There’s nothing quite like an early autumn tournament on one of the Great Lakes to put some extra wiggle in the fickle finger of fishing fate. The swing between good luck and bad luck becomes wider with high winds and big water.
First, the bad luck: 1) Greg DiPalma’s bilge pumps quit after the run south to Belle River Hump and he spent the rest of his day using all his considerable boating skills to get a sinking ship back to Metro Park – fishless; 2) AOY leader Scott Canterbury is forced to compete all day without the use of his malfunctioning depth-fingers on the bow of his boat; 3) AOY contender Cory Johnston’s outboard motor quit but he’s able to switch boats with his brother Chris in order to stay in contention for the AOY title.
Then there’s the good luck, or as Seth Feider deemed it, “dumb luck.” Feider weighed a phenomenal 26-pound, 12-ounce five-bass limit on Day 1 at Lake St. Clair. It was two pounds heavier than the second-place bags of 24-12 caught by Stetson Blaylock and Derek Hudnall.
“In all of practice I found one spot and it was on the south end of the lake,” Feider said. “I didn’t think it was fishable (Sunday), so I just completely scrapped that.”
Feider stayed north, had a few small keepers in the boat and decided to fish a river channel buoy, which he noted was a well-known “community hole.”
“The waves were crashing real hard, so I stopped short, went to drift, picked up a (Rapala) DT 10 (crankbait), fired it out on this little point. caught a four-something and hit Spot-Lock (on his Minn Kota Ultrex trolling motor),” Feider said. “I caught ’em every cast for 20 or 30 minutes. Right there, one spot, never moved the boat, same bait, same cast, everything.”
When asked if that was part of his plan for the day, Feider replied, “Absolutely not. I caught a fish there five years ago. I had not been there in practice. It was just dumb luck really.”
So the question is this: Who does the fickle finger of fishing fate swing in favor of and swing against today on Lake St. Clair?