Yeeehaaa,Luck was with me and my son this weekend,we weighed the winning fish early saturday morning.It didn't come without some "complications",we arrived at sherringham at 4:30 to discover I had left my bait box back at the house,not a good feeling.In my previous nights revelry I was sure I had left it in the boat and everything was good to go for the morning.The thought of using artificials didn,t appeal to me but neither did the hour minimum return trip to get the bait.I looked around for a friend to scrounge from and saw Brian Gibson in his usual spot.After explaining my embarassing situation to him he floated half a dozen to me in a plastic bag and had two more offers from Dave Kennedy and Gord Martin.An hour later we hit a 15 lb.er and shortly after that the winning fish 36.2 pounds.My son Jamie played the fish perfectly even though we rarely get the chance to fish together.Then came the decision to run it in or not,thinking this was hardly big enough to win this derby that usually produces more than one 40 lb.er. AS it turned out our decision to run it in was HUGE as another 36.2 came in later in the day,giving us the win because we weighed in first.Sunday morning was less eventful,with bait in the boat and slow fishing until about 9:30 when we hit a huge fish off the rocks at Sherringham.This time I had the rod and I knew this was the winning fish.It took some short runs and did some surface rolls and then came to the boat and held ten feet below me so I could see the width and girth.This one was mid 40,s plus ! This is where the story goes south.The fish took a twenty foot run and surfaced with its head and tail out of the water and waved goodbye as it spit the hook.My pain was short lived as we were still leading to my amazement.By 10:30 we thought it was time to go so we prepared to pack up.But the story isn't over yet.As I'm cleaning up Jamie yells to me the steering has frozen up.I have cable power steering and it would only turn to the left,nothing right of center.Now I,m ten miles from home and my 9.9 Yamaha is useless because it.s a non tiller model.Time for another friend to help out,John Duncan hooked up a bridle to his Grady and pulled me home at 12 knots from Sherringham past Sunny Shores,it took about 1 hour and twenty minutes.This will be my longest post ever because I,m a one finger typer,but this is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity.RAYVON
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