Sunday August 26^th 2007                                 

                                          Sauk Lake

 Here we go again another club event with no pre-fishing due to the high gas prices and my commitment to the Toyota Tundra Weekend series; I have at least fished Sauk Lake a few times in the past and might have inkling to what the fish might be doing. What a crazy weekend we are fishing on Sunday instead of the usual Saturday because a couple of club members had a team tournament on a different lake on Sat. anyways there is a big two day tournament on Sauk this weekend plus a small club event and then our 17 members on top of that all I know is we had our permit to hold the event anyway the lake has just been pounded hard with pre-fishing and the first day of competition from the two day event so it is going to be tough out there today.

  Out of our club I was the last to take off due to a random draw earlier this year and I am also fishing by myself, well by the time I got my Ranger boat up on plane there must have been 60 boats running around by now, if you don’t know by now I have a problem fishing in crowds so I’m scrambling already I eventually picked a shoreline that looked unmolested and started fishing with a wake bait (shallow running crankbait) and caught a small keeper on my first cast a 12 ¼ “ and I start thinking great get a quick limit of 5 and then I have the rest of the day to relax and fish for some giant largemouth. An hour and a half later and still just the one small fish I decided to try a few docks and on the third one I whacked a 2 lb’er on an ALL-TERRAIN jig, I decided not to fish the rest of the docks because another angler had worked over the area pretty well so I moved to another location that had a small thin shallow running band of weeds that I started throwing a spinnerbait to on the inside edge and eventually picked up a bass of about 1-1/2 lbs and then set the hook on a nice fish so thinking I may have found something well that was not the case turned out to be a 5 lb snot rocket (northern pike) by now the day is half over and I have just 3 fish for about 4-1/2 lbs not very impressive is it, needless to say I’m getting a little nervous. I noticed the wind has really started to blow so instead of getting out of the wind I head to a windward shoreline and start pitching a row of docks with my trusty 1/2oz. ALL-TERRAIN jig and about eight docks in I smack a good fish and quickly flip it into the boat, I probably, no I know I should not have done that but got lucky (mental mistake) and put a 4 to 4-1/4lb fish into the well, now I just need one more for a limit but time is going fast about three docks later I get another good bite and swing and miss so I finish fishing the last couple of docks and run to a shallow flat to try and pick up a fish in the last hour, I figure I will hit a few of the productive docks on my way back to the weigh in. This plan did not work out and I was feeling down on myself and put the boat on the trailer about 10 minutes early I pretty much gave up out of anger its stupid and I’m working on the mental side of this sport.

  Here are the final results of the day for the top 5; funny thing is I thought I only had 4 fish, much to my amazement I actually had 5 keepers so somewhere during the day I caught another fish and forgot. OOOPS.

 1^st Place      Wayne Pacyga                    5 fish                    10.79 lbs             Congratulations Wayne

 2^nd place      Pat Corrigan                        5 fish                    10.71 lbs

 3^rd place      Tony Chmielewski               5 fish                    10.49 lbs

 4^th place      Dave McCrone                     5 fish                    10.37 lbs

 5^th place       Nick Madison                        5 fish                    10.07 lbs  

 My son A.J. came in 12^th out of 17 with a hawg he caught with about 10 minutes to go. 4.37