Hey guys,
It’s me, Braden, and I’m back with another story for you. I’d like to tell you about one of my fishing tournaments. On August 22, me and my sister, Addison Jones, had a fishing tournament on Logan Martin Lake in Pell City, Alabama. Tournament days start early, so we got up at 4:00 AM to get ready. Pawpaw, Josh Nelson, was our boat captain, and he got to our house at 4:30 so that we could head down to the lake. We launched the boat around 5:00 and waited to blast off.
Safe daylight was at 6:15, and at 6:30 our boat number was called. We headed straight to our first spot of the day. While we were fishing some boat docks, Addison caught one that was a quarter inch too short, so we had to throw it back. The required length of a fish is 12 inches.
About 15 minutes later I got a bite and set the hook. Once I got it to the boat, it went straight into the live well. That was within the first 30 minutes of being on the water. We kept fishing, getting a few bites here and there but didn’t set the hook on anymore.
We then decided to go to a spot called Jesus point about 20 minutes away. We fished there for almost 45 minutes to no avail, so we decided to head back to the spot we started at earlier that morning. When we got there, we began letting the trolling motor down and a fishing pole got knocked off. Pawpaw almost saved it. He caught it with his foot, and as he was moving to pick it up it fell off into the water.
In all the chaos, another reel got stepped on and ended up with a broken handle, so we were two poles down. Even with that happening, we were still confident that we could do good in the tournament!
I caught a fish that was about 1 lb., and Addison put him in the live well. As she was doing that, she noticed our big fish, about 2□(1/2) pounds, was floating upside down, but still moving. We had forgotten to put ice in the live well to keep him cool during the chaos of running up and down the lake. The ice helped to keep it alive for two more hours as we continued fishing.
We had an hour until weigh in, so we went to check the fish again, and found it dead. As we were getting ready to head back to the boat ramp, a ski boat came by and cast a big wave that got me and Pawpaw wet. When we got to the boat ramp, we released the fish that was still alive and headed on home.