First and foremost, I want to thank all of those who take the time and effort to put these events together. They are a great way for all of us to get together and learn from each other. Secondly, I want to thank all of the amazing sponsors who donated and made it possible for us to have such an amazing event.
After a 16-hour drive pulling a boat I arrived at a lake I had never dove before. I was able to meet up with my dive partner Kelston McGuire who was able to get down a few days before me to scout. What an amazing lake to explore, with so many coves and arms it made it a challenge to know where to begin and where to look. We decided on our first day of scouting to try and find the rough fish. We found a few areas that were holding nice drum but could not find a carp all day. A little discouraged we kept at it and explored as many areas as we could. Towards the end of the day, we found a gem of a spot for striper. As I dove, dive after dive being schooled by striper, I was wishing I had a gun in my hand. Funny enough a boat approached me and it ended up being Justin Lee and his partner. Trying to act cool, I tried to small talk him…. Little did I know his boat guide was marking fish left and right on the fishfinder and called me out on it LOL! The next day was the striper derby. Not feeling confident we decided to use a little strategy and scout the morning for more rough fish. We also used this time to our advantage and got out early to see everyone’s hot spots for striper in case we needed one on game fish day. We also wanted to test our Striper spot in the afternoon again to see if it would hold fish for us. Sure enough we spotted several teams hiding spots that I heard held striper. We spent most of the morning exploring and finding drum and carp. One of the highlights was dropping down to 70ft and finding crystal clear water. We also found a helicopter cabled down in 45ft of water as well as some welded scuba statues out in the middle of the channel. About noon we knew we should probably try out our spot for striper. Within 20 minutes of getting there we were on. Kelston made a drop and shot a smaller striper, I knew I needed to make an immediate drop as he was coming up and they would be attracted to the commotion. When I hit the thermocline, I was schooled by 25 big striper. I didn’t know which one to shoot and waited till last minute and pulled the trigger. I managed to wrangle in the 2nd place biggest striper at almost 21lbs for the derby and we were stoked! It was personal best for me, and striper are one of my favorite fish to hunt.
Competition days were a learning experience for me as I am new to the sport. We didn’t prioritize our fish and started all wrong. We went for striper and walleye first thing early morning where we consistently saw them in the afternoon. My best spot held a quarter of what it did, and I only managed two walleye, one being over 4lbs, and a catfish. I should have had two catfish but one managed to tear off with a bad shot. I did find a school of striper and managed to shoot an 8lber even though I should have waited to go and hunt my best striper zone. With so much time wasted we left our best spots right as the stripers began to heat up because we needed to look for drum. With 2 hours left I thought no big deal shouldn’t be hard to get three. Wrong again lol, I only managed two small ones even though I had found large ones the morning previous. This hurt my standings pretty badly and I knew I had to try to make up for it the next day. On rough fish day we decided to give it our all did 1 minute up and 1 minute down all day. 154 dives and 3 hours and 8minutes of bottom time later it was done. I managed to pull in half carp and half drum to take a 5th place for day two. Not enough to make up for the mistakes the day before but landed me a 9th place finish overall. Thank you Brett for being our boat captain once again, we could not have done it without all your help. Waking up early each morning, bringing fish bags, and overall motivating us to do our best, we owe you big time! Thank you to my partner Kelston McGuire for putting up with me and not diving with his dad Mike McGuire. I have learned so much from his experience and it has made me a better diver. It was great meeting new people as well as seeing old friends and hope to be able to participate again in the future.
