Ohio River Buckeye Division BFL

This weekend was the 4th tournament in the Buckeye Division BFL out of Carrollton, KY on the Ohio River.

I was ready for revenge on the Ohio River after not even getting bit out of Maysville. I had vacation scheduled for Friday but had just taken vacation time the previous Friday for the wedding and that didn't work out to well without having any type of coverage. I decided to just leave work early Friday and leave myself time to get to registration on time.

Everything came up at work and I didn't get to leave until about 4:00. The GPS said I would arrive at 7:09, nine minutes late. Usually that's not a problem as I make it where I'm going sooner than GPS time. This time however, I was traveling through Dayton and Cincinati during rush hour. For the first time that I can remember I purposely sped when I could to make up time.

I made Cincinati in good time but it was stop and go the whole way through the city. Just as I was about to have a panic attack we made it across the Ohio river and I was flying again.

I made it to the registration site with 3 minutes left to register and by the time I got signed in I had 1 minute left. Talk about cutting it close. I found out later you can call in to register then show up to the pretournament meeting for pairings.

I met Jim a guy I had been talking to at the other tournaments and he said that he had an extra bed again at the super 8. I had been planning on camping near there but a hotel is much easier.

We went out to eat at an awesome Mexican place then went back to the hotel. The next morning we had Waffle House and headed to the ramp.

We locked through to go North and ended up having only a few hours to fish up there before we started to head back. I caught my only bass right before we moved back South. It was raining by the time we started fishing and the bass did not want to cooperate. I only had 1 good bite that I missed right after I caught my first fish.

At weigh in I had 1 bass for 1 pound 3 ounces. Only 30 co-anglers brought in fish so I placed in 25th. I also moved from 46th to a tie for 24th in the standings.

Sunday I pre-fished Griggs for this weekends club tournament. I only had a few hours but had some fantastic fishing in the afternoon. Gene went with me and caught a 2 1/2 pounder. I got one around 2 pounds and a couple smaller fish. I also felt a lot of fish hit and figured out a good pattern if it holds.

I would have a nice picture of a decent bass but as we were leaving I pulled up to the boat dock with the trolling motor. By the time I got it raised and went to step out we had floated a ways from the dock. I tried to make the jump as it didn't look that far. It turned out that with the boat swinging as I pushed off and the distance I had to make it were just to much. My feet made it on the dock but my whole body was leaning over the water and my toes were not strong enough to hold me up. My cell phone was in my pocket and there was quite an audience. I felt like a smuck after that one.