May 30, 2012
After a long day of
travelling from New Hampshire I rolled home into
Victor, Idaho
late last night. Granny was anxiously
waiting, not only because I’ve been gone more than a week, but tomorrow is the
annual Bass on the Fly Tourney at Ririe Reservoir in Ririe Idaho.
The tournament consists of three person teams – one rower and two
anglers. The object of the eight hour competition
is to catch the heaviest five smallmouth bass (must be over 12”) you can. And all must be healthy and survive release
after weigh in at days end. That’s five
per team, not angler. Granny is the
rower of our three man team. Our partner
for all four years of the tournament has been my good friend Weldon Jones. However, Weldon recently moved and therefore
we had a new partner, our friend Scott Smith.
Well, unfortunately, while I was in NH Scott backed out and we never
replaced him. So Granny and I went after our
five bass a challenged fly rod shy.
To my advantage, my body is
on Eastern Time. I got up at 4:20 AM,
well rested and got the boat and fly rods ready. After a week on the smallies in NH it wasn’t
too hard to be ready. At 6 I woke up
Granny and we were off to Ririe for the tournament.
There were sixteen teams this
year. The weather was gorgeous with
light wind and temps in the 70ºs. Everything was right for fishing the
smallies. Yet everyone but the first and
second place teams had tough fishing. At
4 PM Granny and I weighed in only three bass.
And only three bass still put us in sixth place. If only we had a full team, we’re sure we
could have scraped up two more fish. The winners were Rob and Pam Parkins and
Zack Dalton.
It’s always a fun as heck
tournament. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.
You’d think that after my NH smallie week I’d be fine tuned to get a
bunch of nice smallies for the competition, but Ririe Reservoir fishes nothing
like Lake Winnipesaukee. Ririe is a dammed up deep canyon where
finding the smallmouth bass can be tough.
Furthermore, smallmouth were not native here and because of this, they
have some unusual habits they adapted to for survival in these foreign waters.
With the carp tourney earlier
in the month, then the trip to NH followed by today’s tourney, I’ve been
fishing a lot – as promised. All of it
has been absolutely fantastic and what a variety of fish species to contend
with. I’ve been very lucky! For the next couple weeks its back to work
with a mix of some Henry’s Fork fishing up at Last Chance. This is my favorite fishing of the year!
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