FLW Tournament at 1000 Islands

This past weekend I fished my first National Guard FLW College Fishing event on the 1000 Islands in Clayton, New York.  Two teams from Virginia Tech fished the tournament one being myself and David Bryant, the other Caleb Brown and Ryan Slate.  Both teams had disappointing finishes of 34^th and 30^th respectively (see results here http://collegefishing.com/tournament.cfm?tid=6714&t=results) but enjoyed the trip nonetheless. 

The tournament day began by meeting our observer Renee Hensley (who was a great person and a pleasure to have on the boat).  We then packed into my 1987 Skeeter Starfire 150 and headed to our first spot just south of French Creek.  The spot looked great; there was a slight ledge with submerged vegetation to about 15 foot.   We had several small bites here which were most likely goby until I found a point that dropped off from 6 to approximately 18ft.  We fished the point for several minutes before I finally felt weight as I lifted my Abu Garcia Veritas rod.  I set the hook and hooked and landed my first ever Northern Pike at a length over 30” on a 6lb test drop shot rig(I wish I had a picture of the fish but our spectator recorded the catch which I will post it if I get the video). 

After fishing the spot for a few more minutes we packed up and headed north a few hundred yards to fish up to a point at the mouth of French Creek.  Once I put the trolling motor down I saw what would ultimately be our downfall in the entire tournament.  There were stretches of white gravel in the submerged vegetation that looked like smallmouth heaven; they were in approximately 10 to 15ft of water and stretched for over 100 yards parallel to the bank.   Visibility was incredible, and there were massive smallmouth(many fish in excess of 3lbs and a couple that could have been 6 to 8lbs) all over the gravel areas which we thought we could catch to make an incredible limit.

 I made quick work of catching a 13” smallmouth within minutes of starting to fish there, but from that point all we caught were several short fish.  No matter how hard we tried we could not coax the larger fish to bite.  Once we finally decided to leave the spot, time was running out so we decided to fish areas close to the marina hoping for the best.  In the end we only weighed in one fish for 1lb 7oz but had a great time fishing a new body of water which I would love to fish again. Ryan and Caleb weighed in two fish for 4lb 9oz and Caleb had an awesome catch of a 13lb walleye during the tournament. After weigh in we ran back to show Ryan and Caleb the spot the smallmouth were on and I caught a keeper smallmouth on the first cast(the walleye and smallmouth are pictured below).

Caleb's 13lb walleye

The smallmouth I caught on my first cast after the tournament