Feelfree Competitive Fishing Team Member fills us in on his personal report of his participation in the New England Bassin Rhode Island Upper Slatersville Reservoir.
Finally our first live event and partners tourney of the season. No more Online, fish every honey hole in the state tourneys. Now everyone is on an even playing field. I was excited about that and the fact that FeelFree would be sponsoring this event with the great prizes they donated to the club.
Loaded up the FeelFree Dorado around 0300 hours and headed northwest to Upper Slatersville. Arrived to the launch site around 0400 hours and there was already a decent amount of guys gearing up for this battle. I knew for sure it would be a battle. This river system has been my nemesis in the past. I have had a lot of trouble catching good size fish here. Hopefully that would change today.
I got the Dorado all rigged up and ready for battle and launched at 0500 hours. I decided to head south towards the river system. With it being in the 90s all week I wanted to head to cooler water hoping the river would be that. Also with this lake being all choked out with weeds I figured the river would be a good start. My partner Greg Kraz headed south also to a grass flat to do some frogging. I got to the river and decided to I would start off throwing a Gary Yamamoto Flopping hog with a 3/8 Woo tungsten flipping weight on a 6’8” FX Custom heavy rod. Lines in at 0530 hours. My 3rd cast into a laydown BOOM!!! I am on the board. 15” Largemouth Bass. I continued down the river for about a hour and a half with out even a single bite. Time to change up the game plan. Headed back to the main lake and decided to head into a small cove I passed on the way down. Decided to throw a wacky rig black and blue senko and Bam fish on!! To bad it was only a 12.5” fish. Only one more fish until I hit limit.
Few more hours went by not even one bite. I looked at the score on TourneyX to see how every one else was doing. Good news I was sitting in 4th place. Looks like everyone else is having a similar struggle. Greg my partner was sitting in first place at the time also. So we were leading the partners tourney too. I decided to head North to skip some docks. Ended up catching a couple 11.5” fish. So that was not good with a 12” minimum.
With only a half hour to go, I was sitting in 6th place at the time. Still with only 2 fish on the board. I knew I needed to get my limit and I would land somewhere in the top 5. Greg was still currently holding down the number 1 spot. As I was peddling back towards the river to give it one more shot, I noticed a nice ledge on my Lowrance Elite TI 2. I decided to circle around back to it and throw a ned rig and drag it down the ledge. YES!!! FISH ON!!! It wasn’t nothing to brag about but I had limit now. 12” fish with a total of 39.5”. Just enough to bump me back to 4th place with less then 20 minutes to go.
The tournament came to an end. Greg held that number one spot and I placed 4th for my 5th top five finished out of 6 NEBASSIN tournaments this season. We also won the partners tourney that day which was an added on bonus for both of us. Back at the boat ramp Director John DiCenzo handed out the winnings and the giveaway prizes. Ryan Enko won a FeelFree 45 liter cooler. Louis Laporte won two $20 Feelfree gift certificates. I am sure he will get something nice for that beautiful new Winter Camo FeelFree Dorado. John DiCenzo and I won a 10liter FeelFree Dry Tube.
Thank you FeelFree Kayaks and NEBASSIN for putting on this great event. Everyone seemed to have a great time. I am proud to be member of this FeelFree team.
Written by Chris Gomes, Feelfree Competitive Fishing Team Member