BASEBALL, BASS, AND REDFISH

[Catcher's Mitt]

I have been a little busy this week and haven't had a chance to post up last weekend's activities. Alden has been picked up on the Marucci Elite 16U team. they played in a tournament in the Lake Charles area. it was a wood bat tournament. This is the second tournament the team has played in but the first for Alden. there are 18 players on the team

they played 4 games and won all 4, allowing only 4 runs total. Alden rode the bench the first game. Closed the second game, striking out two, walked one, and picked off the one he walked. the third game he caught. threw out one, caught two that had wandered off a little to far from 1st. and doubled off the left field wall. the last game he pitched the last two innings, struck out a few, gave up one run, i think, i was a little tired which I'll will get to in the redfish portion.

Saturday evening two dads and i went down to my buddies camp on big lake. they caught all the reds they wanted to clean and released the rest. we stayed past midnight and they could have kept another limit but just released them. we got back the hotel in Sulfur at 2:30 am. Trey, one of the dads, had met us at our motel, dropped us off and headed to his motel in Lake Charles. there was a wreck on the interstate and he got to his room at 4:00 am

Trey and I were supposed to head a little north after the game to go to another buddies lake to catch bass and to try and get some video using the Catcher's Mitt to lip and handle bass. needless to say he crapped out on me and i had to go by myself. i had brought the tripod and i just got a wide angle lens for my video camera so i let him off gently for wimping out.

I got to the lake around 2:30. thank goodness Dwain got the shed put back up over the dock. it was blown down in hurricane IKE for the second time. Rita got it the first time. anyway i got the poles retied with bass lures, the video camera on the tripod with a 8.8lb barbell weight hanging from the supports to keep it from toppling and shoved off into the 95+ degree heat.

i fished for the first two hours and caught 6 little ones and was able to get them on video........but 10-13 inch fish is not really what i need for the video. The battery died on the camera, so i headed back to the dock to charge it and get out of the sun for a little while.

While the camera was charging, i went trough the settings and turn the alerts i had silenced during hunting season back on. it is very hard to see the record light when it is 8 feet away in the bright sun. the alerts really helped when i got back on the water.

At a couple of minutes to 5:00, I trolled back out in the lake. i had put on a deep diving Frenzy crankbait in chrome. as I was trolling back toward the drop off I planned to fish, i was letting the crank bait out a little at the time behind the boat. As i was getting out into deeper water, the big girl bit. we actually catch quite a few trolling with the electric motor from spot to spot. sometimes we just troll to cool off. this is by far the biggest i have caught trolling. actually she is the biggest i have caught on this lake, which i have fished many time over the last 15 years.

the picture of the one about 3.5 lbs i caught on the very next cast. ended up catching about 10 from the area before the camera battery died again.

I got some great video that will go in the loop for the ICAST show. wish i could figure out how to get it up here. the big girl jumped two or three times next to the boat!


I'm going to lake Pontchartrain Saturday morning after gator trout. hope to have some good pictures of that soon.

Bowed rods and limbs

Mark