Brad and I fished the Mishawaka's Summerfest Tourney this morning. It was on the Merrifield stretch of
the river. We fished from 6:00 till 1:00. Water was a warm 80 degrees and moving at a good clip in most spots. So to start things off if it weren't for
my Son coming in and telling me that it was 5:15 I would still be sleeping.
He was so excited because this was his first tournament he has ever fished, so he set his own alarm.
We make it to the launch was the last boat to register. They only had 8 boats.
The first place we stop I was throwing a Buzzbait around some chunk rock, and after this fish hitting it 3-4 times, I finally hook up with a 1 lb. 5 oz.
Smallie. As I sling it in the boat it coughs up a whole crayfish that was bigger than a Jig-n-Pig and it still hit my Buzzbait. Then we moved up river to
another spot that had some overhanging trees providing some good shade. I told Brad we needed to skip our baits up under the cover. We did just that and we
boated a good Smallmouth. The scale read 4 lbs. 3 oz. I was pumped and told Brad we probably had big bass with that one. We moved around after that and came
back to that spot after awhile. Did the same thing and boated a 1 lb. 7 oz. Smallie. So we had what I thought would be about 7 lbs. That was all we could
muster up the rest of the day. We caught those 3 fish before 10:30. I still felt good 'cause that stertch dosen't normally have big wieghts for
limits. With the 3 we had I felt pretty good. Well, at the wiegh-in our big fish only wieghed 3 lbs.
WHAT???? And our total wieght was 5 lbs. 12 oz. So I wieghed the fish again
before letting it go and my scale then said 2 lbs. 14 oz. Go figure!! I was so mad.
We missed big bass by 3 oz. Someone had a 3 lb. 3 oz. Smallie. I told Brad that I felt let down because I thought we had more than what we really
did. We finished 5th out of the 8 boats, so not a total loss. The Good: Brad caught his first bass on a Jig-n-Pig. Here is a picture, it was 11 1/2 inches.
I wish it was a 1/2 more inch so he could put it in the livewell.
We caught more than I thought we would, had a great day and a great time!! Here are a couple of more pics.
Filling the bag.
Brad with our big bass. (that wasen't)
Our total bag, 5 lbs. 12 0z. for 5th place.
In other news, found out my GPS is fried (horizontal lines through the whole thing) and I need 2 new trolling motor batteries. 
The winning team had 5 fish for 8 lbs. 8 oz.
