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Lake Whatcom Fall Open

Borderline Bassin Contenders will be holding their annual Lake Whatcom Fall Open on Saturday, October 27th, 2012. Driver's meeting will be at 7 AM sharp and blast off will be at safe light. I anticipate we will blast off between 7:15 and 7:30 AM. Please try to be registered with your boat inspected prior to the driver's meeting. I will be in the upper portion of the parking lot at Bloedel Donovan Park at 6 AM accepting entry forms and doing boat inspections as people drive in. I figure this should make things run smoothly. Entry fee is $100 per team plus $20 big fish. Entry fee is paid back 80% and big fish 100%. Payout is 40% to 1st, 35% to 2nd, and 25% to 3rd. We can have a vote at the driver's meeting to see if people would rather have weigh in at 3 or 4 PM. I have attached the entry form and rules to this thread. If you would like to mail your entry in early, PM me and I can provide you with my address. There have not been any issues yet with people just showing up on tourney morning with their entry forms. Also, please try to bring your own signed entry form to the tournament if at all possible. I will bring extras but hardly anyone brought their own last year and I used every last spare form I brought. If you have any questions, shoot me a PM. As it is every year, this tournament should be a blast and the fishing should be excellent! Hope to see all of you that can make it there!

Clarification on issues that have come up in the past, these will be handled at my discretion:

1) Each team will be allowed one re weigh. If you choose to re weigh, you must take your second weight regardless of what it turns out to be.

2) Carbureted two stroke outboards are not allowed on Lake Whatcom. You are allowed to have one on your boat and only run your trolling motor however. Therefore, Borderline will not tell someone whether or not they can fish based on their outboard. Also, it is impossible for me personally to watch everyone so I will not take any protests involving people saying someone was running an illegal outboard. However, if you do run a carbureted two stroke motor, you are subject to being written a ticket. There was no one on the lake enforcing this law last year but I cannot gaurantee this will be the case again this year. I haven't heard any news on whether they will be enforcing this law this year. If you do run a carbureted two stroke motor, understand that you are doing so AT YOUR OWN RISK. Borderline will not assume any responsibility if you are written a ticket.

3) Off limits - The lake will be completely off limits to all competitors starting 12 AM on Monday October 22nd until the start of the tournament.

FYI on Motor Regs:

January 1, 2009—The operation of all carbureted two-stroke engine powered watercraft on Lake Whatcom is prohibited, except: Watercraft powered by a two-stroke engine that is certified and labeled as meeting the 2006 or later model year US EPA emissions standards, auxiliary sailboat engines, 10 horsepower or less engines, and all electronic fuel injected two-stroke engines originally purchased before August 2004.

Attachments:

NEWTOURNAMENTREGULATIONS100610.doc, 39 KB
WHATCOMOPEN2012.rtf, 34 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Parnicky on October 15, 2012 at 9:38pm

Whoa! All of a sudden there is more information about the tournament!

Permalink Reply by David Parnicky on October 15, 2012 at 9:44pm

Robert Mann and I will be fishing together again and we will be doing as much as we possibly can to put the 5 biggest bass we possibly can in the boat on the 27th! I might have to take some trash talking lessons from Richard Sherman in case things go well! I am saving that for after we drop our fish on the scales though.

Permalink Reply by P.J. Koshi on October 16, 2012 at 7:27pm

Joel and I will be there in the Lund. We are gonna make the Linder boys proud!

Permalink Reply by BigBass Dez on October 17, 2012 at 10:52am

The best recent fish report that iv heard about lk whatcom is that " TAG WILL BE OUT OF TOWN THAT DAY :) "

Permalink Reply by Chris Blandi on October 23, 2012 at 8:34pm

Jason Nielsen said:

Has there ever been any largemouth weighed in at whatcom during a tourney ?

To answer your question, yes there has been :-) Not neccesarily at the Fall Open, but there has been some.

Permalink Reply by Tag Watson on October 24, 2012 at 9:45pm

There was one year my partner and I won the October Open and our big smallmouth was beat out by a largemouth in the high-5's caught by Bill Ducker (aka Big Fish Bill) and his partner. Their largemouth was caught in deeper while targeting smallmouth.

Jason Nielsen said:

Has there ever been any largemouth weighed in at whatcom during a tourney?

Permalink Reply by Tag Watson on October 24, 2012 at 9:49pm

Jason,

Just for fun, I fished the first day of a 2-day event with the Puyallup Hawg Hunters several years ago in mid-June. I weighed just under 19 pounds and had three largemouth in my bag that day.

Jason Nielsen said:

Has there ever been any largemouth weighed in at whatcom during a tourney?

Permalink Reply by Tag Watson on October 26, 2012 at 12:28pm

Hey Jason,

There are some very nice largemouth in Whatcom. The population doesn't seem to be very big but the fish are quality. Late Spring through Summer, the largemouth are fairly predictable but seem to be concentrated. I've dedicated some hours to targeting them exclusively the past couple years and have managed quite a few fish over 5 and 6 pounds. Haven't played around with them too much in the Fall, but did manage a 7 pounder flipping one afternoon in October right by the launch. That was the day I first met my friend, Parnicky. He was pulling up to the ramp right after I caught it. Fun intro!

Jason Nielsen said:

NICE!! I should have asked , How many largies has Tag weighed in at the opens.. !

Ive always wondered why its not a better largemouth lake, seems to have alot of habitat??

Tag Watson said:

Jason,

Just for fun, I fished the first day of a 2-day event with the Puyallup Hawg Hunters several years ago in mid-June. I weighed just under 19 pounds and had three largemouth in my bag that day.

Jason Nielsen said:

Has there ever been any largemouth weighed in at whatcom during a tourney?

Permalink Reply by David Parnicky on October 28, 2012 at 9:21am

I just wanted to thank everyone again that showed up for this tournament! 21 boats is an incredible turnout for a Whatcom Fall Open! Biggest ever as far as I know! It got to a point for a while where 5 boats was a typical Fall Open. I think 5 years ago during one fall open, Brandon Thomas and I just threw 20 bucks down on it because we were the only ones that showed up. I need to thank Jordan as well as this site is a HUGE reason for the increase in participation.

As far as the fishing goes, it seemed pretty tough! 6 limits out of 21 boats. Robert and I caught them well in the morning but never caught another fish after 10 AM. We had a 12"er we would have liked to have gotten rid of but I am definitely not going to complain about that after seeing how tough the bite was!

Here are the top 10 places. If wanted, I can post the entire results. Just let me know

Big Fish - Joel Alinen and PJ Koshi - 5.71 lb smallmouth

1) Brandon Thomas/Rich Pratt - 5 Fish - 15.46 lbs (Congrats on the big win on a tough day!)

2) Matt Johnson/Tyler Carlson - 5 Fish - 13.76 lbs (Awesome performance by two guys who I hear just started bass fishing this year!)

3) David Parnicky/Robert Mann - 5 Fish - 12.69 lbs

4) Tony LoFranco/ Wes Wezenberg - 5 Fish - 10.95 lbs

5) Kirk Bain/Ed Webb - 5 Fish - 10.46 lbs

6) Bill Smith/Ron Helvey - 5 Fish - 10.35 lbs

7) Mick Newman/Kevin Morgan - 3 Fish - 10.04 lbs

8) Sun Butma/Tha Kuhn - 3 Fish - 9.63 lbs

9) Joel Alinen/P.J. Koshi - 2 Fish - 8.21 lbs

10) Bill Caldwell/Bill Boretsky - 3 Fish - 7.13 lbs

Permalink Reply by Joel Alinen on October 28, 2012 at 4:07pm

Great tourney put on by borderline! Congrads to Brandon and Rich...it was a TOUGH day but I am always stoked to fish Whatcom the two time a year I get to! The last three years have been won on random stuff...maybe the float-n-fly will be the deal next year! :-)

Permalink Reply by Sun on October 28, 2012 at 6:50pm

I wanted to thank David and bordernline for putting on a great tourney. Congrats to Brandon and Rich on the big win. Congrats to Joel on the big fish, she was a beauty. First time fishing this lake in the fall, even tho I live only two blocks down the road haha. It was tough day for me and my partner, but at least we made every bite count. Looking forward to the spring open!

Permalink Reply by Bill Caldwell on November 3, 2012 at 7:06pm