Fishing Time

My world has been tumbling for over a month now. Am I Finally at the bottom of the hill? I have been without my wife and kids for 4 or 5 weeks now. Loneliness has sank in. At first I had an overwhelming workload to accomplish. I had to paint, pack, clean, repair everything so we can sell the house. The house is listed now and the first potential buyer is coming today to look at it.

I have put in my notice at my work so that they could establish a plan of action for getting me replaced. I will be moving to Kansas May 27th. That gave us 1 week to do phone interviews, 1 week for face to face interviews and we will hopefully have 5 weeks of training. I will stay out here longer if needed to get the person trained.

We have a house lined up in Kiowa, KS. It will be nice to be close to family again.

During my struggles with the house I did manage to get out fishing 1 time so far. Gene and I went to Buckeye lake to prefish for our club tournament coming up tomorrow. He caught 2 bass and I managed to catch 5. Unfortunately, I caught the only 3 that would have kept. One was a hefty 2 to 2 1/2 pounder. We put together a game plan on where we would start out come tomorrow.

It will be a tough tournament. They are having a large tournament at Buckeye today. I am guessing they are hitting the canals hard and plucking all the bass. We will be throwing back a lot of 11 1/2 inchers tomorrow.

I have one spot that I think could be ok. It is a feeding flat that I located. Not that the whole lake is not flat but this spot was a little shallower had some close structure and I saw quite a few bass chasing shad there. Besides stopping at that spot a couple times we will be beating the canals with the rest of the crowd. I will try a couple main lake areas but there isn't a lot of the main lake that looks great.

Now the house is ready. The weather is just starting to warm. We have our first tournament this weekend, and will have tournaments the next few weekends. It is fishing time in Central Ohio.

Plaques

The ice is finally off the lakes around here. Now the lakes and rivers are all to high to fish. Not all of them but we have been getting plenty of rain to keep everything full.

We had our bass club meeting tonight. I received some plaques from last season for largest bass, biggest stringer and 3rd place in the fish off. It was pretty cool to get all those. I didn't even know I had the biggest stringer of the year. That is for the lakes besides Lake Erie.

This season I hope to start out even stronger with what I had learned last year. Really, I just want to get out fishing again. I have bought quite a bit of gear and baits over the winter I can't wait to try out.

Christina and the boys moved back to Kansas this weekend. I am hoping to have the house the rest of the way packed and ready to paint by this weekend. If I can get it painted this weekend, the rest of my time spent here in Ohio can go towards work and fishing.

Our first club tournament will be April 10th. That doesn't give me much time to get everything done and get out a few times before then.

Need a New Name for the Blog

Christina has been offered and accepted a position in Kansas. She moves back with the kids on March 12th. I will remain here until the house sells.

The realtor comes Tuesday to put the house on market. We have had a contractor fixing up quite a few things that have needed fixing for a while.

We have been packing. Once Christina gets back to Kansas she will stay with her sister until we can find a rental place. Then we will move all of our things except for the bare essentials. I will remain here at least until the house sells. This way I can train my replacement and we can continue to pay our mortgage until the house sells.

I don't foresee the house selling quickly so I will probably get most of another tournament season in here. I am going to take another shot at as many BFL's as I can fish here. I will also fish all the club tournaments I can. Once I get the house completed and ready to sell I should have quite a bit of time to fish. I will be disconnecting cable shortly so no t.v. Not that I will want to watch that anyway. I'd rather spend my free time fishing.

Moving to Kansas

Things have not slowed down at work. I'm glad this is the off fishing season. I have been updating our computer system. I have created an all new payroll system and scheduling system to keep up with the demand of our client. That is a major undertaking. We had gotten all my work installed last week and now are working out the kinks. We should be fully functional by the end of the week.

What does that mean for me? Not much. I have another huge project starting that will help our client from ordering extra associates to being able to pull up information that is not currently available to match up their orders to the invoices.

I didn't realize I would be doing so much IT work, or that I even had the knowledge to do the type of work I have been doing. Most of it has just been updating our current system. Everything I am doing should make the job easier for the next person that takes my position.

This weekend I took my boys to the Ohio Sports, Vacation, Travel and Boat show. I got some good deals on some Warrior baits. It helped that I know the owner. I also bought some baits from Hookerz tackle. Both companies are local and have some baits that should work great in this area, as well as across the country.

Once I got home I re-arranged all of my tackle. Leo and Gavin were hovering over me like vultures snatching up anything that I will not use any more. They had their tackle boxes open and by the end, their boxes were full of tackle.

We were at Gander Mountain the other day and Christina picked out a new pole for Leo. It was med/light action ugly stick spinning combo made for kids. This seems like a quality open face rod, nicer than anything I had before last year. If Christina tells me to spend money on fishing gear, who am I to say no.

Leo has been practicing casting out in the yard quite a bit. I can't believe how fast he picked up on how to use a spinning rod. Before long he'll be learning a baitcast. He can fish too. I'd partner bass tournament with him any day. He's 4 years old and learning so much. He'll be 5 on Wednesday.

Gavin has a ways to go. He's wanting to cast now with his spongebob pole, but doesn't seem as into it as Leo was at 2 years old. Leo has any fishing magazine or catalog as soon as it comes in the mail. I have to wait for him to look through it before he'll let me look at it.

I had mentioned previously that we may be moving towards Missouri. It's now looking like we may be moving all the way back to Kansas. We want to be closer to family. The area we are looking at now is not great for fishing. The closest decent sized lake is 1 1/2 hours away. There are some smaller lakes and ponds close though.

It would be nice to fish more with Dad and Mom. The area is also great for raising a family. I will still travel to catch BFL's and some other tournaments. Those lakes are up to 9 hours away with the closer ones only 4-5 hours away. I'm determined to make a name for myself fishing. Even if it isn't a huge name.

I will miss it here in Ohio. I have made a lot of fishing connections in the last couple years. It seems like I am always getting e-mails or IM's from people I have met fishing. I just hope I can find something close to what I have here after I move.

I don't know if I will be here at the start of tournament season this year. Things are moving pretty quickly with job prospects back home. We have a ton to do. We have to get our belongings ready to move, land jobs, sell the house, rid items we don't need to move, and then get everything going once we get there.

It's a pretty nerve racking experience to move across the country, when you've developed roots where your at. When we moved to Ohio, we planned on living here for 5 years. We have been here over 7 now. We've experienced a lot living here, and took advantage of getting to see a different part of the country.

It's time to get back to where we came from.

Catch Up

In the last post I said that the ice was just starting to form. It's thick now. That was a major lapse in posting.

Work has been extremely busy. Once I transferred I had a 1 week training period before I took over. At that point all kinds of work was thrown at me at once. I keep my head down and grind through it each day. I have to say that I am ready for a day off soon though.

We stayed home for Christmas instead of traveling back to Kansas. That didn't feel much like holidays.

I have not done any fishing, or anything fishing related in forever. I really want to go out ice fishing. Dad went out this week in Kansas and caught quite a few crappie and bluegill. He got first fish of the year again this year. He even caught a 20 inch bass. Sounded like he really got into them.

We have our first club meeting of the year coming up and our awards banquet. I'm pretty excited about that since I got big bass of the year last year.

I have not paid my entry to the FLW BFL yet. I'm not sure if I will be able to fish it. There might be a possibility of another job offer soon. It would be in Missouri, a lot closer to home. I would seriously consider it, if I get the offer.

I think the thing I like the most about living in Ohio is the club and the guys in the club. I will miss them if I ever move. I would be in a great fishing area if I ended up in Missouri though.

Ice Forming

As the site fishing is starting in Florida, the ice is starting to form on our Ohio waters.

I drove by Indian lake Saturday morning and the channels were starting to ice over. The ponds are starting to freeze over as well. Hopefully some ice fishing will be in order this winter. I might even get all crazy and go out fishing for New Years Eve to catch the first fish of the year come midnight. I've always wanted to do that.

We had our monthly bass club meeting for Twin Rivers last night and have a tentative schedule set for 2011. We have more tournaments scheduled for spring and fall and less for the middle of summer. That should improve fishing for everyone. After the meeting was said and done, I decided that I would not be fishing the weekend series as I was hoping. The club schedule and the ABA weekend series had 3 conflicts, and the BFL and club schedule has 1. I can only have 2 drops in the club to have a chance at being points champ.

The club tourney's are a lot of fun. I have made some really good friends in the club too. If you are starting to fish tournaments I definitely suggest joining a club in your area. It brings fishing fun to a new level.

Besides fishing I have been pretty busy the last couple weeks. I got a promotion at my company and will transferring closer to home. No more 1 hour commute each way. Now I'll be working 7 minutes from home. Closer to home = more fishing time. Now's a good time to make the transition too. I'll be busy getting up to speed for a few months, then it will be time for fishing again.

New Boat or My Boat?

It's the off season now so I am looking at all of the aspects of next season. What tournaments will I enter? How much will I be able to spend? How far will I be able to travel? What needs to be done to the boat? To the truck? Will I travel South for the winter? Lots of questions to answer.

A big question that I have pondered over the last year has been, will I part ways with my boat this season for a bass boat. I have approval from the wife. She pretty much approves anything when it comes to fishing. What a great life partner I ended up with!

Upon hours of thought, and even listing my boat at one point, I have decided not to sell it. I fish a lot of bass tournaments throughout the year and would love to be in most of them as a boater, but there is a huge responsibility of pre-fishing for the larger tournaments that I do not have the time for. I enjoy being a co-angler and am prepared to continue doing so.

With that in consideration, I can still do club tournaments out of my boat. I can pre-fish out of it, and I can take the whole family out in it. I want them to have fun out on the water too, whether it be fishing or just boating, tubing, or skiing. I can do it all with my boat and that is the reason I went with it in the first place.

There will be a time in the future when I will need a bass boat, but for now I think the need is greater to keep the boat, that has become part of the family.