I have been looking forward to this tournament all year, but not real crazy about when it was. It is a known fact that mid to late Summer fishing on Erie is not nearly as good as very early, or late in the season. In fact, it nearly becomes an average bass lake at this time of year

Prefishing for this tournament basically started while I was prefishing for our club tournament that took place a couple weeks ago. But it wasn't until the day after our club tournament that a specific pattern was starting to emerge for me. It was on this day, while out fishing with touring pro Ken McIntosh, that deeper water was seriously looked at. Small 4 to 5 foot sharp drops in 40-46 feet were putting good fish in the boat that day for me, along with a smallmouth that weighed about 5 3/4 pounds, and another two that I lost about 5 and 4 1/2 pounds. Several 3 pound plus fish were landed as well. These are very nice fish for this time of year on Erie.

The Friday afternoon before the tournament I was out for about 4 hours, confirming once again that fish are holding at the same depths as a couple weeks ago. Saturday I was prefishing with Mike Labriola (skeeter195) and we were still making this pattern work well for us, and in fact, found a couple new drops in this depth range that also held fish. It was very cool to see the fish stacked up on the graph in these depths, along with pods of baitfish in the area to. Being fluent with your electronics, both sonar and GPS, is absolutely essential for successful Lake Erie fishing!!

Tournament morning, winds were blowing pretty good out of the southwest and the lake was expected to be a little rough. We really didn't know how rough until we went around the last breakwall heading out into the lake. Well, "a little rough" turned into a sustained 4 to 5 foot chop all day, with occasional larger ones rolling through now and again.

I elected to go to one of my closer spots about 4 miles away to start. I swapped back and forth between the dragged tube and the spoon for quite some time before I got my first fish on the spoon. but it did not measure. A short time after I brought up another fish about 2 pounds with the spoon, but it came unbuttoned next to the boat. It was nearly 9:00 before I put my first fish in the boat, a little 1 1/2er, on a tube. I was drifting a 3/8 ounce tube on the bottom in 40-45 feet of water. It was then that the bite turned on for me, putting fish in the boat (or missing bites) on nearly every drift.

About 10:00 I heard a noise, thought it was a livewell pump squealing, but in fact it was my trim motor running, with the outboard in the "all the way down" position. This is not good, I had the same thing happen to me last year with my old Stratos I had but the motor went all the way up instead. Back then it turned out to be a shorted trim switch on the bow, so that is where I started the troubleshooting this time. I took the panel off the bow and removed the wires of the switch, but it did not help. I knew I had to remove the cowling off the motor, and inspect the switch on the motor. Remember, we are 4 miles offshore in 5 foot plus waves, this is no easy task. I got the cover off, and literally sat in my motor well with feet tangling in the water while tracing tightly packed and hidden wiring. Nothing was helping, the trim motor was still running and the only thing that would stop it was holding the throttle trim control in the up position. I knew I could probably get back to the launch this way, but I was not ready to end the day just yet, and I did not want to burn out my trim motor. After about 45 minutes of screwing around looking for a solution, I finally found a connecter that made it stop. I lost the ability to trim at the throttle lever, but could use the trim on the motor to raise AND lower the motor. This was good enough for me, and was able to spend the rest of the day fishing. I just left the trim all the way up for repeating drifts, and trimed about halfway down for the run back to the weigh-in.

While working intensely on the motor problem, I became quite qweezy to my stomach. Must have been sitting down starring at wires or something, but I spent the rest of the day tossing my cookies, and think about tossing my cookies. I was still able to fish though, but the good bite died on me about noon or so.

I did not move from this area all day, and made repeated drifts (like 30 or so) over the drop I was fishing. I had a couple other areas fairly close by, but elected to keeping drifting that one drop in hopes of them turning back on again. It never did, so I had what I had. My non boater was only able to land two fish, but lost a few others. My largest fish was about 3 3/4 pounds and smallest around 2 1/4.

Back at the weigh-in it was apparent that many others were not having a good day at all, even some people that were expected to do well had a real tough day. I ended up weighing 14.20 pounds for my 5 smallies and placed 8th out of the 118 anglers participating. I was very happy with this finish, although I expected that weights would be alot higher than what they were from what I saw prefishing. I did not expect to place in the money with the weight I had.

I was hoping to go into this last tournament in a better position in the standings than I was. I think I was 70 something going in, and there wa nothing I could do to make the top 10 at that point. Sacketts Harbor hurt me the most, with a pattern completely falling apart on me. At Oneida, I had a couple missed opportunities with nice fish coming off at the side of the boat. It is all part of the game I guess, and I will be back again next year to give it my "all" once again.