Tournament Recap #4 August 14th

My next tournament this season took me to Golden Lake Ontario. I fished this tournament with my good friend and normal tourney partner Jeff Wilkins. Jeff and myself have been a team the last 2 seasons but this year we decided not to join a club due to my new commitments at home. We had planned on fishing this tournament since early spring when we were informed that the Petawawa Bassmasters would be running an open tournament there. We have had good success on this lake in the past and we had high expectations going in. The day started slow but we did have 2 good keepers at noon hour but we were starting to scramble. We moved to an area where we had marked some fish earlier in the day and worked the area over very slow. Jeff hooked into a solid fish that he fought to the boat, the fish made a couple of hard runs and we got a good look at it and knew it was a good one. The fish made one last run and suddenly broke Jeff off. This is when our day took a turn for the worse.... Jeff was disappointed but I was confident there were more fish in the area and told him not to worry. We boated another keeper soon after and then Jeff hooked another one. This fish started to jump way out from the boat and it was so big it could hardly clear the water. Jeff played the fish very carefully and it made another jump right near the boat and spit the hook. By this time Jeff is very upset and it is nearing 2 o'clock. We move to another spot and boat 2 keepers to give us a small limit before moving back to the previous spot hoping to make up for the 2 lost fish. At 3:30 Jeff sets the hook and it barely moved, he set again and the biggest smallmouth I have seen in years jumps clean out of the water. This time I do everything I can to make it easy for him to land this fish. I pull the boat away from the weeds, I get the net ready, I pull the trolling motor up so it can't get wrapped up,  can you see where this is going???? Next thing this toad jumps right at the boat and spits Jeff's tube right at him. After a few choice words we decide that today just wasn't our day and we head for the launch . We ended the day with 11.47 good for 6th place out of 23 teams. We were a little over 5 lbs out of first which we would have easily had if not for our misfortunes but that's the way fishing is sometimes. It was nice to get back in the boat my with my tourney partner again and we're still friends even after all the lost fish......LOL