Winterfest 2002 Tournament Adventure, Part #1

[Stump Bumper]

For years, my brother-in-law Butch and I fished the Catfish Tournaments hosted By Randolph's Landing at Santee Cooper in South Carolina. These were never boring, we made a ton of mistakes and learned alot of lessons the hard way. Here is a diary of events that occured in January 2002 at the Winterfest Catfish Tournament.

Thursday 10 January 2002: We departed Brooksville Florida at 10am. This was our earliest start to date. Hooking up the boat and packing on Wednesday really paid off. We had excellent weather for the trip and made the drive in 7 hours. It was good to see Nate and Lynn again. They owned Randolph's Landing at the time and had always been the perfect hosts. One of our good friends, Jim Helring, was already there and invited us to join him on Friday. He had made reservations to go out with Santee Cooper Guide Joe Drose, to pre-fish and hopefully locate some good spots for the tournament on Saturday.

Friday 11 January 2002: We rolled out of the hotel room at 5am, found Jim, and drove over to Harry's Fish Camp to meet Joe for breakfast. Joe Drose is a great guy, full of humor and kept us laughing. At 7:45am, we boarded Joe's 24 foot tri-toon and motored straight across the channel to Goat Island where we anchored off in 15 feet of water to catch bait. Using ultra light spinning tackle and 2 hook rigs, baited with pieces of night crawler, it didn't take long to catch 50 or so White Perch between 3 and 5 inches long. They didn't need to be alive, just fresh, so we threw them into a 5 gallon bucket. There was a steady 10mph wind blowing out of the west....perfect conditions for drift fishing. Joe motored us over to the north end of the Lake Marion Dam the turned 90 degrees to the left and motored west to a large promenant stump at the edge of the dead forest. This positioned us approximately 1,000 yards out where the wind would blow us back towards the dam. Joe immediately put out three drift socks and went about the business of preparing baits, baiting drift rigs and getting lines in the water. For almost 10 minutes, we watched carefully as line free-spooled off of the reels. As if on cue, Joe told us to engage the reels and explained that we now had approximately 75 yards of line out behind the boat and to watch the rods carefully for one to go down. Between 9:30am and 2:30pm, we repeated this process 5 times, averaging 4 fish per drift. We caught and released a total of 20 Blues and Channels between 5 and 30 pounds, what a day! I was anxious to see if we could duplicate this success on tournament day. Since none of us had bought ultra light tackle for bait fishing, Joe was nice enough lend us all rod and reels.

[Stump Bumper]

Saturday 12 January 2002: Tournament day! We were up at 5:30am and ate breakfast at Randolph's diner. At 6:30am, Butch and I picked up our Tournament Weigh-in Card. Due to low water at Randolph's Landing, we drove several miles down the road and launched the pontoon boat at Wyboo Creek Public Boat Launch, then motored back over to Randolph's Landing to satisfy Tournament requirements. We made the 30 minute run over to Goat Island to catch up some bait and by 9am, we were in position to start our first drift of the tournament. There was only one difference, during the night the wind direction changed. The perfect west wind we had enjoyed the day before was now blowing out of the east, pushing the large schools of threadfin shad away from the open water near the dam and into the stump fields of the dead forest. Between 9am and 3pm we tried every drift fishing technique we had in our bag of trick with negative results. Tired, flustrated and hungry we pulled into Harry's for a bite to eat. On our way out, we ran into Joe who suggested we might check the drop-offs along the submerged river channel that snakes throught the dead forest. With a glimmer of renewed hope we followed the channel markers into the dead forest. We decided to start stump bumping around Marker #46. We quickly marked three real good fish, tied the pontoon off to a stump and had baited lines in 28 feet of water by 4:30pm. Less than 5 minutes had passed when one of Butch's rods did the "slow dip" towards the water and he was wrestling a 16 pound Blue into the landing net. 20 minutes passed with no more bites so we moved to Marker #48 and anchor on a flat inside a horseshoe formed by the submerged river channel. 5 minutes later, my rod tip goes down and I land a nice 8 pound Blue. In the next 20 minutes Butch and I hook and lose 2 very nice fish. Blues seem to be moving through this area but it is full of bad snags. The fish we need to catch are definately here, it's almost dark, we feel pretty safe so we decide to stay put for the night. At 7:15pm, Mother Nature paid us a visit. How many ways can I stress to you....not to ever get caught in the stump fields of the dead forest after dark?

Let me try....

By 7:30pm, our beautiful overcast sky and mild 10mph wind had turned into a "Howling Monster"! Torrential rain and 30mph winds made it impossible to use the anchors. The boat was swinging so bad that we were concerned about the possibility of puncturing a pontoon and sinking. With an tremendous amount of luck we were able to motor up and move the pontoon boat into a position where we could tie off to tree trunks at two points, giving us some much needed stability.

This was our situation: We were in 25 feet of water....in the middle of a submerged forest that streched for two miles in every direction....There was 30mph winds, driving rain and 3 foot waves crashing over the bow of the pontoon boat every 4 to 6 seconds....It was 37 degrees, before wind chill....we couldn't move for 11 hours....and we were wet!

"THERE I WAS....NO $%%*....THOUGHT I WAS GONNA DIE!"

[Stump Bumper]

At 9:15pm, we had a 15 minute lull in the action. I believe to this day that in that brief period of time we must have been in the eye of the storm. Wouldn't you know it....durning that period of time, Butch put out a baited line and caught another 16 pound Blue! Oh well, break time was over. Mother Nature came back with a vengance! She brought the rain and wind with her. It got so bad that around 3am I called Nancy just to tell her that I loved her in case we didn't make it out of there alive. At 3:30am, it stopped raining, the sky cleared up and the stars came out. That was the good news. The bad news was that the wind picked up a notch. All night long, we watched the lights on the face of the dam and used that as a reference point. On more than one occassion, I would unwillingly doze off from exhaustion only to wake up seconds or minutes later in a panic that would cause me to jump up and rush around the boat checking the tie-offs. What an adrenlin rush! That would immediately warm me up for about 5 minutes afterwards. By first light, I felt as if I had be hallucinating all night. Watching the sun come up on Sunday 13 January 2002, was pretty close to a religious experience for me. After all the praying I had done through the night, I was happy to be alive! When, it was light enough to see, we were looking at the main channel about 50 feet away from where we had been tied off all night. During that storm it might as well have been 50 miles! I guess it's kind of like being in a firefight. Moving a short distance under the wrong conditions will kill you! We started the engine, cut away from the tree trunks and slowly made our way to the main channel. Once in the channel, Butch put the pedal to the metal and we didn't look back until we nosed up onto the beach at Randolph's Landing. We weighed in our three fish for a total of 40 pounds. For us, this tournament was over! Now don't get me wrong, we love to stump bump along in the dead forest. If you are careful and take your time, it's a great way to locate...set up on....and catch fish. One thing is for sure, if there is bad weather on the horizion or if it is within an hour before dark, you can bet I'll be headed out of the stump fields and towards cover and calm water for the night....Ray

[gofish]

that theres a heck of a story stump bumper...almost glad i werent there lol....can understand yer concern,we got a boat stuck on a stump one time with a bad storm comin in that took us almost 2 hours ta free ourselves.wasnt good attall.....didnt say nuttin bout how ya ended up in the tourney though lol.

[Stump Bumper]

Joe, normally to place in one of those tournaments you gotta break a hundred pounds total weight. We did manage to take 10th place big fish one March with a 29 pound Blue. I like the Flathead Tournaments on the river alot better. For me they are just alot more fun....and less dangerous....LOL....Ray

[big country]

well we're all glad that ya'll pulled through.....

[Schoe]

Great story Bumper. You had me on the edge of the chair waiting for part three.

Thanks so much for sharing, Schoe