Lake Talquin Slabfest 2014

Another Great Event...Possibly the best event we have ever had at Lake Talquin!!



I arrived on Monday around mid morning morning, a couple of days ahead of time but that's a good thing. I had a computer malfunction with my car that prevented me from going to work on Monday so I just said the heck with it. I'm going fishing. So this was going to be home for the next 6 nights:



The fishing was slow on Monday and Tuesday but we were catching some good fish. My friend Kevin, from Tampa, arrived there on Tuesday evening to fish with me for the week and we started after them on Wednesday. The fish started picking up some and we managed to catch some pretty good fish that morning.



Wednesday evening was pretty good also and we ended the day with a beautiful sunset.



By Thursday morning, the Crappie.com gang started arriving and taking over the campgrounds at Lake Talquin Lodge. The fishing was getting better every day and you could just feel it in the atmosphere. The fish had started moving down the lake and the hunt was on. We had enough boats on the water that we were able to keep up with the fish. All you had to do was look for the boats and put the trolling motor in the water and fish. We were catching what Rawhide calls the "Starting" fish, they were just "starting" to turn on. We saw several quality fish coming in. On Thursday afternoon, 15-20 of us took the afternoon off from fishing and went to a local restaurant for supper. Afterwards, we headed to the Crappie Shack for some....uh....umm...Story telling...Yeah, that's it...Story telling!!!







The Sunrise on Friday was another awesome one:


Friday morning was the Fruit Jar Tournament. Before I could get all my rods in the water, my 18 foot Wally Marshall doubled over and I knew I had a biggun on there. I was fishing double jigs and caught 2 at once!!



The morning started out nice but the winds almost made it unbearable to fish any open water for a while. There were a lot of good fish caught early but slowed down when the winds started blowing. 1st Place went to Hooker and Heavylead, 2nd Place was GPCF and 1Cove, and 3rd went to TnT and Slab. Heavylead won Big Fish with a 2.14 lb slab that was caught right before they were reeling up to come in. But Slab had a respectable showing with a nice slab himself. After he caught this fish, you couldn't slap the smile off of his face for an hour!!



Several boats went out fishing on Friday afternoon and of all the reports I heard , the fish were definitely ON. Some of us was busy getting things together for the Fish Fry and setting up for Saturday and we missed out on the best afternoon of the week. But after checking out the next few pictures, it was worth missing out!!!










Saturday was Slabfest Day and we had a beautiful day on the water and I think everybody caught fish. Slab had 2 days in a row of breaking his "Usual Limit of 1 fish" and Shuorc caught his share also. Even Speckanator was catching doubles!!! The next few pictures tell the story of the day:













After the lunchtime festivities, things started to quieten down a bit and several folks started making their journey back home. Slab and a few of the Central FL bunch came over to the camper for some Homemade Vegetable Beef Soup and Brunswick Stew that Talquin Maggie made for us. That pretty much ended up the weekend for Talquin Maggie and I.



Thanks to everyone that took time out of their busy schedules to attend and make this event another successful event. We are already looking forward to next year....Well, some of us are