There have been several instances of post-practice tales of woe prior to Elite Series tournaments this year. Like at Chesapeake Bay, for instance, when it was being compared to the Delaware River event in 2014. Usually these stories about how bad the fishing was in practice are followed quite a few zeroes, but a greater number of success stories. So the anglers get accused of "sand-bagging," in other words, lying about how bad practice was.
Wednesday's anglers' meeting fit the pattern of woeful tales. But if you know how good the smallmouth bass fishing is in the Sturgeon Bay area and you looked at the flags flying straight out in the 20-plus-mph wind, you understood that they weren't lying. Wind is everything on these big waters.
Justin Lucas would like to overcome his five-point deficit to Dean Rojas this week and take second-place in the final 2015 AOY standings. It would mean an extra $10,000 over a third-place finish. But he wasn't excited about his prospects of doing so yesterday.
"I honestly don't know if I can catch a keeper," Lucas said. "I caught two keepers in three days of practice. Unbelievable."
Bobby Lane, who needs to catch one keeper in three days to cement a Bassmaster Classic berth, said, "It's a beautiful body of water. There are a lot of big fish here. Where they are, I have no idea. I caught one or two fish every day."
But the fish catches are coming in pretty rapidly on BASSTrakk this morning. Greg Hackney put three 3-pounders in the boat in about five minutes. So we'll see. This scenario always reminds me of the infamous Alan Iverson press conference and the sentence he repeated over and over: "We're talking about practice. Practice."