ICE BOWL 2006
Lake Guntersville
February 18-19, 2006
By: Bo Crawford
TMTanglers held its 2006 spring tournament on chilly Lake Guntersville February 18-19. Our plan was to get in on some of this pig sticking action we kept hearing about at the lake. This tournament will go down in the annals of TMTangler history as the “ICE BOWL”. We enjoyed excellent accommodations the Goose Pond Lodge. Luckily the heaters are in working order there.
For practice we had windy but acceptable weather on Thursday. Things went down hill from there. On Friday it turned cold with strong North winds. For the tournament day on Saturday it turned cold, windy, with a rain/sleet mix. Basically it was the type of miserable weather that chills you to the bone. Luckily muddy water did not accompany the weather front. That is about the only thing I can imagine that would make it worse.
On Saturday Clint Jacobs and I fished the Mink Creek area where I had found some fish in practice. Because we launched at Goose Pond, we beat most of the big tournament boats there and had the whole place to ourselves. We did not have much luck. Then we saw the predicted armada for rooster tails approaching from the North and the South. It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be and everyone was respectful of each other’s water. There was one Procraft that was fishing by us that we dubbed the “Bass Vacuum” because they sucked all the bass out of an area. Like I say, everyone was respectful of each other’s water. It was just that they were catching fish and we weren’t. They were fishing the same spot we thoroughly worked before they arrived and hammering the fish. I’ll bet whoever that was earned a check that day. I sure would like to spend a day on the lake with them to learn what I was doing wrong.
We ended up changing areas because watching the Vacuum catch fish while we stood there in the freezing rain was demoralizing. My partner Clint got in the groove with a Rat-L-Trap and started catching some fish. Believe me, I was happy to help with the net. By 11:00 we had a limit (all caught by Clint). By the end of the day we had culled a few times and had a nice 17-12 stringer and figured it was going to be close.
We arrived about ten minutes early to the weigh-in to find none of our club there yet. I told Clint, “I am so proud of those guys. They are getting in every last cast before weigh-in.” I soon found out how wrong I was. Everyone else had come in early…ranging from a couple of hours early to hardly fishing at all.
For Day Two the group woke up to frigid 16 degree temps. That plus a 17 lb deficit was enough for most of the rest of the club to throw in the towel. My partner from Day 1 had to return to Birmingham for a family emergency so I ended up picking up Benson Murray for my day two partner. Because it was just us fishing, we were in the unusual position of fishing for the sake of breaking records with none of the usual tournament pressure.
We got out there and the winds were light and there were hardly any boats on the water. We had to contend with freezing line guides, but it eventually warmed up and was quite pleasant on the water. Benson caught a 4-6 which is the biggest bass he has ever caught. I caught a 6-3, which is the largest bass caught in TMTangler tournament history. Our biggest five were a 6-3, 4-6, 3-12, 3-8, and 3-8 for a club record weight of 21-05.
We are a small club but have good anglers. It is weird that I had so much more fun than everyone else. I contribute the difference to one thing: insulated Cabelas Guidewear. Ever since I bought that Guidewear I have had lingering doubts about whether it was worth the money. But on this trip it was worth its weight in gold.
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