Day 2 brought a little more wind, so we had a good 3-4 foot chop for my 23 mile run to my first area in Big Bay de Noc.  It took around 40 mins.  I had told myself the way to get back into the tourney was to bust a big bag with the swimbait.  The bite I found on Monday had turned into nothing but short fish and few follows.  We fished Big Bay until about noon and neither my partner or I had a keeper fish.  I decided it was time to hit the panic button and run to an area around Ford River that I had found fish around on Tuesday.  It took about 45 mins to get there.

When we got there, it did not take long before we found a large group of fish.  My partner caught a quick limit and I caught a nice limit on a SWL QuickStrike spinnerbait.  Being able to easily swap blades on my spinnerbait this week was a big deal, you really needed to burn your spinnerbaits, so matching smaller blades with heavier heads was the ticket for catching a lot of smallmouth.  I also caught a few nice fish on a Gobie colored Sweet Beaver.  With not much time left, I decided to give my Optimum Swimbait a whirl for a bigger fish.  It only took a few minutes to raise a big smallie that nosed my swimbait, I threw back with the Sweet Beaver and caught a nice 4lb smallmouth.  We each caught a few more fish, but nothing that helped, it was time to head back, we had about a 10 mile run north back to the harbor.
 
I ended up with 13lbs plus, but still lost ground to the team lead.  I was about 8lbs out, which is a lofty mountain, but it could happen if I could catch a decent bag, as many people caught 20lbs on day 1 and only weighed a single fish on day 2, so really anything could happen.  The fishing was pretty volatile through practice and the tournament thus far.

Rich
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