FUNFEST 2011 – WINNERS AGAIN? Not exactly…

Well FUNFEST 2011 was held this past Saturday, September 17th, and though the fishing was slow “the show must go on”! This is the third year of the event and like last year, we had 60 boats competing. Jonathan, Rick, Doug and myself started bright and early Saturday morning and though we didn’t have high expectations, I knew we’d boat a few. The question was would they big enough to matter?

Since Doug has been fishing up north, he didn’t know where to start or look. I had spent a few days scouting and knew where to find some fish and sure enough, we started marking a few on the graph right away. Unfortunately they weren’t ready to bite. Finally at 9:00 AM we got our first bite as Doug hooked one in the mouth of Big Creek on live blue back herring. It measured just 27 1/4″ which is tiny compared to what we normally catch but based on how bad it’s been, we knew it was a good fish.

But then it got real tough. We were able to find fish from Big Creek to the dam but could not get the first bite. As the clock was ticking and 2:00 PM was fast approaching, it didn’t look like we’d even boat two fish let alone do well in the standings. At 1:40, I decided to put the trolling rods out and hope that at least one fish would see our offering and take a bite. That decision turned out to be a good move…

Just 5 minutes into the troll, we got a bite! FISH ON!! And as often times happens when we get one while trolling, the second rod got a bite while Rick was reeling it in! Five minutes later two fish were boated and with just minutes to spare, I was able to take a picture and send our second fish photo to the tournament headquarters before the clock struck 2:00 PM!!

Our second fish was just 28 1/4″ so that put our total at just 55 1/2″. With such a poor outing, we didn’t expect to be high in the standings. Remember, we won this thing last year with 72 1/2″ so we were 15″ short of last years production. Still, we felt two fish would put us in the top ten and boy am I glad we went to the closing ceremonies!

So how did we do? We took SECOND PLACE!! Yeah, we didn’t win but we were close! Here is a brief summary of how everyone faired that competed:

• Of the 60 boats that entered, only 28 caught a fish. Last year 45 of the 60 caught fish.
• Awards were given out for the top 20 finishers and the boat in 20th place caught one 19″ fish
• Boats 11-20 in the rankings only caught one fish; only the top 10 caught 2 or more fish on the day!

Here’s Jonathan and I smiling with our second place finish.