Top
5 Finishers, left to right, 1st to 5th place:
Barton Butts,Fred Blom,Jason Pierce
Burnell Haney,Mark Mothersell
Canandaigua
Lake Report
10/17/2004
This
Sunday morning was our 4th Early Bird tournament for the 2005 season.
The weatherman forecasted terrible conditions…but that is upstate
NY in October! You just never know. The forecast was rain with high
wind gusts and low 40’s for the temp range. Sad to say that
for once the weatherman turned out to be correct. On the way to pick
up my fishing buddy I could almost swear that I saw snowflakes mixed
with rain! Oh yes you could see your breath…it was going to
be an interesting day on the water to say the least. Arriving at the
launch site at the north end of the lake the wind was howling and
the waves were pounding the shore. I had to make a decision whether
to postpone this tournament or try moving down to the south end of
the lake…which was about a 25 minute ride by truck and see if
we could launch from there and still hold a safe tournament. I questioned
a couple of the local fishermen and I decided to shift down to the
south end and launch from there. Arriving at the south end of the
lake…evaluating the situation, I felt that we could hold this
tournament as scheduled. The wind was still blowing and the rain was
still coming down…but this end of the lake was somewhat calmer.
Never ever having fished this lake, a very good friend of mine told
me you will only need one rod this time of the year and one bait!
However, me being me, and not having my boat, you see my boat is at
the Boat House in Alabama to be sold, so I am a non-boater for this
tournament. I did bring more than one rod and of course any one that
knows me, knows the first rod I will use in the morning will be a
Pop-R…LOL !! Well after throwing the Pop-R, and the spinnerbait
and the crankbait and never having a strike, I finally decided to
tie on what my friend had suggested. This lake in the areas we fished
has extremely sharp drop offs, some areas that we had fished dropped
from 3 feet to 25 feet in a matter of inches…like a vertical
wall. Docks 20 feet long were sitting in 25 to 30 feet of water. This
lake does get very deep and rough…well over 100 feet deep in
places.
cFrom
what the winner described he fished points and deep water. And as
he told me he only used one rod, one bait all day! He told me that
the pattern seemed to be the rougher the point the bigger the fish…you
had to fight the wind and the waves to get the bait down 20 to 30
feet. He mentioned that he must have caught over 35 fish many of them
were 3 lbs., that were culled. Ladies and gentlemen this was the biggest
limit that we have ever taken in, at any of our tournaments, that
I have been Director of this region. They were all smallmouth bass!
Top 5 finishers:
1st Place
Barton Butts 20.56 lbs.
2nd Place Fred Blom 11.30 lbs
3rd Place Jason Pierce 6.65 lbs.
4th Place Burnell Haney 6.55 lbs.
5th Place Mark Mothersell 3.34 lbs.
Big Bass
Barton Butts 5.70 lbs.
2nd Big Bass Barton Butts 4.90 lbs.
This
concludes our Early Birds for the 2004 Season. We have 2 Early Birds
scheduled in May at Lake Erie … the launch site is Small Boat
Harbor. Have a safe winter ….and a great Holiday season.. We
will be sending out information about our once a month dinner meetings
beginning in March… location has not been determined for the
meeting as of yet. We will be in touch.
Thank
you all for a great fishing season!
Joe, Don and Marlene
