My first ever crappie tournament

[Ketchn]

I knew going into this crappie tournament that it isn't my style to be told when to go and where but I had a bud that wanted me to be in his boat and I gave into the pressure . That said it was kinda like I imagined . Wind was howling early and got nothing but worse and the temperature was dropping right nicely along with the nice rainy mist as well .....
We had a plan that went south quickly and managed 2 right quickly on out first stop , we then proceeded to struggle for 2 more fish and finished in the sea of waves about 2 hours early . Our total bag was 5 fish and the tournament regulations said we were able to weigh in 10 live fish .Now mind you out of 36 teams only 8 or 9 even had fish to weigh in and when we came in early like most of the teams did .
The good news is that is was a super friendly bunch of folks that just like to ketch crappie .We had children and women and every kind of boat you can imagine in this thing . A few had to be towed back in ,but other than getting a bit wet everyone had a pretty good time .The food was really good and we laughed it up pretty good .
I won 2 bottles of Slab Slobber and am eager to try them soon .
Might do another one of these someday if its a similar type of thing , but like I told the man running it he should make it a few weeks later on a big lake in these parts to insure success for all the anglers . the winners of the tournament said this is a tough time on many lakes while the fish transition and I would agree totally with this and knew in advance from the prefishing reports and the one day I prefished there as well .
here are a few photos and as always hope yawl have a great day
last 2 photos are the winning basket and the jig they used to produce them .....

[cre73]

Yep, I quit doing tournaments a couple years ago just because of that. I hated fishing because I had to. Miserable cold day, windy and rainy. Feel bad for my fishing buddy, but that was it I was done.

[Bricks]

I have not fished a tournament in years usually fished Bass and Walleye. I loved the tough fishing days it brought the really really good anglers to the top. Forced me and my partner to dig deep and try to figure out the bite.

[cre73]

Yea I didn't care about the tough bite, it was because I froze my butt off. Heck I can struggle at times in perfect conditions.

[RogerA]

Tournaments seem to almost always be on days with bad weather from my experience.

[Crestliner08]

Great job out there! Tough to "have to" fish when conditions are bad, but that's tournament fishing in a nutshell.