KLBL - Lake Calhoun

Well last night was the final night in determining the team of the year on Thursday nights. We have one more night to fish but that is the championship and no points are awarded. Going into the night my dad and I had a 1 point lead over 2nd place, however 2nd place had the tiebreaker so all they needed to do was finish 1 spot better than us to win team of the year. All we needed to do was beat them for the night to secure 1st place for the season. We knew what we needed to do but unfortunately we couldn't get it done. I think we made a bad decision about where to start but in the end it wouldn't have mattered. They smoked em by catching 3 fish weighing over 12 lbs to take first for the night and for the year. 2nd had 11.66 lbs and 3rd had almost 10 lbs so the fish were biting good for some people. My dad and I weighed in 8.23 lbs to take 4th place for the night and also 2nd place in the team of the year standings.

Our initial plan was to start in a matted up weedbed but at the last second we decided to hit docks first. We had our limit in 15 minutes with 1 fish close to 3 lbs. Then we moved to another stretch of docks and caught another fish in the 2 1/2 lb range. After that we moved near where we should have started and watched the guy sitting there catch bass after bass. I got pretty close and caught another solid 2 1/2 lb fish under a tree. That was it for our limit. We did eventually get in the good area but he had cleaned it out already and all that was left were small fish. He was the guy who finished third for the night so even if we had started there in the first place we would have been able to catch about 10 lbs which wouldn't have been enough to hold on to team of the year anyways.

It is really disappointing to finish 2nd on the year but I guess overall it was still pretty solid. After winning last year I really wanted to repeat though. Actually I want to win it every year. That's just my competitive nature when it comes to fishing. I don't feel like we fished very well on the year anyway so maybe we didn't deserve it. We made too many bad decisions and lost too many key fish. Salvaging a 2nd place for the year was probably the best we could have hoped for.