Today Rick, Eric, Jay and I teamed up for the Mustad Challenge.  We had an up & down day, although it ended up being more up than down.  We boated a few nice fish and lost just as many nice fish.  One of the fish we managed to boat is the new Summer LOC Derby Salmon division leader at 25.12lbs.  The fish came on a Green Double Crush Glow Smartfish/Siggs Rigs Green Hypnotist fly fished off of our 600' copper rig out over 130 FOW.  The fish was also the largest fish of the tournament and won the big fish award as well as the Shane Zimmerman Memorial Big Fish Award.  Rick's arms were just killing him at the end of the battle with the fish...it took close to 300' of backing out on top of the copper & leader and it took Rick quite a while to land it.  Way to go Rick, it was a real thrill to boat that fish with some of my best fishing buddies on board!

Here's a few pictures:







One of the fish we lost was in the same size class as this fish.  We had just returned to the lake after being chased off for a couple of hours due to some severe thunderstorms.  We weren't set up for more than five minutes when our 220' wire diver pulling a White Spin Dr./Siggs Rigs Blue Dolphin fires.  Jay is on the rod and it's a screamer!  He played the fish for a few minutes and then it broke the leader and was gone.  As if to rub it in our faces, the fish kept jumping after it broke off, and we could see the white Spinny hanging from it's mouth.  The funny part of the story is when we're at the weigh in later in the day, some of our friends from another boat that was fishing near us at the time came up to us and said they saw a big King swimming on the surface with a white Spinny hanging from it's mouth!  They tried to net it, but once it saw their boat it got some of it's ambition back and split the scene!  Too funny.  I sure would've loved to have boated that King too.  Oh well, that's fishin!

 A big Thank You goes out to Lester Zimmerman and Tom Allen for organizing the Memorial Award for Shane.  We are honored to have won it.  You guys are both class acts and are exactly the kind of people that make this fishery such a pleasure to be a part of.

We had a great day fishing the Challenge.  If you've never tried any of these one-day tournaments, you really ought to check them out.  They're a lot of fun, you might just learn something new, and you'll make some fantastic friends while you're at it.

Well, I'm off for a week's vacation with my family.  We'll be back at the lake for the Oswego Pro-Am in a couple of weekends.

Until Next Time,
Fish On!! 

~Capt. Bill