What a tourney.

[Minnerman]

The first thing I wanna say is, the good lord ain't thru with me yet. He has still got werk fer me to do. Here is my CUSA tournament report.

Thursday we went pre-feshin. I used this opportunity to scout out some new water and just enjoy being on the water cause I knew where we were gonna fesh. Everything was goin well til bout dinner. I met up with my brother on the water and we decided we had better make one run thru the area we were gonna fesh, just to make sure the fesh were there. Uhhh Ohhhhhh. We still aint got a bite there. So then we go to scramblin. We run to another spot and found some fesh on a deeper water condo. Cool were set. We go to the seminar and then to Little Dooey's fer supper. Here's where it gets bad. We both want the fried ribs, but they only have one orders werth left. Well I give in and let my brother have em, only cause I live close enuff to go anytime. So I settle fer 3 lbs of crawfish. All was good, I reckon.

["G"]

So......what about the dadgummed tourney? did ya catch some fish? Dang the eatin.....we wanna know about the fish.

[feelay]

Bad crawfish, nite before the tourney......You should know better!

[Minnerman]

Friday, Day one of tourney.

We get out there Friday mornin to our spot and the wind is really crankin, but our spot is protected from the wind by a south bank and all is good. We sit there 30 minutes Waitin on 6:30 fesh time. We had to get there early cause there was 2 boats that saw us ketch fesh there Thursday. Well it's time to fesh. We get our 8 poles in the water and we ease up to it and bam. My brother has 3 of his four poles hung. He ain't a happy camper. But on the good side, I'm draggin one in before he dislodges the condo and moves it 3 or 4 feet. Well as you would know this spot is ruint. We only caught one more dink in the next hour. So on to spot number 2.
Spot 2 was gonna be #2 even after our original spot played out, but here too, we ain't caught no fesh while pre feshin. Well when we get there, the wind is makin bout 27 mph and they ain't no protection from it. So we throw out a drag chain and 43 foot of rope and finally get the boat to slow down. We went about 3/4s of the way thru it with no bites. By this time I'm doubting this decision. But just when all hope was gone, bam. There it was a bite and a caught fesh. It was a 1.97 dandy. But after another 30 minutes with no bites and the rain so close you could smell it, we decided if we gonna get 7 fesh we had better hit spot number 3.
Now spot 3 is a ride up the river, but I had caught a few fesh there the day before. They were small, but with the rain showers comin, we wanted to at least get our 7 so we make the run. We get there and man this is great. No wind to speak of cause this is a little mud hole nestled in the woods. We drop our lines in the water and bam. A 3 lb bass that tangles 3 of my 4 rods. Get this mess out and catch several dinks and then finally a keeper. And then the fun starts. The tornado sirens start goin off. It got so dark I needed a flash lite to see to tip my jig with a Minner. Then the light came, but it was in the form of a bolt. I know it struck somethin close cause it made the minners in the bucket hide under the Minner net. And then the rain came. 6" of it. This was confirmed by my air force buddy.
But lucky fer me, I had my pro qualifiers on. Only one problem with them. Ya see I done passed the 40 year mark and as all of you know, adder 40 you start whizzin every 27 minutes. So to combat this problem, I always leave my bibs and my britches unzipped to eliminate some of the hassle. Well ifn you got taped zippers they ain't waterproof unless they zipped. Ifn you guessed my britches got wet you guesses right. Every thing else was dry, cept fer one important area. So we float around in this hole fer an hour with it rainin so hard the minners were bout to drown and the auto bilge was bout to burn up from runnin so long. It finally slacked enuff for us to leave and go back to spot number one.
We get back to it and we changed our game plan. We single pole it with a cork and a Minner. this was better. Not many hang ups and got our 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th feshes finally. Then it happened. The rain stopped and the sun came out. We had just watched a lightenin storm come from Starkvegas to Columbus just south of us and we thought it was over. So we decide to try another spot that was in the back end of some real
Skinny water. It takes us about 10 minutes to get back there cause I'm skeert to run in this shallow water. (remember this statement). So we get back there and bam. We get s decent fesh and get to cull one. Oh yea, this is gonna be good. And them it went sour. The storm that we had jus watched go from west to east turned and came back east to west. We were smack dab in the middle of a lightning storm. Ch68 was bout a half of a mile from us and saw it all. They left when the first bolt almost hit us. I know we saw 20 bolts within a 1/4 of a mile from us. Then it happened. A bolt shot down that we heard before we saw the flash. My brother almost jumped into my lap and almost went to cryin. I agreed with him at this point. It was time to go. So we throw our 8 poles on top of one another and we troll out of the stumps as fast as we could. Amazingly we ain't hit the first stump gettin out of there. We make it out of the stump field into the skinny water and he floors it. I told him they was stumps out there and he was gonna tear his foot off. He said never mind the foot, he had insurance. How he got it on plane i'll never know but he did. So we were makin 57.9 mph in 2 foot of water and running from a storm. We had about a 2 mile run to the ramp. Needless to say the pucker factor had almost exceeded it's limits. We make it to the ramp and took out with the hopes of goin back to this spot. We sit there bout 30 minutes weighin our options and giving thanks and finally decided to just take what we had and weigh in. Ended up another storm came thru and we were tickled we were in the truck.
Day one offeshuall results 6.98 lbs. 1.05 out of the lead in 4th place.

Final day to come. Writin this has been exhaustin and I need a nap.

[Minnerman]

So......what about the dadgummed tourney? did ya catch some fish? Dang the eatin.....we wanna know about the fish.

Calm down. This story is gonna take time. Trust me on this one.

[Minnerman]

Bad crawfish, nite before the tourney......You should know better!

I knew better Feelay, but hey, we weren't in my boat. And plus, they gots a really nice outhouse at the ramp that I put out of commission just before we blasted off.

[Billbob]

nap time over get with it

[Minnerman]

Final day.

Saturday was supposed to be a better day, just a little breezy and the river was gonna be up a little. Little was the wrong werd. The wind blew about 29 mph and the river was up about 2'. After Fridays fiasco, we had a game plan in place and felt decent about it until bout 9:00 that night. My brother got a call from a friend who revealed a location on Aliceville lake that would be clear and there had been some Good fesh comin from here. So we change lakes on a report. Well we get to the lake that mornin bout 6:00 and the wind is already kickin bout 17mph and it's comin straight down the slough we gonna fesh. Oh well, we here now. Too late to turn back. The water was a very good color and we were confident in this location. We feshed about 30 minutes til we caught our first fesh. Then we fished another hour and decided to leave. By this time the wind had picked up to a full 36 mph. Steady. So as we were gettin our poles up the wind blew the boat around and I caught a fesh about a pound. We had a delima now. Leave this area and get out if most of the wind or stay and fight it. I made the call to leave and as it turned out it was the right call. We went to this other slough that is better protected from the wind. The win was also keeping the mud pushed out if this slough. This water was also good color. We caught around 25 fesh in here, just no big uns , but we did have 7 fesh and we thought this would prolly push us up in the standings. The leaders from day one were from St Louis and they had stumbled on some fesh. I knew with the water up they were done and they would not be able to fesh where they had the day before. I was right. They only brought one fesh to the scales that weighed an impressive .44 lbs. Bwahahahahaha
Well we head to the weigh in and weigh our fesh and we had 6.50 and we were tickled. It pushed us up to 2nd. Then a feller that lives on the lake came in with a little over 8 lbs and went to the lead and knocked us back to 3rd. Then we had a wait of bout thirty minutes til the last boat came in. We were on pins and needles cause they only paid 4 places. Well here comes the last boat that could possibly over take us. He had a big cooler that took two fellers to tote it. Only thing was, he only had 5lbs in it and needed 8. Whew. What a tourney. We finished 3rd that paid $600 and my 1.97 fesh was 2nd biggest and that pain an additional $100. My brother also won a $100 piranha max 160 depth finder at the banquet that'll be used on my dads pontoon.

Over all we are thankful to be alive and to have placed in the tourney.

Like I said earlier. The good lord must not be through with us, cause he kept the lightning off of us.

[BigBlue]

Congrats to you and our brother MM..sounds like yall had a hairaising good time..

[wilbur]

Good job Minner