Sit down, it will take a while to read, but hopefully you will find it entertaining. Do you remember last week, when I said there was not a lot going on at the Rock these days? Well all that I can say is this past weekend was just a blur in my memory today. I told you last week in the report that the Red Door tournament was this past weekend, Saturday and Sunday to be exact, and that Jordan and I were not going to fish it. Well we did, and in many ways I was glad that we did, and in some ways I wish we would have just stayed on shore where it was safe. Even though there were only 39 teams in the tournament, the pay out was still 5,000 bucks for first, and they where only going to pay down 5 spots, which is always second in our books. We wanted the trophy that comes with first place. It is always about the win. Who wants to be second place in any sport right? We needed to fish this tournament, just so that we would finish the season and try to put it behind us. It has been a tough year for us in the tournaments. Well, this one was not much different from the last one at Hunters point. We caught 6 fish on Saturday, with no weigh fish, and Sunday we caught one fish, that was 27 and one half inches in the morning. I had one bite all day on Sunday and as I was reeling it in, it came off and when I got the line in, it hade been cut by a tooth. The feeling that I had was like, I had just been punched in the guts!
Let me back up just a little bit. I would like to try to give you a some what of a visual, on the two days on the water this past weekend in the tourney. We will start off with the wind, constant 30mph winds, with 40 to 45mph gusts, all day long, from the West / North West! We off course thought, well it is going to be an up and down kind off day. If we had only known how wrong we were to make that kind of a run in those kinds of waves, I do not think we would have done it. When you have those kinds of winds, the waves and swells become your worst nightmare, not the wind itself. You start to get swells in the 8 ft range, with constant 4 and 6 footers crashing over the bow and stern of the boat and heaven forbid you would get side ways on one of them. I am sure that you get the picture. So we said to each other, why not make the run down to the rocks anyway, where we know that we can bobber up on the rocks and catch some keepers. So we punched in Rocky Reef on the lowrance unit and to my horror, it was 13.75 miles from the Red Door. Just to move the story along, it was not pretty. We where completely soaked within a mile of take off and we still had 12 more to go.
Once again we made the long and torturous journey down to the rocks, and it was not any better down here than it was up there for wind and waves. We sat on the rocks for 3 hours and caught 3 fish, one being a 27 inch with great big fat shoulders on it, it must have weighed over 8 lbs it was so fat. Back it went, along with the other 2 fish that were too big, but not big enough. At that point it was pretty apparent to us and it was almost noon with no fish in the well, that once again the Reef was not going to give us the right bites and off we went to the east side of the lake to July Bar. That gravel has been very good to us in the past, at this time off year. Wrong again, it was 7.46 miles from here to there and we could tack it just enough on the way over to not take to much of a beating, all though we did take some hard hits from the side that will make you wish you had not done that and it is a very wet ride with the waves breaking over the sides of the boat and the wind turning water into little tiny spears as it blows through you. So now we have gone over 20 miles to catch these darn snarf garvelers as we like to refer to slot fish. The waves over there have had 12 miles of water to build on and they were very, very impressive in their shapes and sizes. Some were so big and thunderous, that you would actually brace for impact as they came up from behind you.
We were control drifting all day with the big motor. It was never out of reverse for very long, but with that comes lots of water wanting to enter from the rear. At one point I looked back and there was water, and I mean lots of water coming up from the floor. Jordan had the bilge pump on all day. So we just put the nose to the wind and started to assist the bilge pump, by letting it run out the back of the boat until the pump could catch up. I said to Jordy; let us not have to call out a mayday please! To make it even worse, we did not catch any fish at all. We could not keep the drifting speeds under 3.50 to 4.75 mph. that was not going to work and you could not hold with an anchor in these winds, that is unless you would like to sink the boat. The waves were just too big and it was getting late in the day, it was almost 4:00pm. We had to be in by 5:00pm and it was going to take all of an hour just to get back 10 miles to the Red Door. So off we go back to the north and dead into the waves most off the way, we would take on some waves that were I know over 8 ft. The bow of the boat would go up and the stern of the boat would go down, so far that it would totally submerge the cowling of the big motor and dump 20 gallons of water in the boat.
No weigh fish that day out of 6 fish caught. I will make the second day memory sweet and simple. No weigh fish, but we made the run down 9 miles to Sherman�s flat, where we spent the whole day trying to control drift the entire west side of the flat from top to bottom as the winds where still from the West/North West at 30 to 40 mph, but at least it would blow you down the flat and you could maneuver around just enough to be productive. One fish was caught, it was the 27 and a half caught by Jordan and I had one bite that broke of just after the hook set. We did try pulling some cranks down the flat for the last hour, with no success. The ride back to the Red Door was just like the ride down, wet and wild. We took a couple of hard waves from the side that just shook your whole skeleton. So there you have it, the days in the life of the Rockman and Tillerman in these tourneys. I would not have it any other way, than to fish these tournaments with a long time close friend like Jordan, but I am getting a little too old to take on these big waves that this lake will throw at you, that I can do without. It got so bad at one point, that we started referring to the Deadliest Catch show. I would like to take Sig Hanson and put him out here on some big waves in a 20 ft boat with 8 ft waves, just to see him wet himself! Now that would be a good show!
Anyway, one fish that weighed just over 6 lbs took first place day one, and just under 6 lbs in day two with three fish took it on day two. Man, those are the lowest weights I have ever seen to win a tourney on Mille Lacs Lake.
Have a great week
We will see ya
When we see ya
The Rockman
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Topic: Rockman's Report (Read 1509 times)
