Coanglers dominate at Manchaug

Eight anglers showed up for our first event held on Manchaug and the last qualifying tournament of the calendar year. The weather was very good for fishing nearly all day, with overcast skies and a light breeze, cool temperatures to start (in the 40s), and water temperature around 70 degrees. The only drawbacks to the conditions were that the breeze picked up to a strong wind (10-20 mph) for a couple of hours at midday, and there was about a half hour of rain in the early afternoon. The weather was the latest in several different patterns leading up to Saturday, that saw wind direction, sun conditions, and temperatures all fluctuate wildly over the previous few days. As a result, it may have been somewhat comfortable for the fishermen, but the fish seemed a bit skittish and somewhat hard to come by.

Three limits were caught and a couple of outstanding lunkers came to the scales. The best of those was a 6+ largemouth from coangler Jeff Lin that easily vaulted him into frontrunner for the annual big fish award. Only three 6-pound fish had been weighed in our previous 76 tournaments dating back to 2004. The second of the lunkers was a 3.32 lb smallmouth by coangler John Boudreau, a terrific brown fish for this lake.

Because of the small field the event only paid out two places. In second was Jeff Lin with 3 fish that weighed 9.81 lbs. and his monster largie that also earned him the lunker award. Doug MacNeill won it with a limit of 9.84, narrowly besting Jeff by just .03 of a pound. Watch out for Doug ... he has come in first in two of the last three days of fishing, leading after day 1 of our 2-day on Singletary and now taking the win on Manchaug.

Next up is our annual non-qualifying mystery tournament to be held on Mystery Lake at a date TBD.