Choke Canyon Fishing Report - September 7, 2008

My Fisher's of Men partner, Justin Fisher, called me up to fish the BassChamps Anchor Marine 2nd Annual Big Bass Tournament on Choke Canyon as a birthday present. Great day on the water for us as it turned out. Started out on one of my favorite little grass lines and my partner hooked up with a nice fish and as soon as he did, my line got slammed. He said don't worry about netting his and just play my fish but it soon got off somehow and his started jumping at the boat. When I saw that it was actually a big bass, I immediately picked the net back up and netted it. It was over 7lbs. I then threw back out to the spot I got slammed on and got slammed again. It peeled off about 20 yards of line and broke off on the only tree around. Bummer! We caught several more up to 4lbs and decided to go hit the first weigh-in. Justin got a 4th place check for it and it weighed in at 7.68lbs. Nice.

After weighing in, I decided to fish a small section of road bed not terribly far from the weigh-in area. Being that the wind was blowing into this area, I picked up a trap and started chunking it. About 3 casts later, I hooked into a big fish. As it came up by the boat, it was shaking it's head rather weird so I thought it was a Gaspergoo (freshwater drum for you non-Texans LOL), but when it jumped, I knew it was the kind of hawg we were after. Just missing the next weigh-in, we decided to just fish around until the next one. During the last 2 minutes of it, the big fish was just over 8.5 lbs so I thought I had it. Weighing in just ahead of me though, Kevin Spahn had a fish just a little bigger at 9.38lbs and I ended up getting a 2nd place check worth $250 instead of $500 for my 9.02lber. Ouch! Should have waited till the next weign-in when a 7.5lber won top spot. Lesson learned I hope.

Heading back out, we decided to go back to our starting spot. We immediately started catching fish up to 4+ pounds, keeping one just in case. After watching a boat work a grass line and never seeing them throw a frog, I waited for them to leave. Not too much longer, they did so I moved in. I chucked a frog right over the hole in the grass near where they were and I hooked into what would be our 3rd check, a nice 5.58 pounder good for 7th place in the final weigh-in and another $110. Nice.

Great day on the water catching over 30lbs best 5. Only thing is we needed to play better poker with the weigh-ins and we may have doubled our money. That's the game though. If it was a regular BassChamps tournament, I feel we had a very good chance at winning $20,000!