Shpack on Top at Harwich with One of Just Two Limits

As with the recent trip to Long Pond Lakeville, Avid's trip to Long Pond Harwich dovetailed with the Mass Bass Federation Nation Pro-Am tournament. The event featured 25 boaters (pros) and 19 ‘amateurs’ (ams) for a total 44 participants. The expanded field made the fishing that much more challenging compared to a smaller club-only event.

The format provides a lot of interesting layers of competition: As with any club T Avid particpants earned points toward club standings based on their order of finish against other Avid members; they also earned points for their overall finish towards the BASS Federation Nation TOC; because of the larger format and higher entry fee more places were paid out and the winnings were substantially higher than the payout for a club-only T. While there was no club lunker or 6-pound pool award, the bigger field provided for a much larger lunker payout too. Finally, because of the pro-am format, boaters and non-boaters did not fish directly against one another but fished for different, separate payouts and lunker awards.

As for the fishing, the results were somewhat disappointing considering the time of year. Wth the warm winter and spring weather in 2012 the spawn should have been well underway. And while there certainly were fish on beds, neither their number nor size were what everyone hoped, likely due in part to a recent week-long strech of cool, rainy weather leading up to the event. Water temps were in the upper 50s to about 60 degrees by day’s end, so the bedding fish were primarily small buck smallmouth. Few largies had moved up and those that had seemed very skittish. In fact, bed fishing was so unproductive for some that several anglers reported targeting small keepers cruising shallows instead of targeting beds. The weather, along with a tournament held there the previous week, likely combined to remove many fish from the beds.

Among the Avid anglers there were two limits, from John Shpack and Wade Estabrooks. John's bag weighed in at 10.19 pounds for first place among club members and third place overall, while Wade's club second place finish came in at 8.81. Bill Wright rounded out the top three club finishers with 3 fish at 6.42. Dave Waugh captured the event's boater lunker award with a 3.41 pound smallmouth. Overall, the 10 Avid participants netted 25 fish.

Our next event, on June 9, is at Mashpee-Wakeby and will also be a Federation Nation event. Perhaps the giant bedding fish missing at Harwich will be present in force at Mashpee and make for a great time!