My son, my friend Mark and myself entered into the tournament this year. It's the 1st anniversary of me and my son taking up fishing as a hobby together.
It was a blast, getting the boat into the water at 5 am with 50 other teams around was very intense. When it was time everyone blasted off from the Harbor which was a sight to behold. Mark almost hit the sailing clubs far out buoy on the way out (whoops!) and the excitement continued. We headed NW away from the pack to 75-100 feet of water to an area me and my son of discovered some good structure around in our earlier ventures. I started the day thinking we would be lucky to bag one fish and was just happy to be out having fun and being a part of the tournament with my son and friend.
Right after we got our lures down we hooked up with our first fish. I have never had my heart race so much holding a net in my life. Mark got the fish in after about 4 minutes and it was around 8 pounds, nothing huge but we were off to a great start. About 30 minutes later and a little deeper my rod went off ( I am 0 for 0 this season downrigging ). I thought my heart was racing holding a net, with a fish on my rod I thought my heart was going to explode. We managed to get that fish into the boat as well, now we had 2 fish on the board, a 7 and 9 pounder.
The waves started building up and the rain started coming down and then my son's rod popped off and folded over. My son Jack was having a battle trying to get the fish to the boat. After about 10 minutes he got it up to the back and then the fish decided to get a second wind and went sideways hard, Jack was struggling to keep the fish under control and not get tangled in our other rods. The fish was a monster ( to us anyway) and all the sudden was full of energy again. About 4 minutes later he finally wore the fish out and now we had 3 fish, 7, 9 and 14 pounds. At this point, I started to believe we had a chance of getting up on the boards.
The next two hours we got rained on hard as we bounced around searching for more fish. Some other boats started to show up around us and I got a lot of funny looks being in a tank top and shorts ( I am super hot-blooded ) from the fisherman in other boats who probably thought I was crazy. We started changing our lures and started doubting our choices. Should we go back to what we started with catching fish or has the bite changed? I always start doubting myself in moments like this fishing. I went back to the fly/flasher combo that got us two of our first fish and Mark decided to see if the plug bite was on. We had about 30 minutes left and had been dried off by the sun and feeling in much higher spirits. Soon as that plug went down that Mark put on we had our 4th fish.
With about 20 minutes left we did everything we could but the clock ticked down to 0 and we had to pack it up and get back to not be late for weigh-ins. Our final weight was 37 or 39 pounds with 4 fish, I think we were just outside of placing in the top 5. Before we went out in the morning I never thought we would do so well. The day was full of excitement and adventure. We donated our big fish to the GTAA for the fish fry in September. I have another year to practice and get better before the next Slam and can't wait to see how we do then.
Big shout out and thanks to John Baldry, his son and everyone else who helped organize and run the events! If anyone has spare any spare time or would like to give back, please consider joining the Georgian Triangle anglers association. My family has signed up and have been helping out at the hatchery 1 day a week for the past few months, the kids have a lot of fun and it's teaching them about giving something back to the community they are a part of.
Our first Slam experiance.
