BASSMANIA CLASSIC XIII

My partner and I entered the BM100 (for boats with 115 horse power or less) series this year for a chance to Fish the BASSMANIA XIII CLASSIC held on the Tri-lakes (Pigeon, Upper and Lower Buckhorn and Chemong Lakes). Our season started slow with some mediocre, head scratching weights, but we fought our way up to a respectable finish of 6th place overall after 4 events. This earned us the privilege to fish the Classic in our first full dedicated season of tournament bass fishing.

Going to the Classic was a great experience with the added opportunity to talk to and fish against some of the best anglers in Ontario. During the opening orientation meeting I got a chance to meet the cream of the crop. Mike Desforges, Doug Brownridge, Ceasar Ruscio(a broken rod story later), David Chong and many other notable top tournament anglers were present and to say that I was excited and honoured is definitely an understatement.

Our first day we scored an underwhelming roughly 7.5 pound mixed bag of large and smallmouth. My pre-fish the week earlier had me zeroing in on rock\weed transition areas with prime strike zones seemingly in 10 to 12 feet of water. That pattern seemed to hold for the pre-fish the day prior to the event so my partner and I decided to stick with that plan. It didn't work out as expected. The weather was beautiful, for sun bathing that is. It was a hot and sunny blue bird day with water as flat as a pancake, not really conducive to good fishing. Top weight at the end of the day was 20 lbs, so we knew someone had figured them out. We certainly had our work cut out for us the next day.

Day two had us trying for bigger smallmouth off deeper rock shoals. Again, the sky was cloudless and the water clear as gin. We could see at least 12 feet down and knew the fish could see us, so we headed to deeper water in the hopes of hooking unsuspecting bronze backs. Nothing.... It was still early, maybe an hour or so into the event. I knew we had to drastically change our our game plan as we suspected we needed at least fifteen lbs to make the cut for the final day. (Turned out to be 19 lbs!!! ouch!!) Checkin was 4pm, an extra hour more than usual. I can't begin to describe how fast checkin time comes around on a tourney day. Seems like a snap of the fingers. It goes by so fast!!

I scanned the horizon for any visible cover or structure and noticed a small offshore island of cane. With it being so bright and clear, overhead cover might be the ticket the bass were looking for to shield them from the penetrating sun. We planed our way over and cut the main engine just short of a hundred yards from the edge of the cane. Our slow approach had us tossing spinnerbaits to cover some water for any aggressive fish. The cane island had a perfect combination of openings covered with some slop and we started pitching and flipping our baits. As we made our way to the point, I got my first subtle "tick" and set the hook hard on a one and half pounder. Not big, but it was one for the box and boosted our confidence. Just what we needed to get the ball rolling! We push a few meters further around the island, made some targeted casts and suddenly I sensed a second subtle "Tick" and proceeded to boat flip another largemouth that was slightly bigger at just shy of 2 lbs. Okay...things are looking good, we're making some quick progress. We press on and a few moments later my partner let loose on an aggressive strike with another clone fish just shy of 2 pounds. Fantastic!!! The excitement level was high and we had three fish in the box for just under 15 minutes of pitching and flipping. We continued on until we fished the entire circumference of that small cane island and decided to go for one more pass around. This time we choose different baits and heavier worm weights in order to get into the farthest reaches of pockets.

My partner Ryan decided to target the really thick stuff. Within seconds of his cast he snapped back a hard hook set on a beautiful 3.5 pound largie. Wow!! Our second time through and we're getting bigger fish. Suffice it to say we were pumped and the adrenaline flowed freely!!. A few moments later I cast into an adjacent opening and let my power worm settle to the bottom. Sawing it back and forth amongst the cane I felt the slightest little tick. That kind of strange sensation that's so subtle but which triggers your brain to instinctively shout at your body to set the hook... and hard!!! Another bright green three pounder in the box!

In just under 25 minutes we had boated roughly 12.5 pounds and still enjoyed several hours before weigh-in. We continued on around that little island but the bites died off. Even still, we couldn't have been happier. Not only had we a great limit to start the day with, but our confidence was significantly boosted and as we all know, confidence is 99.9% of the game.

That short and exciting experience perfectly set the tone and mindset to find new water in search for that lurking monster that would be needed to get us past the cut off. Unfortunately we didn't end up finding him but we had such a great time and learned a ton. We started our event at 85th position and ended in 51st out of 116 boats. Not a bad day in our books and those 25 minutes is what keeps you coming back.

Cheers

Flavio