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Tough Going In HT3 Fishing Tournament

Dave Douglass/Highlands Today

From left: JW Watkins and Wayne Yohn show off their fish from last Saturday’s HT3 Outdoors tournament held on the Kissimmee Chain of Lakes.

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Dave Douglass

Published: October 19, 2007

The HT3 Outdoors' Team Open Bass Tournament came to Lake Kissimmee Chain of lakes and launched out of Camp Mack River Resort located on the Kissimmee river canal between Lake Hatchineha and Lake Kissimmee.

Thirty-eight teams participated in the event which featured a different format and option of teams using two boats instead of the usual one boat.

Also, the limit was extended to six bass any size - if teams used two boats each angler's limitation was three bass to be combined with his team mate at the scales to be weighed in together.

The start of the tournament day last Saturday offered clear skies, mild winds, and the tale-end of the New Moon, which happened on the 11th at 5:01 a.m.

I entered the competition with friend Terry Dale and we opted to compete out of his boat in order to have a "Net-Man" present to better ensure the landing of larger bass.

This decision would prove later to be "Null and Void," but I will get to that later in the article - no is not the time to start crying.

Half the boats headed toward Lake Kissimmee and the rest headed for Hatchineha and Cypress. At the weigh-in, we did hear of a few who locked-through into Lake Toho, north of Cypress. The barometer was on the rise, the hydrilla areas were recently managed with Aquathol chemical spray, and the wind was out of the Northeast, when added all together you end up having to abandon all pre-fishing plans, chalk-up everything done in preparation for the event as useless.

Our plans to duplicate our practice success during the tournament now had to be completely thrown out and plan "C" implemented.

Our "Third Plan C" consisted of "Running and Gunning" lakes Hatchineha and Kissimmee avoiding hydrilla areas in favor of hunting for bass in Bulrush, Lillypads, and Kissimmee Grass - all places we did not pre-fish and had no clue if bass where in those areas. The results were, yes, there were bass in those areas, plenty of them, however none of them were larger than 12" long.

We tried everything I knew to locate larger bass and ended up with our largest weighing in at about 3.5 lbs.
The other five bass combined equaled 4 pounds.
I am done crying, so lets get on with the results and congratulate the winners.

The weigh-in event started at 2:30 p.m. and ended at 4 p.m. This provides lots of time to make it back to the scales in time and not be disqualified for being late, - and this is a great feature of HT3 Outdoor tournaments.

Fifteen teams out of 38 bypassed the scales, loaded their boats, and had a seat in the audience. Of the 22 teams with bass, nineteen had limits of six fish, two had three, and one had four.

One team in the 15-pound range, one in the 14-pound range, six teams in the 13-pound range, three in the 12-pound range, one had over 10 pounds and the other 10 teams between 4-9-pound range.
Terry and I weighed in six bass for 7.70 pounds and finished 17th place.

Third place went to K. Haworth and J. Lopresso weighing in six bass at 13.96 pounds and won Big Bass at 6.37 pounds.

Winnings of $1,000 plus Big Bass of $370

Second Place went to V. Strawbridge and S. Paul weighing in six bass at 14.22 pounds and their Big Bass weighed 4.38 pounds.

Winnings of $ 1,250.00

First Place went to J. Watkins and W. Yohn — "Team Camp Mack" — weighing in 15.03 and their big bass weighed in at 4.15 pounds for winnings of $2,500.

A total of 124 bass were caught and weighed in of which only 1 was dead. The average weight per bass was 1.90 pounds, which totals 235.29 lbs of bass weighed.

It was speculated that perhaps the majority of those bass were males in the early pre-staging process for the start of the majority of the spawning season which will start in greater numbers around Thanksgiving.

It is more likely that the weather conditions and lake management chemical treatments played the more active role in larger bass not biting.

Check out the HT3 Outdoor Pro Bass Tour online at www.ht3outdoors.com and visit www.campmack.com for all the latest news.

Dave Douglass is a Bass fishing guide and teacher, Bass tournament fisherman and also an officer of S.O.S.-Florida Lakes, Inc. You can reach him at (863) 381-8474, e-mail davedouglass@sos-floridalakes.org or visit the Web sites reds-bass-fishing-guides.com and sos-floridalakes.org/.

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