Western Outdoor News Santa Ana River Lakes Tourney 12/6

[nickc5]

WOW! What a weekend! I don't usually post on here, but bored at work and figured I'd do so now. I've been following big waters edge for years and its about time I share something.

At 7pm on Friday, the parking lot was about half way full for the tournament the next day. Boozing and hanging out with old buddies all night till they let us in at 430am. People were talking smack wondering why my brother and I were fishing off of his boat since SARL is typically a shore fishing kind of place. But that didn't throw off our GOOD vibes. Was feeling pretty good and decided to finally get on the water at around 5.

Drove to a spot where we thought would hold fish. Already on a good one from boozing all night and having no rest, it was time for me to drop the anchor. As i was letting it go through my hands, i noticed there wasn't much rope left. F**K! The anchor slipped through my hands. Lost the anchor. At that point, we thought we were pretty much screwed. It's hard to drift for trout with one anchor but we didn't let that stop us. We knew bait fishing was out of the question, so constant jigging it was.

5 casts in and BAM ! hook up at around 6:30. The fish instantly started heading towards shore where all the anglers lines were out. People were literally shoulder to shoulder throughout the whole lake bait fishing. I ended up muscling the fish in so that it would get in any lines from the shore anglers and my brother netted the guy. My brother ended up catching one fish drop shoting but that was it! The slow drift kept throwing us off our new honey hole and was hard to get back to it since several boaters posted up next us and started fishing at our spot.

We knew we were in contention of placing, but didn't know I'd take the whole TOURNEY!
I ending up getting 1st place which prize package ended up being:

$920 Cash
5 Day RW'S Alaska Fishing Trip-3 Full Salmon Charters
3 Daiwa Excellor/Presso Combos

I've fished a few tourney's, placed, won some money, but never came up as big as i did this weekend. Still cheesing after winning. Especially since all my buddies from shore were talking the most smack. HAHa. I'll probably fish more tourney's if I have the time off from work. Glad I finally had a Saturday off

GOOD VIBES TO YOU ALL.

HAPPY MONDAY!