[Guest]

The best thing I can say about this tournament is that I lived through it. Those of you who were there know what I mean.

Six foot swells moving across the main lake made for a pretty scary situation. Luckily the guy I drew had a 21 foot fish-n-ski that was able to handle the waves better than a bass boat. As we were being lifted and dropped with huge waves breaking over the boat, my partner turned to me and said "you think we'll make it?". I just smiled because I thought he was kidding -I figured he had done this before and I had all the confidence in the world in his ability to keep us from rolling over. A few minutes later he asked again and I started to realize how serious this situation was. I had my eyes shut most of the time because there was so much water hitting me in the face (and I really didn't care to see what I was seeing. Luckily we were able to duck off the main lake into a small cove that had a private ramp at which time my partner said "this is as far as we're going -I'm not going back out there". As we sat in the cove trying to figure out how we were going to get back to the main ramp to pick up his truck and trailer, he explained that this was the worst water he'd ever been in or seen and that he was pretty scared. Later, talking to the other fisherman I heard many say that this was the first time they had ever been truly scared while out on the water. In the end, nobody died but one team lost their boat when the excess water in their boat caused the battery or something to quit and the motor to quit resulting in them being slammed into some shallow rocks where their boat ended up filled with water and stuck. Another bass boat that ended up in the cove with us had their trolling motor wrecked and the driver side window completed ripped off.

It was scary and exciting and I hope I never have to go through it again. I love to fish but it's not worth dying for....besides death tends to really cut into a mans fishing time.

 

[Guest]

Saturday was bad, sunday was pretty nice, breezy and a bit bumpy, but not nearly as bad as saturday. I would have to say saturday's waves were bigger than six foot. there were some i would swear were between 8 and 10. It was not the worst i had been in, but it was pretty nasty. I have been on mead in waves that were probaby 12 to 15, but atleast at mead they roll and they don't have the sharp drops that those waves did.

 

[Nastybasser]

I know exactly what you mean..........

I was there with my wife. We weren't in the tourney but we were in the water and it was really scary. You guys took off from the ramp that I refused to. We went to Sand Point and launched. It was pretty scary going across from there. Tried getting out of the wind, with not a lot of success. Finally we said heck with this and went back to the hotel. Sunday was great!!! Caught some fish and had a real good time. Hope you did too! Sorry to hear about the misfortunes of some of the other anglers. Kip told me all about it that evening. Hope the rescue boat is ok also

 

[Guest]

First off I am sorry to hear of the misfortunes of some.
We were there this weekend also just fun fishing. Saturday we pulled the boat down to the ramp but decided not to go out. There was so much sand and dirt in the air besides the rough water it was not worth going out. Most of us that do fish tournaments do it for fun or extra income and don’t make a living at it.
I think this is ware the tournament directors need to step up and call it off and not have some half ass vote if it is that bad. If a storm comes up after you are out there is not much they can do about that but it started blowing around 3:00am so there was plenty on time to cancel Saturday and just fish longer Sunday. We all spend plenty on this sport so why should we tear up our equipment or worse someone gets hurt or killed for maybe $1000.
Sorry just my opinion.

 

[conquistador]

I was there and we'll be talking about this Federation tournament for years to come.

I don't think that many of us knew how bad it was in the morning and then how bad it was going to get. It was only really bad in the basin just north and south of Lake Havasu. But I must say it was bad.

The next day, Sunday, the federation board was very concerned about the safety of all and decided to fish because by 6:45 it was calm and turned out to be a good day.