Berkley/ WAFISH Open Results and Story

First off, I'd like to start by thanking everyone who attended, it was great to see some of you again and meet new guys from this site.

We started the day at just before 4:30am when the park ranger came and opened the gates early for us. By the time that I arrived at 4:32am, there was a line at the entrance path to get your boat checked and probably close to 15 boats already in the parking lot. At this point I knew we had something big. Well, little did I know that about an hour later after registration was all said and done we would land at 59 boats. The parking lot was packed with nothing but bass boats and trucks, very American.

Once everyone was registered and drivers meeting was completed, everyone launched their boats in a semi-orderly fashion and soon enough there were 59 boats floating around in the boat launch area. We had everyone shut off their motor for a live singing of the national anthem and waving of the American flag, mounted on a 15' Ugly Stick rod. Once it was completed and everyone started back up, the smell of two stroke really got me excited. I wished that I was fishing so bad and now I know how tournament directors feel to watch all your buddies go fish and you sit and do paperwork and crunch numbers. I have a new respect for guys like Gary Stiles. We had two flights of boats, one due at 2:30 and the other at 3:00. As the boats ran off into the distance, the fog was just clearing off the water and I made my way back to "Home Base" as we called it, since we had a couple of pop up tents up and the 16' long stage with banners surrounding it. We squared away all the payouts and prizes and hopped in the boat to go fish for a few hours ourselves.

We soon found out that the fishing was tough. As Nick Berto said in his post tournament interview on stage when asked how fishing was "It sucked..... It really sucked...." . Certainly nobody expected fishing to be this difficult, as traditionally, the fishing is lights out that time of year. Tito and I ended up catching a couple of fish, which was perfect for the mystery pot of "Beat the Berkley Boat".

We arrived back at home base and setup the weigh in equipment. Our two fish mystery weight went a total of 3.94lbs. Shortly after the first flight began making their way back to the scales. There were alot of somber faces and also a number of people doing the "Dash of Shame", but I don't blame them, that’s a long day on the water for no fish. Out of all of the boats in the first flight, only 10 teams weighed fish. Leader after the 1st flight was 6.60lbs belonging to Chris Ferry and Willie Parsons.

The second flight appeared to have a little more success as they came to the scales, with a few more fish per team and a little better quality. As the line thinned down to nothing to weigh in, last call for the scales was announced and one final team, in a classic case of sandbagging, was still sitting in their boat to weigh. As they came up, everyone saw they had a bag full of green fish and did they ever! After doubling the previous leaders bag, the nail was in the coffin and the winner was clear. Here is how the top ten lined up:

1st: Mike Wolsky/Chris Sergeant 18.15lbs

2nd: Gabe Lowe/Tom Librande 9.02lbs

3rd: Thayne Hatch/Phil Johnson 8.58lbs

4th: Shane Denherder/ Dan Capry 7.30lbs

5th: Bob Higbee/Mike Collins 6.79lbs

6th: Chris Ferry/Willie Parsons 6.60lbs

7th: Bob Leary 6.21lbs

8th: Greg Johnson/John Burres 5.78lbs

9th:Greg Burton/John Heaslip 5.29lbs

10th: Thomas Maciel/Duane Lee 4.69lbs

Cash prize was awarded to the top ten teams.

Big Fish: Gabe Lowe/Tom Librande 5.05lbs

Mystery Weight of first team to Beat the Berkley Boat: Chris Rider and Nick Berto 4.10lbs.    

Out of 59 boats fishing, only 28 caught fish for a total of 50 total fish caught. Certainly an uncharacteristically a tough spring day on Sammamish.   

In closing, I want to mention a special thanks to David Parnicky, who guarded home base all day as we went out on the lake, and those of you who stuck around after to help take down and cleanup.

We all had a great time putting this tournament on and hope to make it bigger and better next year!