2010 Tournament Schedule

I got a schedule for the 2010 tournaments from the Twin Rivers Bassmasters today. It is still in process and waiting for permits but I have looked at the schedule for next year and realized that I would not be able to compete in both the Elite Series and the Club tournaments due to 6 conflicting schedules. I decided to stick with the club tournaments as I think they will be more fun and are spread across many lakes instead of just 3.

I will not be competing as a boater this year. I think that will help a lot in the learning process. It will be pretty cool seeing how other people fish for bass. I have only had 1 friend that taught me bass fishing. The rest I have had to pick up on my own.

I might try to get in on some Thursday night action through Team Bass Xtreem since I will not get to do their elite series.

Here is the schedule at this point.

April 17, 2010 Alum Creek Spring Open Open TRB
May 2, 2010 Deer Creek TRB
May 16, 2010 Knox Lake TRB
May 22, 2010 Grand Lake St. Mary's FLW
June 5-6, 2010 Lake Erie TRB
June 12, 2010 Indial Lake FLW
June 27, 2010 Delaware TRB
July 11, 2010 CJ Brown TRB
July 17-18, 2010 Erie Ashtabula non points TRB
July 24, 2010 Ohio River/Maysville FLW
July 31, 2010 O'shaughnessy night TRB
August 8, 2010 Clear Fork TRB
August 21, 2010 Ohio River/Carrollton FLW
August 29, 2010 Griggs TRB
September 12, 2010 Rocky Fork TRB
Sept. 19, 2010 Pleasant Hill TRB
Sept. 25-26, 2010 Ohio River/Tanners Creek FLW
Oct. 2-3, 2010 Fish Off TBD TRB
Oct. 9, 2010 Alum Creek Fall Open Open TRB

Registered for the FLW BFL

I registered for the FLW BFL Buckeye Division yesterday and coughed up the 585.00 for entry fees and the membership. I am really excited about it. The expenses will be a little high since only one of the tournaments is somewhat close to the house. It is not really about the cost to me though. The experience is what it is all about. I am going to be doing something that I dreamed about all my life.

I will be fishing 5 differnent spots that I have never fished. I would like to but probably will not pre-fish them. I will be fishing with a boater that might or might not have an idea where the fish are. I am just going to go fishing and make the most of every situation. Hopefully I will do decent, but most importantly I hope I learn some new things to use in the future.

I found out what the entry fees are for the club tournaments. They are 20.00 + 5.00 for big bass. 20% will be held back for a fish off at the end of the year. So that will be 250.00 for that plus the 80.00 membership as well as expenses. I think if I have around 2400 more saved by tournament season I should have the the rest of the tournaments and travel expenses for the year. Then I will only have to worry about catching fish.

On the poker front I am up to 70.00 on Full Tilt and 60.00 on Pokerstars. I transferred 20.00 to Mizike from Full Tilt. He played 1 game and I don't know if he is going to transfer the money back or give me 20 in cash. I have played quite a bit so far. I guess that is an understatement. I play almost every day. I am very confident in my game right now and thought about going to Belterra Casino in Indiana next week to play. Mizike said we should wait until after Christmas so he could go. I will probably wait.

The snow is starting to come down pretty good here. I know a lot of the rest of the Midwest has had it bad the last couple days. We will not get near what they had but I'm not a fan of driving in snow. It is getting really cold and the ponds are freezing over. We may be ice fishing on Lake Erie before too long.

Twin Rivers Club Meeting # 2

I left work last night and headed to the area where the Twin Rivers Bass club meeting was going to be held. I got there about an hour and a half early so I drove around looking for a place to grab a meal.

I found Carribean Jerks Bar and Grill near the Donato's we were having the meeting. I walked in and found a seat at the bar. I ordered a Shiner Holiday beer that turned out to be very tasty. Then I saw they had Keno so I played 4 spots for 5 plays and ordered a Philly Steak Sandwich. The sandwich was one of the best I have had in years. I will definately take my wife there. They had a great grill menu with anything from fish n chips to wings to burgers and sandwiches.

My 5 plays on keno went pretty quick while I was eating. I won a dollar so I ran it again and was done eating and playing in time to drive down the street for the meeting.

The meeting was pretty cool. They had the club elections for next year and set up the tournament committee. The tournament committee stayed after the meeting to set up the lakes and dates for potential tournaments next year. Most of the rest of us hung around and talked about fishing and drank a few beers for the next hour until the tournament committee finished. As soon as they get permits for the tournaments I will know what my full schedule will be like next year.

I have now attended 2 club functions and now will just need to fish with 2 members before I can be voted into the club. I had a couple guys offer to fish with me early next spring. They said I could still attend the club banquet in February and continue to do things with the club until I am voted on.

At work we have a weekly pool of about 27 people that put in 3.00 a week and pick who they think are going to win the nfl games for the week. This week I finally won after tying twice before and loosing by points. I got 81.00 for my lucky guessing this week. That money will be nice since I have my registration for the BFL tomorrow. I had saved 470 out of the 550 I needed. With the extra 80.00 I will have the full amount to buy into all the BFL tournaments tomorrow as a co-angler. I have an extra paycheck in January. Depending on the club schedule I will send off the entry fees for the elite series by Team Bass Xtreem if the schedules do not conflict too much. I think a lot of the club tournaments will be Sunday tourney's so I might not have to worry about a conflict of schedules at all.

Sick over Thanksgiving

There has not been much fishing content to write about lately with the weather finally turning sour. There were a few great weekends leading into Thanksgiving but I did not make it out to fish. I guess I had pretty much given up on the season and decided to wait until next year.

I had 4 days off for Thanksgiving. My nose started running steadily on Wednesday by the time I got off work. By the time I got home I was having coughing attacks to where I could hardly breath. I drank a little bit on Wednesday night as the wife and kids were back home to visit family. I stayed behind so she could ride with her sister from St. Louis to Wichita.

I woke up Thursday morning to start the turkey and I was feeling miserable. My nose was running like a faucet and my chest felt like it had flames swirling around in my lungs. We got Thanksgiving dinner prepared and had a feast. Everything turned out really good. It was just me Mizike and his fiance. We ate half of a 12 pound turkey along with a ton of side dishes. It was that good.

The rest of the weekend I layed around playing on-line poker complaining about how bad I felt. Finally on Sunday, around noon, I woke up Mizike and asked him to take me to urgent care. I felt like I couldn't even get out of bed. I was freezing and shaking and every muscle was tight and sore. While Mizike was getting ready I started sweating and got warm all of a sudden. I was breaking a fever that I didn't even know I had. By the time Mizike finished getting ready, I felt normal again. I didn't have to go to the urgent care and the only time I have been coughing was when I have flem building up.

Mizike called me on my way to work yesterday and said that he had looked up ice fishing and saw that some places had ice tournaments. I have ice fished before but like bass fishing, it has been some time since I had done it regular enough to be decent. I think I talked him into trying Lake Erie if it freezes hard enough this year.

I looked up ice charters at Erie and saw that they are pretty reasonable between the fishing, and the accomodations. You also have the opportunity to take a airboat to the islands. That would be really cool.

I would really like to try fishing out of a ice hut. I have only ever fished off a 5 gallon bucket in the middle of a frozen lake with 40 mile an hour winds freezing me within seconds of the start of fishing. I can't imagine ice fishing in comfort. Hopefully we will make the time to do it.

My second meeting with the Twin Rivers Bass Club will be next Monday. I really like the idea of being part of the club. They were a great group of guys the first time I met them. The FLW Buckeye League registration is right around the corner as well. I will be online December 9th to sign up for that.

Hopefully, I will have a few fishing updates throughout the winter. I have a great saugeye spot beneath the dam at Hoover lake that seems to be great fishing right around Christmas each year. I also have my Febuary trip to Lake Cumberland to look forward to when we go down after Striper.