a deposit and register for this opportunity similar to registering to fish one of the events.? During the briefing they covered safety concerns, responsibilities of the observers, schedules of the tournament, etc. then without hesitation they instructed everyone if you didn?t already have a vehicle make your way to a truck with the lights off, and like that I was gone. They also explained the BassTrak system to the observers; this is the way they track what fish are caught during the tournament.? It works through Nextel service, as fish are caught the observer enters the weight information and whether the fish was kept or not, this then sends the GPS coordinates to ESPN.? They use this information to return the fish back to the lake and general area they were caught from.

I sprinted passed a couple waddling gentleman like Steve Prefontaine, hurdled an equipment bag like a pouncing cheetah on an antelope?well I guess I walked quickly anyway, straight to boat 50 and hit the lights.? I had claimed my boat and nobody was going to tell me differently, Ken was able to reach boat 51, so we both had claimed our prize.? I hadn?t even noticed the name on the boat when I went to the truck, but soon noticed I had ?The Big Show? himself Terry Scroggins and Ken had claimed Stacy King?s boat.? Shortly after the pros began to arrive via motor coach from the Animal Kingdom Resort and made their way to their Classic boats.?

Our duties included driving the pro to the launch site which was about 12 miles away, launching them, riding throughout the day, driving them to the weigh-in site which was 15 miles from the ramp, then returning the truck and boat to the boat yard?the day had begun.? During the morning ride Terry and I made small talk, he had a lot on his mind being an early tournament favorite to win since he is from Florida and these are almost considered his home waters.? He slept off and on, but managed to give me a small bit of advice, remember this isn?t any different than fishing back home, the stakes are just a little higher.? We did talk about fishing in Traverse City a bit, he was there last summer and fished out on the Bay, he said they loved it. but who doesn?t??

Prior to blast off I was swapped out of Terry?s boat and put into a camera boat while the cameraman took my spot.? Our new assignment was to follow Terry from the Berkley Tackle boat and following us would be a film shuttle.? Terry gave us the coordinates of his first stop which was in the southern part of Kissimmee Lake some 32 miles away, I set a route on the Lowrance GPS and my driver awaited the blast off.? I strapped on my Fish Hedz and we were off, through Lake Toho to the lock, thru Lake Hatchina, Lake Cypress, and into Lake Kissimmee to Terry?s hot spot.? Upon arrival and much to Terry?s despair someone had already made it to his spot but he decided to start here anyway.? We stayed quite a ways away from his spot due to very shallow water; Terry had to basically jump a little bar going 60mph to get into his first spot.? Terry is a run and gun type of fisherman which was evident by the 30+ different spots he fished the first 2 days, Terry decided to leave the first spot and that?s where the trouble began.? My driver had run us on ground and we had to us the trolling motor to get out to good water all the while Terry was heading off at 75mph to his next spot.? We finally got going with Terry nowhere in sight, we headed off in his general descending direction but we had lost him.? We continued to buzz around the huge body of water in search of the elusive boat #50, but had no luck.? We were communicating with ESPN via telephone and they had GPS tracking information on Terry?s boat but our GPS system quit working.?

The driver of my boat was very inexperience with running a boat, he was a retired volunteer that runs this camera boat all over the country for ESPN, but had no idea how to work GPS, didn?t understand how to trim the boat, and had he ever been on the Kissimmee Chain before.? We did manage to make our way to one of the remote Mercury mechanic stations where they worked on our GPS, turns out we had passed a boat with radar that scrambled our signal and caused our unit to fail.? Here at the station, which was also known as Camp Mack, we reunited with our film shuttle that we had gotten separated from 2 hours prior.? Together, along with the ESPN provided coordinates we set out to find Terry?s boat.

His GPS trail led us back to Lake Toho and only a couple miles from the launch, we finally located his boat at 12:30, only 5 hours after we lost him.? We stayed with Terry for the rest of the day, observed through a thunderstorm and some wind, he managed to round out his limit and cull two small fish for a total of around 12lbs., not the day he had hoped for.?

We headed to the weigh-in, which with traffic took about 45 minutes to get to, upon arrival at the state of the art Orange County Convention Center we were directed through a truck and boat wash area then to the back stage area of the convention center where we lined up with the others awaiting weigh-in.? While in this area I talked with many of the pros and actually got a first hand look at how the production was run.? The weigh-in took a great deal of time, we were actually backstage for close to 2 hours until it was finally our turn and an ESPN employee took over the driver seat, I moved to the passenger seat while we proceeded into the weigh-in area to drop Terry and his fish off on the stage.

I made it back to the weigh-in entrance and parked, I wanted to wait for Ken to get through as he was 15 boats behind me, so we could make our way back to the boat yard together.? As I waited I walked over to Mike Iaconelli?s boat and had a picture taken with him, I then called my wife and told her about that experience, when Mike said can I talk to her?? I handed him my phone and he had a conversation with my wife which started out with him impersonating Brittney Spears, it was very entertaining, he was rather respectful and comedic, my wife really enjoyed it.? I continued to wait out by the truck when out of the blue Andre De?Villiers walked up and said I need to get a ride with you, then along came Chad Brauer, Dave Wolak, and Mark Tucker, they all wanted a ride back to the boat yard to catch the shuttle.? I decided I could do better than that and drop them back to the Animal Kingdom which was no more than two miles from the boat yard anyway.? We drove and just chatted, I got a lot of tournament gossip and their hush, hush plans for the next day.?

They are all average guys that were very humbled to be fishing at the level they compete at.? The funniest part of the excursion was as we started to leave I told them, you guys thought you were lucky to get a ride but ended up with a guy from Michigan that doesn?t have a clue where he?s at.? Andre De?Villiers chimed in and said, could be worse the driver could be from Africa.? I made it back to the boat drop and met up with Ken, we stopped through a Taco Bell for dinner and back to our low rent room all to get to sleep at 11:00pm.? Can?t wait to do it all again in 4 hours.

[dartag]

thanks for the write up.. sounds like a good time..

question:  did they keep spectator boats away..  i know the ESPN people were quite a ways away..  and never really saw any other boats around the fishermen.

[blakstr1]

no the spectators were around but really not that many...we had a couple with us most of the time but that was it, i'd say most of them stayed within 30 - 50 yards of the pros.

[Dan]

Hey Blake,
Thanks for such great reports. I know how long it takes just to put these together and they are very well done. Props to ya!!!!

[blakstr1]

Hey Blake,
Thanks for such great reports. I know how long it takes just to put these together and they are very well done. Props to ya!!!!

Thank-you very much Dan...I really appreciate the vote of confidence..