Table Rock 2008 - Here is the Story

[Heagster]

Steel City Members,

For those of you who were unable to attend the Table Rock event 2 weeks ago, we had some pretty amazing things present themselves.

As we all know, high water has been the primary story of our 2008 season. I have never witnessed a year of club tournaments that has been so adversely effected by the weather.

The boat docks at Lazy Lee's were marooned about 50 yards from shore. The owners got power restored to both docks early in the week and beached one of their pontoon boats with the keys in it for our use to shuttle to and from the docks. That was a key ingredient for making the week bearable.

We got to see all 10 gates opened at the dam early in the week, followed by seeing them all close simultaneously on Wednesday afternoon. The gates closing was the best thing that happened because the rapidly falling lake level early in the week made the fishing pretty tough.

By tournament time, the water was steady at 15-feet above power pool. It was tough to find shoreline to fish with 50 ft of treetops between you and land.

The spawning bass of 2008 should be very productive. No one can get to them on the beds and the fry will have plenty of cover to protect them. In 4 years or so, there should be an ample supply of keeper size bass of all species. (Lots of shorts between now and then)

On the day before the tournament, a big thunderstorm came through about an hour before sunrise. It was brief, but it took out the power to the resort. Brad Ferguson's boat was parked in his personal dock on a lift and the wind slid it up and off the back, completely submerging his engine. The bow was pointed straight up in the air with just one rope holding it in it's verticle position. Some of our boys were there to help him get it upright and on the trailer, but he wound up renting a bass boat for the tournament because his outboard was temporarily shot.

Our pre-tournament festivities on Friday went very well. Rick LaPoint was our guest speaker and he got very good reviews from the folks in attendance. I heard from several of our fishermen that his "swimming grub" suggestion served them well during the tournament.

Then came tournament day.....

I woke up before the alarm clock to hear our EZ-Up tarps rattling in the constant high winds coming straight from the west. I will guess that the wind was 30mph plus.

Lazy Lee's owner Ron and his son Easton were out there at 5:00am on the pontoon shuttling everyone to their rigs for the tournament.

To our surprise, three of our rigs that were parked on the western side of the main dock were "swamped" and absolutely full of water. Arthur, Jenks, and Bill Naeger were the unfortunate victims of the high winds, constantly blowing waves over the stern.

It was a huge effort to get the water out, since the winds continued and even more water came in over the back. After a 1-hour tournament delay to help salvage those three rigs we got the tournament underway. In the end, we had four boats that were non-functional and pulled out of the tournament. Another three boats pulled out because of the high winds.

Hopefully we will get a good picture of Arthur maneuvering his flooded Ranger with the trolling motor to get to the non-windy side of the dock for bailing. He looked like he was "walking on water" and wants to send the picture to Ranger, thanking them for the upright and level floatation concept.

It was a pretty ugly feeling knowing that those other guys came all that way, only to be spectators at the weigh-in and we all felt badly for them.

The weigh-in saw over 100 pounds of fish from what was left of the field. It took 19 pounds to win.

The post-tournament meal and festivities went without incident as we drowned our sorrows with the boys who had boat problems.

I would like to say that there were a lot of guys who put the tournament on the back burner to make sure that the sinking boats were saved. It made this club president proud to witness all of the effort that our boys put into helping their fellow club members.

On Saturday evening I made special mention of our hosts at Lazy Lee's (Ron and Joy) for putting in a supreme effort, shuttling everyone to and from the docks, getting sump pumps from their shed to help bail out the swamped rigs, and making sure that everyone got the help/service they needed.

We have had more successful fishing tournaments, but we will not soon forget what happened at the Spring Table Rock event of 2008.

Thanks everyone. Now let's please get some dry weather here in the midwest so that the lakes and fishermen can get back to normal business.

Heagy