Lake Leon - Better than Last Year

Tournament #2 for the TBC West Region is done, and I don't plan on looking back!

We met at the hotel on Saturday night, registered, then headed out to supper. The fellowship and visiting was great. The food was good. But the smoke was terrible! I guess, living in Abilene, I am just spoiled to the fact there is no smoking in any public places. When I go out of town, I expect the same. Not so! The little restaurant we were in was a complete smoking establishment so along with my food, I ate smoke. I did manage not to get sick and that was nice.

I am not sure if they are talking about supper, solving all the problems of the world, or telling about the one that got away!

We started with a nice day, partly cloudy skies and not much wind. As usual, a beautiful west Texas sunrise.

Frank had a decent day, three keeper fish, a few small ones (as seen in the picture below! He was so mad at me for taking this!), and one striper that went on a sailing trip when Frank got him off his hook. They put up a pretty good fight so when you get to where you can see them, you are a bit disappointed.

I on the other hand could not stay out of the rocks and trees. I had two small fish with the largest only being 13 1/2". The other one I think was smaller than the one Frank has in the picture above! All in all we had 6.03 pounds, lost about 5 spinner baits, and got beat up by the wind. Weatherbugg reported 29 mph at Dyess AFB with gusts of 45! I am beat, but poor Frank is exhausted from battling the wind from the front of the boat!

We stopped at DQ in Eastland and ate with Russell and Michelle, then headed home. We saw three grass fires to the south of the interstate. We were worried they might close the highway because of smoke.

This is smoke not clouds!

We also saw the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile on the way home. I did take a picture of it. Do you see it? I promise, it is in this picture.

There is a tournament next Saturday at Ivie, but we don't know if we will be fishing or not. It depends on how much time Frank gets to spend with Mattie May this week and what the weather does. I promise you, if the wind blows like it did today, I will not be on that lake!

Fishing Lake Stamford

This past Sunday, we fished Lake Stamford with the Panhandle Region of TBC. The day started out pretty good. It was a bit cooler than the weatherman said it would be, but it sure beat last Sunday! Frank and I decided I must have had a bit of a fever because it took me a really long time to warm up and I had an extra long nap on the boat! I have gotten pretty good about not doing that, but I just couldn't help myself.

The wind was also good to us. It didn't blow to hard. The water was a bit muddy and we flipped cat tails almost all day! We caught fish all day, but for some reason couldn't get them in the boat! As Frank set the hook on one, it went through his legs (really, I was watching!), took one bounce on the deck, and off the other side of the boat she went! I had never seen anything like that before. We had several things like that happen.

I caught a really nice white on a spinner bait. Sure wish I could have weighed that one. It was a very nice size.

After Frank tried to electrocute himself (this is a story all it's own) on an electric line running across the lake, we called it a day and went to weigh in. We had three fish that went just under 9 pounds. It took 23 pounds to win. A new couple from the Panhandle won it. I really do like when that happens. It helps to get more couples in the club.

Our next tournament with the West Region is at Lake Leon on March 22. Ya'll come on out if you get the chance.

This was a Tournament I Would Rather Forget!

This was just one of those days. It actually started Saturday night when we called for our wake up call. I reminded the man to set his clock forward one hour and he quickly informed me that I was wrong. He would set his clock up SUNDAY night just like everyone else. So as a precaution Frank and I set our phone alarms and sure enough. we received our wake up call at 7 AM one hour late. We were actually walking out the door. We had kind of hung around to see if the phone would actually ring.

We didn't get in a real hurry to get to the lake and stopped and had breakfast. It was still dark due to the time change and it had been awhile since Frank had been on the lake and we didn't want to damage the boat.

Once on the water, I was still not feeling very well so I slept most of the morning. Frank struggled to find a place to fish. There was land where there was none and there were no cattails where they used to be. He felt like he was on a lake he had never been on. And he kept trying to make sure I was OK, such a good doctor.

I am not sure what time the wind hit but it was very strong. Poor Frank, it just kills his back when it is like that, but he will not give up. He just kept fishing. I finally started fishing around noon with no luck. Second cast and my rod with the spinner bait was done for the day. I put a knot in the line that was not coming out and we will just have to strip the line and start over. Then I fished with my crank bait. This went ok, I had a few backlashes but nothing I couldn't get out. We were fishing around some docks and it wasn't to long until I casted up over a dock and the lure hung on the railing on the back side of the dock. There was no getting to the little guy and we just had to break the line and leave him hanging there.

By this time we only had about an hour to fish so I threw Frank's spinner bait until he decided he had had enough and we headed in. He did boat a couple of fish and I had one little dink that I could barely feel on the line, but nothing to weigh.

Congratulations to Warren and Liz Hutcherson. They won with around 10 pounds. And I'm sorry, I don't remember who won Ladies Big fish or Big Fish. You can click here to see more snap shots from weigh in. Check out the TBC web site here to get more information from the tournament.

Our next tournament is April 20 at O.H. Ivie. Hope to see you all there.

Tournament #2

Boy this month has gone by fast. I just realized that we have a tournament this weekend.

TBC will be fishing at Lake Leon in Eastland. We will be staying Saturday night at the Super 8 Motel (click here for info) and will be having registration in Tommy and Pam's room from 5PM to 6PM. I don't know of many places to eat in Eastland, but if I have anything to do with it, I am sure we will all go somewhere after registration.

Hope to see you at there!

This was way before CPR

Just think how big some of those guys could have gotten!