Pennsylvania pro Destin DeMarion caught five bass Thursday that weighed 19 pounds, 6 ounces and finished Day 1 in 13th place. That’s plenty impressive by itself, but it’s downright amazing when you consider he did it mostly without a trolling motor.
“My power steering wouldn’t work on the motor and I couldn’t Spot Lock,” DeMarion said. “I called the service trailer and I was about to come back, I was far away. But I decided to fish for a second to see if I could make it work.”
On the first cast, DeMarion caught a 4 1/2-pounder and then another fish about 3 pounds.
“I started finagling with it and decided I was gonna try to make it work,” he said. “It was making this weird sound all day, but we made it through it and had a great day.”
Now DeMarion knows he would have missed a great day of smallmouth fishing if he hadn’t decided to make those first few casts.
He was headed straight to the service yard after Thursday’s weigh-in and is hopefully trolling well this morning.