Friday we pre-fished out of oak orchard, we will just say that we eliminated a lot of empty water and only caught a few fish, no complaints we knew where not to fish and that is just as important as where to fish.

Saturday morning we set up in an area that had produced nice steelhead on friday afternoon, it was in front of a small river and the recent rains had flushed out all kinds of crap into the lake and all we could do was hook weeds. We bugged out after an hour of crap and moved and pulled no fish, moved again and found a school of fish late in the morning and we landed 5 keepers to enter. We returned to port with our box of fish and we were in 19th place out of 38 Pro Boats so right in the middle was fine with me there were a lot of boats with 0-2 fish for the day.

Sunday we headed out and tried a spot out a bit deeper off the weedy river mouth and pulled a quick steelhead and a couple coho in the first 2 hours but then it died, we headed out to where we did well the day before and found our school of steelies and coho. we were able to put 6 more keepers in the box for a 9 fish total and headed back for weigh in. I didn't see where we placed for the day but i think we took about 5th place for the day because our box pulled us up from 18th into 10th place overall for the tournament and into the money for $1000.

So 10th place out of 38 pro boats, I am very happy about that. We also beat out i think 10 of the 12 amateur boats so we scored about 12 out of 50 boats but still took 10th place money for pro division.

Not bad for never fishing that port before.

Here is Dad and Tom with one of dads 10 pound steelhead, taken on a bloody nose Jake 45 spoon from savant. The new Savant crusher proved it's worth this week and the Jake 45 outfished everything on the boat, the steelhead red color lived up to its name beautifully, we even caught a steelie on a little winni wonder.

Congrats Adrien! Sounds like a great time!

Keep it up!

-Kool-Aid

Nice going Adrien, looks like your hooked.

Charlie

Way to go Adrien! Pretty Steelie.
Thanks for the report.
Richard

It was a good time... I actually like the fact that the fishing was tough. If everyone is limiting out on fish, its more of a "luck" thing as to who wins. (You HAVE to keep the first 12 fish of legal size for these derbies - but only two lakers max - so NO culling for bigger fish.) When you have to work to find fish... and then get them to bite... its a big challenge. Knowing everyone else is working just as hard to find them makes it kinda stressful but sure adds to the anticipation of weigh-in!
Starting to get to know more of the guys involved in these tourneys and that makes it more enjoyable too. Its incredible to see some of the boats that pull out of port in the morning! Wow! Very nice decks these people are fishing from.
I'll try to get a few pics up (tomorrow) of a couple more fish and the morning "parade" out of the harbor.
Oh yeah... in case you didn't notice... take a look at the background of the pic YoA posted. Not often Lake O looks so calm. What a gorgeous day Sunday.

Congratulations Adrien and crew!!!! A job well done...
Doc

Is that your father in a dress shirt, fancy sweat shirt and cool sun glasses? Has he gone Hollywood? What happened to the jeans and T-shirt?

That is a MEMBERS ONLY Jacket i will have you know, John IS Hollywood!! LOL!!!!!

Good Job Guys ! And that steelhead sure is pretty. Cal P.

Here's a few pics from the last couple weekends...

Olcott the day before the tourney


Olcott first morning of Pro departure. Little crowded in the port, but John was still happy to shine his pearly whites for the camera! That's our appointed observer on the right.


Prefish day at Oak Orchard. Andrew (our observer for the weekend) with a nice one!


Leaving port first Pro departure of the Oak... in front...


and behind... tight quarters...


The view from the helm... Tom fighting, Adrien removing the slider and John doing the heavy looking... haha

Craig
Nice pics, busy harbor, flat lake, trip must have been priceless! Thanks for sharing.
Richard

Besides the 4 pro am tournaments there are 3 seperate Challenge Cups that combine the first 2 west end events, the 2 east end events and then an overall cup winner.

There are 30 Pro Teams in the west end challenge cup race and after the 2 western events we are in 19th place out of the 30. That is as far as we can go on the west end leg but we can start over on the east end cup and then combine for a year end total.

Here's looking up, but still satisfied with 19 as these were my first 2 events as the official captain of the team, each trip out is a big learning experiance and we make the most of it as we strive to chase down the best of the best.