Going into the pairings meeting, I knew I would be using my boat, as I was a guaranteed boater.  I ended up drawing boat # 5 the first day and my partners was Noah from Bass Seekers.  Based on the wind forecast for the two days and that I was sharing my Boy Bay spot with another club member, I decided to fish my Steamboat fish the first day and save my Boy fish for Day 2.

We headed out across the lake and not many of the early boats seem to go the direction we did.  We arrived at the first area and I pitched my 1/2oz Black & Blue Jig into he cane grass and as I was letting the trolling motor down, one already had the jig and fish # 1 was in the boat, my 3rd pitch yielded fish #2 as well.  My partner soon caught a nice fish as well.  I ended up culling before 8am on the first patch of reeds and cane.  We hit two more reed patches and one produced a cull for me and the next produced to nice fish for my partner.  I also hit some bog areas, but they did not produce.  One thing to point, myself and other club members did something a little different with our jigs.  We used real pork chunks all week, I know you are probably thinking, didn’t people stop using pork in the 80’s…..   We used it for two reasons, one the fish seem to like it and the 2nd is that once you put in on, you never needed to fix or replace the trailer, which means more flips and more time with your jig on the water, which when fishing rice, means more fish!!!!   At Reeds in Walker, I found a sweet pork chunk that looks like a super chunk and the fish loved it.  It was an Uncle Josh Phantom Craw (Black with Blue Claws).  Every fish that I weigh the first day came on a Tru-Tungsten jig with tipped with a pork chunk and several of my other club members caught their fish on the same or similar combos.
    

I then made a stop by a dock that I had located that had several fish on it a few days ago.  Only one problem, my trolling motor had almost no juice at 10am……  But i did end up getting a 3.5lb plus fish of that dock, so my bag was starting to take shape.  It turns out one of my batteries went south almost instantly.  Fortunately my All Charge unit saved the rest of my day, as when I would run from spot to spot it would add a little juice the one battery I had, so I managed to limp around the rest of the day.  We were able to fish, just not as efficiently as if we had full power.  We spent the rest of the day around the rice in the north end of Steamboat Bay.  I was catching lots of fish on cane toads and jigs, but I was not finding big enough fish to help me.  Finally I plucked a nice fish from the rice on the jig that went close to 4lbs.  I knew at that point I had a solid bag, I knew it would not be the biggest bag, but would keep me in the mix for making a Top 12 spot.  We fished hard for a couple more hours, but neither of us could any more big bites that would help our bags.

The wind had picked up, but we made the long run back with 3 minutes to spare.
My total weight was 5 fish for 16.26lbs, my big fish was around 3.8lbs.  I think that put me in 21st or 22nd after day 1.  My partner weighed around 12lbs.  The leaded was Nick Gross from Granite City with 21.04lbs, so I was aways back from him, but I was only 1.14lbs out of 12th and that is where I wanted to be, in the Top 12, because the Top 12 advance to 2008 Divisionals.  It was a real whackfest the first day, it seemed everyone had a limit that wen 13-15lbs.  Well, after the leaderboard wall tallied it was time to get home and start troubleshooting battery problems and get ready for day two.