B1 Day Two

Day two saw us up & out early and we arrived with plenty of time to just relax before putting the boat in the water. With our weight from yesterday putting us in the lead, we had to have a guest aboard today in the form of a camera man. I just hoped he wouldn’t be in the way while trying to land fish! The day started with us blasting off first and it wasn’t long before the camera guy realized that the floor of the boat was the place to be as the wind chill numbed his face. We arrived at our location and wasted no time with the fish. I believe it was the second or third cast and a 2.5 pound smallie was swinging into the camera lens with a lift. We managed to get a limit of fish fairly quickly but they weren’t the size I expected and to make matters worse, we were sharing the fish today. It’s always amazing to me how people tend to flock to an area on the second day when they know how well you did the previous day. Oh well that’s tournament fishing in Quebec! We even had one boat that was committed to shadowing us for about two hours. They would go around the outside of us just to get ahead of the path we were on and even when I turned around they would manage to do the same. I just told Norm to block them out and keep fishing as it would only get worse if we acknowledged their presence. Although we bumped up our bag slightly throughout the morning it wasn’t until the camera man was out around noon that we started hitting bigger fish. The sun was warming the areas we casted and the fish became active. At one point, both of us simultaneously hooked up and it was chaos. Norm slammed a decent fish and one second later, I nailed another. When I saw both fish go to the air I realized that mine was quality and hoped Norm would land his first. Not going to happen and I was forced to swing a 4.5 pounder into the boat and net his instantly after. We had just managed to put 8 pounds of bass in the boat in seconds and cull out two fish for about four pounds. We were pumped and wanted more! Unfortunately, the rest of our culls were just ounces as we bumped & grinded our way through the afternoon. We did have a few fish try to attack us right at the boat only to miss the lures completely. I hoped this wouldn’t come back & haunt us at the scales. Time was getting on so we decided to head back to the weigh in not chancing anything. I’ve lost tournaments by 0.05 before and wasn’t going to leave anything to chance today. We made it back in plenty of time and waited quite a while before it was our turn to weigh. As we were in first place going into the second day, we were forced to wait and weigh in last today, building the suspense even more. When the scales came to rest, we had missed the win by 0.56 pounds and finished second. Mere ounces had separated us from Norm’s first win as we came up just short. It was the huge lunker of 6.43 on the first day that secured Jacque & Stephane’s win and they deserved it. We weren’t as fortunate and never really had a kicker to aid in our two days of fishing. We hadn’t dropped any fish that would have made a difference and executed to almost perfection in the tournament. Although we did have to throw out all the pre fishing we had done at least we had adjusted quick enough to be able to be in contention. Norm & I had competed in the largest Quebec tournament and finished second. I know he will cherish the memories along with the trophy for quite some time. He had gotten to compete and see all the good along with some of the bad and now had a better understanding of the tournament scene. I hope he’ll be able to sleep tonight!!