International Bass Championship Lago di Garda, Italy
A Tournament Journal
October 18, 2008
Planes, Cars, and Broken Rods
So, I have been delinquent writing this journal and I must apologize for that. Obviously Pete is more a man than I am when it comes to writing journals while in tournament mode. Like I said in the first installment of this piece, these two tournaments are totally different – but I’ll get to that later.
In the meantime, I’ll give a brief summary of our experience getting to Lago di Garda.
Arrival
Nine-and-a-half hours isn’t much time at all when it comes to a year, a person’s lifetime, or the time since humans have inhabited this planet. Unfortunately, 9-1/2 hours dwarfs the life of the universe when spent in a 1-foot squared plane seat while sitting next to an eastern-block stranger who insists that your shoulder is their pillow. But I diverge from the story.
We arrived at Venice International Airport, tired and sore, on Monday at roughly 11:15 am, not a minute off schedule. After deplaning – there’s that word again – we headed straight for baggage claim to retrieve our luggage and most importantly our tackle.
After a healthy hour, where we got dizzy watching the carrousel go round and round, we finally received our bags and headed to pick up our cars. Unfortunately we had not secured cars prior to the trip but assumed we’d be able to find two vans once we arrived in Venice – you all know what assumptions lead to.
At the AVIS desk we were politely told, actually laughed at, that vans are a special commodity and we should have made reservations months in advance in order to secure even one. But, the attendants did tell us they had two Smart Cars we could rent as they proceeded to check inventory of the remaining cars on the lot.
For those that don’t know what a Smart Car is imagine this: A car that seats two where your feet actually touch the front bumper and your ass-umption touches the rear bumper. The engine sits between your legs and the beauty of this car is you can park it at the curb, nose in, and not take up any more room than if you had parked a normal car parallel to the curb. Obviously the Smart Car wasn’t a smart choice for seven people and six anglers’ gear.
After another 30 minutes the agent found two cars that “would” help us get from Venice to Lake Garda – both sub-compact station-wagon types that were no bigger than a standard VW Jetta.
Without any choice we carted all our luggage and gear to the parking lot to check out the only two cars left for rent in Northern Italy.
Upon first glance there appeared to be no possible way that we’d get all our gear and six eight-foot long rod tubes into the proposed cars. That is until Charlie “Houdini” Weyer spent an hour finagling bags and tubes making room appear in front of our eyes. Problem was, one willing participant had to ride on the hood of one vehicle to our destination – Peschiera del Garda, the host city of the International Bass Fishing World Championship.
No Reservations
The car rental should have been an omen of what was to come. Once we arrived at the host site, amidst a number of wrong turns on roundabouts, we were told that our rooms wouldn’t be ready until the following day. Thank God that Ron and Heidi had brought copies of our reservations, which put the responsibility into their hands to find us a room for the night.
By this time its 6:00 PM, we’re checked into our rooms and its time to shower and get ready for the opening dinner at half past seven.
If any of you have ever eaten in Europe you know that dinner is a huge affair. It generally starts late and ends late. Italy is a different story. Dinner starts late and never seems to end. This is great if you’re visiting friends and have time the next morning to recuperate from the wine and Grappa – not so great if you have early-morning commitments and jetlag. Fortunately we were able to skirt the long dinner and made it back to our rooms to catch up on our sleep before midnight.
Baggage “Handlers”?
Tuesday we awoke to sun, 80-degree weather and the anticipation of getting on the lake. Tackle preparation was the main goal of the day along with the typical meetings associated with a tournament of this magnitude.
Rods were taken out of tubes, tackle boxes taken out of bags and reels placed on rods. Tackle was sorted and we all talked about what we’d need or what the bite might be the next day during practice. Unfortunately, Ron had a number of meetings that day as team captain and wasn’t able to unpack his gear until late Tuesday evening.
I don’t know if it’s better to get bad news sooner or later but in this case, it would have been better not to receive it at all.
Once Ron returned from his meeting and dinner, at 8:30 PM, he began to unpack his tackle. As he unpacked, the team sat in the kitchen of our room, drinking beer and having a good time. Then, it hit – the look of disbelief, pain and outrage.
As the steam coming from Ron’s ears slowly began to subside, he turned to us and threw an entire set of broken rods on the floor. The airline baggage handlers had crushed his unbreakable rod tube and his rods at the base. Not a good day in Peschiara del Garda.
With that I’ll leave you untill tomorrow’s update on our practice and the first day of the tournament – also known as the second day of practice.
October 14, 2008
Should It Stay or Should It Go
I have always been one to stick to a deadline – self-imposed or not – but unfortunately I missed my first deadline for this journal and it’s only the second entry. There was a good reason for it, though. This was supposed to be an easy entry. Put my tackle together for the trip, take a picture of it, pack it and then write about what made the cut and what didn’t.
I had planned on getting my packing completed by mid-afternoon on Saturday, doing some research on Google Earth and then sitting down to write this. As it turned out, the packing got the better of me, my day and my night.
Its one thing to go fishing at your local lake where you tow your boat, i.e.; tackle store, behind you, all accoutrements at your very disposal. But travelling to fish via air is a whole other story – especially when you don’t have the luxury of hiring a Ryder truck and driver.
Travelling by air has become extremely difficult over the last few years since 911, even for frequent flyers. In the old days there was no trouble bringing an overweight bag and getting it through baggage. The airline checkers just stuck a “Heavy” tag on it and you were on your way. Bring extra bags? No problem, they just checked them along with your “allowed” bags.
Nowadays, though, you have a 50-pound limit on checked items, international flights or not, you’re only allowed two checked bags and the airlines are getting more stringent with carrying rod tubes on board. Carryon bags cannot have any sharp items in them so this means that all hooks, pliers, scissors and nail clippers must go into your checked bags. This obviously leads to difficulties for the angler who flys.
So Saturday morning my dilemma started.
Friday evening I set out my 25-or-so Plano boxes from my boat and bought 6 new 3700-sized boxes to load for Italy. I also had a thin 3600 to use for my terminal tackle like hooks, sinkers swivels – you get the idea.
Now, let me tell you, I am no novice when it comes to travelling by air to fish. I do it at least once a year and have become a pro at it. Plus I generally know the lake I’m fishing or know people who can give me an idea what tackle is best suited for that body of water which makes tackle packing easy. Also, these trips are usually fun trips and have nothing riding on them except pride. This trip, on the other hand, is a lot different. I have my pride but also the pride of my 5 teammates and the United States.
Back to Saturday.
I began to stock my Italy boxes with baits based on confidence and what little information I had gleaned off the internet on forage and water color at Lake Garda.
It started by me consolidating 3 crank boxes and 1 trap box into one box followed by taking the cream from two topwater boxes and 4 jerkbait boxes to make another. At this point I took an assortment of buzzbaits and frogs to make box 3.
This I felt would suffice my need for reaction baits.
Of the number of plastics boxes I have, I had pretty much made up my mind I’d only need three important ones – a Senko box, a small 3600-sized drop-shot box and a Robo worm box. I had one 3700 left to fill and it would consist of jigs.
To round out my inventory, I put together a spinnerbait box, terminal tackle box and threw together some bulk bags of tubes, Yamamoto Kreatures (5-series baits) and some other Yamamoto plastics that I never leave home without.
I placed my meager tackle into my main suitcase along with my raingear, jackets, some spools of line and a pair of boots and zipped it up. Because of the weight limit now imposed by the airlines, I thought I better weigh the bag to make sure I wouldn’t be paying any unknown fees associated with too much gear. So, up to the bathroom I went to grab the bathroom scale.
Downstairs with scale in hand, I asked my wife to read the dial as I stepped onto the scale with the suitcase – I’d already weighed myself without her for fear she’d know exactly how much mass I’d accrued over the last few months.
“Honey, what’s the dial say,” I asked.
“It’s on the four,” she answered.
“It’s on the four? What’s that mean?”
“The dial went all the way around and now it’s on 4 pounds,” she said.
This is not good. I have what I considered the bare minimum of tackle I’d need for 4 days and now, somehow, I must trim roughly 30 pounds of fat off my inventory. So begins the thought process.
I take everything out of the suitcase and look at what I can live without and what can be consolidated. First the jig box.
I take 10 brown jigs and 10 black and blue jigs and place them in the buzzbait/frog box, in place of two rows of frogs. Ten pounds eliminated in one box.
Then I realize that any box that doesn’t have a hook in it can be placed into my carryon so the Senko, drop-shot and Robo worm boxes come out – another 10 pounds.
Looking through the rest of the bag I take out my boots and a jacket, which amounts to another 5 pounds. I’m at 25 pounds and think it’ll be no problem so I move on to packing my clothes, rods and computer bag.
The rods are an easy ticket since I own a Plano Bazooka that holds roughly 15 rods. The reels are a different story, though.
I’ve had too many pieces of high-dollar equipment rendered useless from baggage donkeys mistaking my bags with “fragile” or “breakable” written on them as items that can be thrown, dropped and/or used for a quick game of kickball. So, the reels go with me.
Now the dilemma begins again. The rod tube can’t carry anything but rods, my carryon suitcase has to carry a weeks worth of clothes and 3 Plano boxes and my computer bag isn’t big enough to hold 13 reels, my computer, and my camera.
Off to the basement I go to get a full-sized backpack to replace my computer bag.
Back upstairs I empty the computer bag and realize that I’ll be able to use it for everything but my clothing. I empty my normal computer bag and begin the transfer. Reels in the bottom compartment, computer and Plano boxes in the main compartment, computer gear in another and personal items scattered throughout the other 23 zippered storage areas. I’m golden – until I get the tape out and measure it – it’s too big to be considered carryon.
Back to the drawing board.
At this point I asked myself: “In an instant like this what would any other serious fisherman do?”
The answer that came to me was: “Start taking out clothes.”
Four pairs of jeans turned into two, 12 shirts turned into 6, 9 pairs of sox turned into 6 and I’ll relieve you of the underwear situation. I also took out a sweater and figured I’d wear the jacket onto the plane. I hope the hotel has laundry facilities for my teammates’ sake.
Now there’s enough room for my Planos and reels in my clothes bag and room for my camera in my normal computer backpack. Success finally after 6 hours of trials and tribulation.
As I finish this, my plane from Salt Lake City, Utah is about to land at Atlanta International – where I’ll meet up with the rest of the team. Our flight leaves at 7:15 pm and then its 9 hours in the air to Venice Italy. So far I’ve been up since 4:00 am Mountain time and sleep is not in the playbook until after we get to Lake Garda.
October 10, 2008
Being Guided vs. Finding Your Own Fish
It’s currently 8:45 pm on Thursday, October 9, 2008 and I just finished a day’s work for the National Laboratory I work at. I’ve been on travel now for two straight weeks in New Mexico – Kirtland AFB and Los Alamos National Laboratory – and I haven’t had a moment to think about the most important tournament of my life.
Tomorrow I’ll wake up, take my daughter to the orthopedic surgeon (another story), meet one of my bosses for a brief and then its home to begin packing for a week abroad to fish with Team USA in the International Bass Championship hosted by Italy on Lago di Garda, Lake Garda, in northern Italy. How the heck did I get chosen for this mission?
Yes, the magnitude of this event is setting in.
So, as I sit here unpacked, I’m starting the first journal installment for a tournament I have dreamed of fishing in for years. But, I have to give credit for this journal’s genesis to my good friend, fellow Inside Line writer and friendly competitor Pete Robbins for putting me up to this. Yes Pete threw down the gauntlet and challenged me to a duel of journals – his Falcon Lake Elite Series journal against my International Bass Championship journal.
It’s no easy task to compete with Pete in prose as he’s become one of the best bass-fishing writers over the last few years. But it’s difficult for me to turn down any challenge whether it be on the lake or on paper. I guess this is where the fun begins.
This journal will be a bit different than Pete’s journal – the two events couldn’t be more different from pre-event preparation to the tournament itself. For example, the event Pete fished in was an Elite Series event so proper tackle preparation was tantamount.
His preparation began by moving the contents of his boat, truck and garage into a Ryder truck and hiring a driver to move the arsenal from Vienna, VA to Zapata, Texas. At this point he kissed his crawdad dog on the nose and then his bride kicked him into his buddy Bill’s car for the ride to the airport.
His preparation didn’t stop there, though.
Upon arriving in Texas, he rode shotgun from San Antonio International Airport to Falcon Lake, all the while checking his eyelids for holes. Once he got to Falcon he loaded his tackle into a separate room and then set out to pimp a ride with an Elite Series angler for the next three days. Problem was the Elite anglers had been warned of his tackle room and although Pete’s a sought-after writer – a coveted writer to be honest with you – they were all afraid he’d weigh their boats down to the point a 19-inch prop wouldn’t get them out of the hole.
He ended up hooking up with three pros for prefish – albeit they all constrained him to 200-pounds, including his body weight – and set out to “find some fish for the tournament”.
As far as practice went, he did well – but who couldn’t do well in a bathtub filled with 8-pounders and hired guns to find his fish for him? But wait, he still had to write about it – he was commissioned to do a journal for Bassmaster.com, which I must admit, I waited to read every day.
So the tournament comes and goes, Pete does well, makes the cut and finishes in a respectable 21st place while still fulfilling his obligation to his journal. It doesn’t hurt that he’s fished with three of the of the best Elite anglers in the field but still he had to wade through his tackle room each night, restring his reels and write that evening’s journal entry.
It was a tough tournament that required lots of thought, preparation and writing into the late hours of the night.
Me, on the other hand, I have it easy.
I have to get bags packed for an international flight which will comprise of one 50-pound bag of tackle (my suitcase tare-weight is 20-pounds so that’s really 30-pounds of tackle), a rod tube with 10 rods, a small carry-on with my clothes and my trusty computer backpack with my reels and computer.
When I arrive in Italy, I have to drive 130 miles from Venice to Lake Garda, amidst 36 hours of no sleep and jetlag, unpack and then partake in the first night’s festivities welcoming all the participants to the event.
After the festivities I’ll be pounding the keys of this laptop producing my “First day in Italy” portion of this journal and then its time for tackle preparation and if I’m lucky, I’ll get 30 minutes of sleep.
The next day my partner for the event, Ron Colby, and I will head out to a boat we’ve never seen to fish a lake we’ve only seen from Google Earth. No Elite pro to show us the way or what the best patterns are – just our intuition and bass-fishing savvy we’ve both accrued over the last 60-plus combined years of fishing we’ve done.
So, as the clock ticks past 10:30 pm Mountain Time here in Idaho, I leave you till next time – Saturday afternoon after I’ve completed packing. I’ll fill you in on what made the cut, what I left home and my thoughts on what we can expect in the old country.