This past weekend I fished with Team LandingZone in the Niagara ProAm fishing to...

[Jolly II]

This past weekend I fished with Team LandingZone in the Niagara ProAm fishing tournament. The fishing this year was a far cry from what is was last year thanks to the stubborn east wind Wednesday and Thursday before the tourney.

Friday during our prefish the wind came around west and by the afternoon things were looking like they were setting back up, we found decent numbers of fish and schools of bait off shore. Our catch consisted of mostly steelhead, with a few coho, and we finished up with a teenage king at the end of the day. We had deffinately caught a box of 12 fish, which is the goal to get for both days of the tournament, and felt confident about working our program for the main event.

Unfortunately Saturday morning Mother Nature had different plans for us, and threw another curve ball with more east wind. When we got out to our waypoints from Friday, all the bait was gone and the fish were scattering quickly. We worked hard for our fish, and only brought 5 to the scales, 2 kings, 2 steelhead and coho, total weight was 43lbs. We were sitting somewhere in the middle.

Sunday we made the decision as a team to go back out deep and continue to work over our water from the previous 2 days. Unfortunately the picture out there went from bad to worse, and the fish had all but disappeared. We spent the entire day searching, and working changes in our presentation to try and entice the fish we did find on the sonar. By some fish miracle we boated 4 fish, a king, a steelhead, and 2 cohos. We ended up finishing 19th among 30 teams, far from the 2nd place finish we had last year.

It was still a great weekend on the water doing what I love, and despite the fishing we still had a lot fun, and a lot of laughs. Looking forward to it again next year! And congrats to the Reel Excitement team in putting together 12 fish boxes both days of the tourney, with some very tough fishing, to take the top spot.