Man, What a week… Just got home a day ago, and It still hasn’t really hit me. Back in August, Dan and l qualified for the FLW Canada Championship on Rice lake, where we finished 7th place with a 2 day total of 36.I5 lbs. I was super pumped to qualify for the Championship on Big Rideau. The day I qualified, I called my boss, asked for some time off work. I took the week off, and Dan and l headed to Big Rideau to start practicing for the FLW Canada Championship. Coming into this event, knowing that this could take you to the Forrest Wood Cup, made us want the win that much more. We called my Dads truck “home” we lived, ate and slept in the truck, 6 days practice, and all 3 tournament days. We spent 2 days of practice, driving around, using the graph to cover as much water as we could and to get a feel for the lake. By the end of day 2 practice, we had an idea of where we were going to spend most of our practice fishing. By the 6th day of practice, we narrowed it down to one section of the lake where we found some bigger fish, and lots of them. In practice we found a couple topwater bite areas, along with some deeper fish. The topwater fish in practice were big, but when the tournament rolled around, it seemed like the bigger fish had moved off of our spots, and good keeper 3 pounders replaced them. We had 2 topwater spots, where I would throw a Dropshot and Dan would throw a topwater, with solid 3 pounders, a bunch of secondary stuff with 2 - 4 pounders and our big fish spot.
Day one rolls around, and we’re pumped. We have good fish going, and were fishing day one of the FLW Canada Championship! Going into the tournament, we figured around I8 lbs. a day would do it. We fished our topwater stuff early, got a pretty good limit in the boat quickly, and caught some good ones off of our big fish spot, and secondary spots which gave us a I7.98 lb sack for day one. Right where we wanted to be. Going into day 2 in 7th place.
Day 2 we were excited to get back out there. Day 2 is exciting because it’s the day to make it or break it to championship Sunday. Our goal from the start was to catch I8 lbs. a day and we figured we would be right there. There was a fog delay on day 2, and first thing that came to our mind was our topwater stuff. It usually died at about 9 am. We did our top water stuff anyway. I always threw the dropshot, and Dan would always throw the topwater. The bigger fish in practice would come on the topwater, and the smaller ones would usually come on the dropshot. Dan had 3 big blowups, but every one completely missed his bait, and didn’t want anything to do with a follow up bait. I ended up catching one 3 pounder, stuck around for 20 more minutes and left to go to our deeper stuff. By 4:00, we had about I7 pounds in the boat, and we really needed to cull a 3 pounder from the box. We figured that we had made it to Sunday with the bag we had and we wanted to save our big fish spot for the final day, so we made some last minute decisions in the last few minutes and fished some new water that looked very similar and we hoped had some good fish. In the last hour we caught a 4 lb Smallie and weighed a I8.3I sack for day 2 giving us a 2 day total of 36.29 and had us sitting in 2nd place going into the final day. Wooooop.
We were super pumped after weighing our I8 pound bag, knowing we made it to championship Sunday and knowing we have a shot at winning this thing. Throughout day one and day two, we caught one or two fish off our big fish spot each day, so we could save it for the final day.
Day 3, the final day and we were pumped to get on the water. The top ten met at Walmart for a quick meeting and off to the launch we went. Blast off was at 7 and check in was at 3. An hour less fishing than day one and two. We fished our top water spot first thing in the morning, and got 2 cute ones in the box.. We completely scrapped everything and stuck on our big fish spot all day. We wanted to win, and the only way we thought of having 20+ pound sack was to stay put. Danny would throw the tube, and I would throw the dropshot. Within the first few short minutes, we got our biggest fish of the day. We were fired up, but we needed 4 more just like that one to try and seal the deal. By around noon we caught 4 more keepers and had about I9 lbs in the boat… still not there yet. We figured we needed to cull the one three pounder with a 4 to have a good chance at winning. We grinded it out until about 2:00, and then left, and spent ten minutes at a couple of our secondary spots till we had to head in. We couldn’t get another bite. We only caught 6 fish all day, but they were the right ones.
All ten boats got to the launch, the boats were trailered and off to Walmart we went where the weigh in was. We were last in line to weigh in. We figured we had about I9 lbs, and it was a nail biter… Dan and l and Morison and Lapidus were the last 2 boats to weigh in. There were a bunch of big bags brought in and we thought for sure we were out of the race. Morison and Lapidus weighed an I8.84 pound bag which meant we needed a 20.I7 pound bag. We honestly thought it was over for us. Cory put our bag on the scales, Chris held the fish there for a second, let go, and the scales read 20.42 lbs. I completely blanked for a solid 3 seconds, looked at Dan, and realized we had just brought in a 20 lb sack to win the FLW Canada Championship !!
Words can’t describe how excited I am to head down to Kentucky Lake for a shot at fishing the Forrest Wood Cup next November. It was an incredible week, a week I will never forget. So many people to thank, including my parents, all of our fishing friends, Cory and the guys at FLW Canada, Chris Jones, Pure Fishing, and everyone for their continued help and support. You all rock.
Wooooop, Coop ><>
