Potomac big 5 slam

[Delawareriver]

Team bloody decks worked all week to rewire just about the whole boat plus some touch up r
Welding and misc projects. Unfortunately we didn't have a chance to test it till Friday night (was planning on leaving Friday night but wasn't driving 4 hours without a test run)

So the team met up Saturday and made the drive to the Potomac big 5 slam. Fun format as you could only weigh one fish of the 5 main species down there, (blue catfish, snakehead, gar, carp, and goldfish) 4 hour drive turned into 5 and half hours with traffic and storms but we made it. Met up with some old and new friends before the blast off. At blast weather was beautiful but decided to trailer the boat 45 mins to the other side of that river knowing the wind was gonna pick up through the night. Got to the launch with plenty of time to spare with the weather just a touch breezy but manageable
Just started to get dark so launched the boat and headed across the cove, in the time it took us to motor over with the kicker the wind changed directions and started howling. Managed 3 quick gar but water clarity was terrible and wind only getting worse making white caps even in the cove. Tried switching sides and getting behind some protected shoreline but nothing helped. So after about an hour we loaded up to try plan b. Took a half hour drive to a smaller cove that definitely would be protected from wind. Water clarity still sucked. Managed a few small gar and found we could only shoot the most protected shoreline but was hoping to get into a few more fish with high tide. Finally around 12am we had a 20lb blue cat come exploding to the surface and took off, we laughed and I told the team mates sometimes that's what the bigger blue cats do. No more than a minute later a bigger one does the same thing right in front of the boat and my team mate was quick on the draw landing a good arrow in him. Fish fought good, and took a few minutes but I was able to get a second arrow in her to seal the deal. Definitely was a good time to happen to up our spirits.

We knew with the water conditions, if we at least added a good carp to the barrel we had a chance to take some money home. So we fished some different water to try to find the carp, saw lots of mud swirls from fish taken off before we could see them. Managed to upgrade our gar.

Finally around 3am we managed a carp buy with luck would have it was only about 4lbs. Fished till 5am and frustrated we called it a night to head back to weigh ins. Talking with other teams everyone struggled, several boats had to beach their boats to bail water and several teams thar crossed the river call saying they wernt coming back to weigh ins as they didn't wanna cross the river again.

With just weighing the 3 species we ended up in 6th out of 28 teams. Not too bad competing against mostly local teams and we knew if we could have just found one average 15lb carp we would of been in the money. Overall fun tournament with lots of laughs with great team mates. Felt great to be back on the water with the team bloody decks rig!

[FASTEDDIE29]

Cool story and great report! Cool pics to boot! Way to go guys! Tough conditions no doubt! The wind hasn't layed down since December! Unreal!

[River Renegade]

Nice going everyone!!

[Chrisper4694]

sick blue cat!

[AndyS]

Nice haul guys, love the pics !