What else would one expect in terms of weather? Saturday was brutally cool and windy. Sunday was brutally cool and windy. Kpin spent the first couple of hours shivering, although he tried to blame it on food poisoning or something. If you're looking for a calm place to tie up in a storm, Oziles has it.
Tough fish? Kpin and I teamed up and set out to try for our pickerel first thing in the morning. After an hour Kpin caught our first fish. It was a sauger... but it didn't make the legal minimum of 12 inches. We blew around in the middle ot the River for a couple of hours and decided to take a break from the wind by going to our catfish spot. On the way there we picked up a smallish pike and missed a slightly bigger one.
We spent a couple of hours in our catfish spot and didn't catch a catfish. This is confounding me. I knew the pickerel were gonna cause me a problem but the pike and catfish were gonna be a cake walk. Right! We ended up catching a few sheephead just to keep the spider senses tingling.
We spent a huge part of the afternoon trying to catch a pike and didn't even catch a glimpse of one. How can one cover so many hundreds of acres of weedy water and not catch a pike? If it had to have been a bass derby the pike would have been jumping into the boat. Anyway, we didn't replace the smallish fish that we had in the well and decided to give the catfish hole one more try. It was a good call because we were in the spot for a couple of minutes when Kpin stands up and starts to crank in something from the back of the boat. It was a great fight to witness and the whole time I'm thinking... pls don't be a sheephead pls don't be a sheephead. We were in luck - it turned out to be the kind of catfish we were looking for.
At the end of the day, BEN LEGER and his partner Mario won the derby with a 12.7 lb total weight. They had a pike that ran 5.3 lbs, a pickerel that was 3.3 and a catfish that was 3.6. It was a great victory for them as they picked up an extra 1/2 pound for bringing in one of each species. They had the biggest pickerel. While Bobber caught the biggest pike (6.5 lbs), he and I didn't qualify for the Magnus net that went to the angler who catches the biggest pike. Ben's pike was 2nd biggest so he got the net. Congratulations Ben and Mario.
Mario and Ben - the winners - with Yves Grandmaitre of Oziles and some other big guy that hangs around boat launches talking about fish non-stop. They call him Big Jim.
Bobber wins the prize and a hug (yikes) from Big Jim for biggest pike
Kpin and his last minute catfish was good for the big catfish prize. His catfish was 5.4 lbs. Congrats Kpin.
And I have to apologize for not having pen and paper on me to take notes. This couple of anglers whose names I don't remember came out for the derby and returned to the weigh-in with just the one pike. As they were approaching the scale with pike in hand the fish wiggled the wrong way, took a little bounce off the deck and into the River. Gone! Fish? What fish? Thanks for coming out guys - and too bad about the fish.
Thanks to everyone for coming out on such a miserable day. Speaking for myself, I still had a great time trying to figure out how the heck we were gonna return with three species. Catching six different species was a hoot. Thanks for coming out Kpin. Thanks also to Big Jim who always has a few words of wisdom to share after a Derby. And finally, thanks to Oziles for hosting the Derby - I can't wait to see those new concrete launches.
