FLW American Fishing Series
Lake Erie, Erie PA
Water Temp: 69
Post Spawn

I was trying to stay positive as I was driving to Lake Erie. My season has been terrible thus far and I was wondering if my streak of bad luck would follow me to Pennsylvania. The thought of catching giant smallmouth was making me feel warm and fuzzy inside and I was making good time; life was good. That was until the check tire light came on. Thankfully there was an exit right there so I pulled off the exit and took a look at my tire; oh, and it had just started pouring rain about 2 minutes before. There was a bridge overpass that I pulled under to get out of the rain and assess the damage. Yep, the tire needed to be checked; it was flat as a pancake! I got back in the truck and pushed the onstar button and help was on the way.

I couldn't help but wonder what I had done wrong to deserve all this bad luck. Not only was it bringing me down, it was making me more broke than I already was. It is what it is, flat tires happen. The tow truck showed up and his jack didn't work, so I had to dig mine out from underneath all my tackle in the back of the truck; he tells me "yeah, I'm going to go pick up a new jack today". Thanks buddy that makes me feel much better; who responds to a flat tire call with a bad jack? There were more follies that ensued, but there's not enough time in the week to tell you all the things that were wrong with this tow truck responder. I get back on the road and make it to Erie in surprisingly good time, even with the breakdown.

I'm going to roll practice up into one big ball. I fished in Presque Isle bay for 40 minutes and caught 11 largemouth cranking the edge of the grass in about 10 feet of water. If we got stuck in the bay due to bad weather, I figured I could catch at least 8-10lbs.


The next few days I attempted to get out on the main lake and find some of those giant smallmouth I've heard so much about. The problem was the wind. The best day we had in practice the wind blew 15mph out of the southwest; the waves were about 3 to 4 feet. The rest of the time the wind was blowing over 20mph and the fishing was near impossible. In 4 days of practice I caught 3 smallmouth. 2 were within a couple yards of each other, and the other was 40 miles the opposite direction. My whole plan for practice was to start looking in 55 feet of water and work my way in. With the wind blowing the way it had, I was only able to make it out to about 40 of water. Practice was not going as I had planned and I was starting to feel like I might miss the Championship for the first time since I started fishing. I needed some kind of break.

By the meeting I was praying that the wind would blow 50 and they'd confine us to the bay. I was confident if we were confined to the bay that I could keep up; if they let us out on the lake I would get my butt kicked. As is would happen, the wind gods smiled on me and blew like crazy. We were confined to the bay and I went crankin'. I ended up weighing in 4 largies for just over 8lbs which was good enough for 16th place. Between my Co-angler and I we boated close to 50 fish, but the 15" size limit made keepers difficult to come by. I was able to boat 10 keepers, but the 4 fish limit kept my weight down. I was happy though, I was within striking distance of the top 10. Now I just needed to get out on the lake and hope the area that I caught the two fish in practice on was better than I thought.