South Long Lake Snatcher Tournament

The Weather:
The weather forecast was for it to be raining from the get go and winds out of the NW gusting upwards of 20mph.  Fortunately the rain held off and the wind stayed fairly mild as well out of E NE for the first couple of hours.  It then rained for about an hour or so and the wind was really blowing by the end of the day.

The Tournament:
We were first boat out at around quarter to 7AM.  We would have got out sooner but a certain boat put there plug in the wrong hole.  We went right to our starting spot and my boater Owen had his big bass of the day in the first five minutes.  I decided the conditions might be right for topwater so I had put on my Stanley Phantom.

Right after Owen got his fish in the boat.  I had my first keeper on, a solid 15.25" fish that I would hold onto all day.  I caught the next 3 fish as well landing a 14.5", 16", 14.75".  By this point we started getting crowed by a couple of different boats; All of them catching fish as well.  Owen landed a few to catch up with me.  I got a 15.75" and 13.50".  We were now in a calm area and I got my big fish of the day a 17.5" , 3lb 1oz bass also on the Phantom.  Unfortunately we didn't really stay in that area to work it over and headed back over the water we had just come from.  The wind had come up a little bit more at this point and when we got back into the wind the topwater bite seemed to have died.

Owen caught one off a dock so we did that for bit, but that was totally unproductive.  It started to rain so we headed to our secondary area.  I think I landed one that didn't help then I got a 16 incher getting both fish on black blue Strike King Pure Poison with black blue Berkley Havoc Grass Pig Jr. as the trailer.

This is what I would get the rest of my fish on for the day.  Other than that one fish that area was a bust.

We then went to an old reed bed that was in the wind.  I had a good feeling fish on right away but it came off half way to the boat.  That was it for that area, so we went back to our starting spot which was quite crowded at this point.  We started catching fish almost immediately, so we worked the area for the rest of the day.  However we did go up into the calm area that was still calm and I culled a couple of times with a 15.25" and a 16.5" and I got several that didn't help. Owen culled a couple of times as well.  I did try throwing the Phantom some scaring Chuck Steinbauer in the process, but didn't get any hits on it.

Results:
My 6 fish weighed in a 14lbs 7ozs which put me in a tie for 5th place, which I won on the big bass tie breaker.  I got lucky because the other guy had a dead fish penalty.  Owen had 13/7 and came in 10th.  We broke record for the best first club tournament of the year in terms of total weight caught.  Our average bag was 12.65lbs.  Chuck Steinbauer won with 16/15 beating Ed Ott by an ounce.

Analysis:
I'm happy with how things went for the most part.  I had fun, it was a good day with the topwater to start.  It's pretty clear we wasted time fishing those docks, but one fish sent us off on that mission, so what are you gonna do?