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came during the 2007
Bowers Rodgers Tournament held on Lake Greenwood. Brad and I were not
only fishing this tournament but also were in charge of conducting the
weigh-in to be held at 2:00. The 2 o'clock weigh in meant that we would
come off the water at 1:30 to have everything ready when the other fishermen
came in.
Well, we caught them
pretty good that day but knew we needed a couple of more pounds to hopefully
put us in contention, so we stretched that 1:30 'til 1:45.
Needless to say it
was a mad scramble getting everything set up so instead of grabbing
our fish and weighing them we left them in the livewell until things
settled down a little.
The weigh-in went
smoothly and fifteen pounds was leading with thirteen pounds in the
money with only a few more teams to weigh.
One of these teams
was Brad's regular partner in the Five Lakes Tournament Trail and his
fifteen year old son. After they weighed we asked the son if he would
mind getting our fish for us, he, being a good young man, said sure
and proceeded to release their fish and get ours.
Several minutes passed
and still no sign of him when Brad spots him in the crowd talking to
a few of his buddies.
Figuring he forgot
about our fish, Brad motioned for his dad and asked him if he would
bring our fish to the scale.
A minute or so later
Gary comes to the scales and informs us that there are no fish in our
livewells.
Brad has a tizzy
and leaves me to bag and weigh the few remaining teams fish by myself
as he goes to investigate for himself the missing fish dilemma.
By now everyone had
weighed their fish and Gary, Brad and Chase walked up to the
scales to break the news to me that somehow in his fifteen year old
brain he thought we meant for him to release the fish we had
in our livewells.
After the initial
shock wore off we all tried to console Chase, who was feeling pretty
bad about himself and soon everyone had a big laugh about it.
I don't think we
had enough weight to win but it would have been pretty close. Lesson
learned, don't trust anyone to handle your fish.
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