Rockman's Report/West coast

[rockman]

What a week, what a week. The Rock has eaten cooked goose on this tourney. Out of 126 teams, we ended up in thirty seventh spot over all, with only 3 fish each day, for a weight of just over 8 lbs. The winning weight was just over 20 lbs. That is a very low weight for this tourney. That is how bad the bite was for most of the guys in the tourney last week. Last week started off pretty darn good on Monday with a couple of days of nice weather ahead so we could get out and do some pre-fishing for a couple of days before the big dance with the Wave Wacker Tourney on Thursday and Friday. The pre fishing was going pretty well and we where able to boat 5 to 7 slots everyday for 3 days. That is, until Wednesday when we had 35 to 50 mph winds, for over 15 hours and 3 inches of rain changed it all, and kept us off the lake on Wednesday. I have been fishing this lake for 3 decades and have never seen a storm system shut down the bite like it did to us last week.

I am talking about every spot that was holding fish during the pre-fish, were now all scattered about the lake. It was huge challenge to boat just 10 fish a day Thursday and Friday and to have only 3 of them be slots was a sad thing to experience. We wait all year to fish this tourney and to have such a poor showing in it, is something that takes days to get over. I had to overcome the pain of a severely sprained index finger on my left hand, which by the way is not usually my fishing hand, but being the co pilot for the tourney, ended up being my fishing hand for the day. As I was getting into the boat on Friday, I was pushing Jordan away from the dock and my finger happened to get caught in the trolling motor release, as Jordan had thrown it into reverse to avoid hitting the bow of the boat on the dock and I had too jump onto the bow of the boat with my finger still caught in the trolling motor release or end up in the water.

Needless to say, I removed a big chuck of skin and almost broke the finger, as it started to bleed profusely and I did not even want to see what had happened to the finger. The pain started to move in and it was going to be a very, very long and painful day on the big pond. So I grabbed a clean rag and tore into a long bandage, wrapped it up to the middle finger as a splint and went out fishing. Just to keep it out of the elements when we were running, I stuck my hand into a 1 gallon Zip lock bag to keep it dry and held on for dear life with one hand on the ride over. We had 25 to 30 mph winds out of the West, so it made for a very painful ride for 11 miles to get to the West side to our spots.

It was a lot like, what I would have to imagine a Bull rider would feel, riding a 3000 lb bull with a badly sprained finger. Not an easy task I have to say and then to have to ride that Bull backwards on the ride back to the East side for the weigh in was not fun at all. But when faced with adversity, we must find a way to block out the pain and do the job at hand. But, it is what it was and we will move on to the Hunters Tourney, which by the way I just found out this morning, is this weekend, instead of the next weekend. Hunters point has always been two weeks after the Wave Wacker, not this year. We will be on the water pre-fishing again for a couple of days for that. I will be a very tired boy again this week.

These 18 hour days get harder and harder to handle, the older I get. I will post more in depth reports on the fishing after the Hunters point tourney this weekend. We will have a lot to discuss by then with the bite changing day by day. There are a lot of fish moving around the lake and we will have to find a pattern to the madness of it to get it done this weekend.

Stay tuned in to see what The Rock has cookin in the Hunters Point tourney this weekend.

I am hoping for Prime Rib, this time around!!

I hate a Cooked Goose!!

Have a great week

Be safe

The Rockman