2nd Place in 2008 Saltwater Bass Showdown!
Sunday, May 25, 2008
This tournament was one of many tournaments in the 2008 Saltwater Bass Showdown put on by John Cassidy. And once again, it was another fun and successful tournament due to John Cassidy and the sponsors for the tournament. This tournament was restricted to the area South of the Coronado bay bridge for boaters and no restrictions for the kayakers. The goal was to bring in your 5 biggest Spotted Bay Bass with a side entry for the largest Spotted Bay Bass, largest Sand Bass and largest Halibut. We entered both of the bass side entries for largest fish. The day turned out to be really nice despite wind and rain during the previous days. We fished various docks and structure throughout the back bay with a very steady bite on the Spotties and every so often a quality fish to put into our live well. The weigh in was at 2pm, and by 1pm we had a pretty good bag but nothing to win with. With the last half hour we decided to fish the main channel area just South of the Coronado bridge. On the second drift I was able to get a quality Spotted Bay Bass which rotated out one of our smaller fish. This helped sweeten up the pot and put a little more weight in it. With about 20 minutes left Terry hooked into a quality fish which was obvious the minute he set the hook! I began to back the boat down on the fish while brining in my line. I did not want to risk anything knowing that this was either a good Spottie or a good Sand Bass. After Terry finessing the fish to the boat we finally saw it as I began to net it. We couldn’t believe our eyes, as the fish was scooped up and carefully brought into the boat. It was the biggest Spotted Bay Bass we had ever caught or seen! With an amazing fish like this in the last 20 minutes of the tournament we were blown away! Like the sang goes, “it ain’t over until it’s over!” We did a couple of high fives and decided to head in with pretty good confidence that we got the biggest Spotted Bay Bass and possibly the biggest 5 fish bag in the tournament. Our total weight came in at 9.56 pounds with the largest Spottie at 3.3 pounds! Here is Terry with the monster Spottie!
We ended up winning the biggest Spotted Bay Bass and got 2nd place for the 5 fish bag. Unfortunately the gents who won had a total weight of 9.58 pounds! Yes, they beat us by two hundredths! Ouch! But hey, it was still a great day and we took home the most money with a sweet $425 bucks!
