Lake Griffin Slabfest

Cake by CrappieGirl1

My first tournament, well kinda. The Florida board had a contest going on about how much my catch would weigh at the Griffin Lake Slabfest held last weekend. I've never felt this much fishing pressure in my life. I usually never participate in tournaments, and when I fish it's more about having fun and tuning into nature than anything else. Even when I go to a media day event at for the Crappie Masters, its more a social thing than a fishing competition. And even then I'm not running the boat, I just fish wherever the pro happens to take me.

But this time I was running my own boat, selecting my own fishing spots, and having a large crappie.com contingent counting on me bringing in enough fish to weigh. I was supposed to weigh in five fish, and the guesses were from the embarrassing to the ridiculous. They guessed everywhere from one pound six ounces, to eight pounds one ounce for my catch. You can see the original thread they had going on here:
http://www.crappie.com/crappie/flori...umber-8-a.html

You have to understand, Lake Griffin is a tough lake to fish. I've fished it often this year, and most of the time I'd only catch one fish (a Wannabe... limit of one). My big goal this day was to just come in with five fish. That's all I wanted.

Billbob happened to be fishing with me. The week prior he had flown down to Tampa to pick up an RV, but after the deal fell through he decided to stick around and attend the Slabfest. Billbob and I went out to Picciola Point where we had done well the day before. The day before we had the best day I've ever had on this lake and we caught four nice ones there. Here are two of bigger ones we caught that day:




The day of the Slabfest was a different story. Our little plan kinda fell apart when we fished Picciola Point for two and a half hours and only caught one fish! This is when a good buddy called and told me he was catching them on the pads. I shure won't mention any names here, but I do want to thank that individual fishing with his grandson that day and bringing us some luck.



Anyway, we went to the pads, and caught bunches. You had to weed through some small ones to catch a keeper, but gosh darn it, I was going to the weigh in with five fish and that's all that mattered. It was going to be a good day on this difficult lake. For the fist time I caught more than only a couple fish.


Our honorable moderator "Flycaster".


And the venerable Phnatom309.


Anchorman caught some good ones that day while his wife read a book. I thought for sure he was going to win the tournament with those nice fish:


I had to post this to show my wife other peoples wives go with them fishing too. This is exactly how my wife would fish.


Flycaster, Anchorman, Shuorc and Slab. The three previous pictures were not taken at the Slabfest. Regretfully Anchorman could not attend. I thought I'd just share some pictures of their successful trip to Florida here. Good a place to share them as any.

THE RESULTS:

----------------------Big Fish--------------- Heaviest 5 Fish

Flycaster ----------- 1 Lb. 3 oz---------------- 5 Lb. 6 oz.
65Pontiac --------------- 7.7 oz ------------------- 7.7 oz (1 fish)
HuntinSlabs ---------1 Lb. 0.4 oz. ------------- 4 Lb. 8.5 oz.
Speckanator -------- 1 Lb. 9.2 oz.------------- 5 Lb. 6.5 oz.
Slab ---------------- 1 Lb. 3.9 oz.------------- 3 Lb. 14 oz.
Shuroc ------------- 1 Lb. 2.5 oz ------------ 4 Lb. 14.5 oz
Up2Specks --------- 1 Lb. 1 oz -------------- 2 Lb. 11 oz. (3 fish)
CrapSlabStu ------------ 14 oz --------------- 1 Lb. 6.2 oz (2 fish)
Tom Pickrell ---------1 Lb. 12.7 oz ----------- 5 Lb. 0.5 oz (4 fish)

Spackanator won the tournament by a half ounce over Flycaster with 5 fish that weighed 5 pounds 6.5 ounces.

Tom Pickrell won Bigfish. His fish was just shy of 1 pound 13 ounces. A very nice fish for Lake Griffin indeed.

I did not get any good pictures of the trophies given out but Crappiegirl1 did. You can view a wonderful slideshow Crappiegirl1 put together for us here. Warning, there are a lot of pictures there.
http://www.crappie.com/crappie/flori...ml#post2223571

The food was awesome, the presentation was awesome. We had many Slabfest newbies there, and a lot of the regulars. I'm sorry some of the regulars could not make it. They missed a wonderful event. Even though the fishing was tough, it turned out better than expected, especially for a lake that has not really turned on yet.





Fishergurl could not make it, but she sent some shrimp that we thoroughly enjoyed:

"Glad you liked the shrimp... :-) Terry (CaptHook) and I caught them Thursday night/Friday morning (basically middle of the night) and steamed them Friday. Danny (Phantom309) drove up to where we have the RV and he picked them up and delivered them to you all for us. We are really sorry we missed the festivities. Had a family commitment that we couldn't miss." ...Fishergurl

What a great time we all had!


A 2.77 pound Crappie out of Crecent Lake caught a few months earlier x Racer had mounted. He brought the mount with to the Slabfest per popular request. Boy that was a nice fish.



"Great time, good looking women, ugly old men, great food. And more gewbers than in Mississippi. About even on the JADA's." ...Billbob