Well let me start by saying congratulations to two of the nicest guys that fish the Tear Drop Tournament Trail. Gary and Dave have fished for years with us and I don't mean to say they're older than dirt, but lets say their seasoned veterans. They are fish alholics and you can readily see their love for the sport written all over their faces whenever you meet them on the water. Gary lives just outside Grand Rapids and a couple of his sons went to school with my boys. Dave lives north of Baldwin in Michigan's Great Northwest Corner. They decided to head down once again this year to the Bass Cat Owners Invitation in Mountain Home, Arkansas. If you are a Bass Cat owner or know one then end of story. If you don't have a Cat then you are missing out on one of the best, and excuse my partiality, boats on the market. Not only is it rock solid and a plush chick magnet, the company stands behind them like no other. They win the JD Powers award for customer service regularly. The tournament down in Mountain Home is just one example of their commitment to their boats and owners. A number of our Tear Drop anglers have Cats and have made the pilgrimage to Mountain Home. Once there, the whole town adopts you for the week. The Bass Cat folks blanket the town looking for boats and trailers that they then go over with fine tooth combs fixing things and replacing others at no cost. Yep, no cost!! They work on your trailer while you are out fishing, and they jump in your boat when you get back. Everyone who makes the trip their comes back awestruck, and we haven't even talked about the tournament itself yet.
There's about 300 miles of tournament water shoreline to fish on Norfork. It's about 12 miles east of Mountain Home, Arkansas. Click on the hot link here and you can orientate yourself with a map of the lake and where it lies in relation to Mountain Home. The lake has stripers, walleyes, white bass, crappie, smallmouth, largemouth, and Kentucky bass, about anything you could want to fish for, and according to one of the guide reports, there is no closed season for any species. License cost are $40 for a nonresident annual license, and $22 for a 14 day nonresident license. You can buy them online at this hot link, Arkansas fishing licenses. Most of Norfork is in Arkansas, but the north end is in Missouri so if you plan to run make sure you get licensed up.There are a number of websites that you can Google on Norfork that give you information on the fishing. Here's one Norfork Fishing Secrets.. Gary and Dave I'm sure did their share of Googling, and they went down early and prefished four days. Gary told me they used the experience they gleaned from fishing Table Rock, a favorite spring get away for them over the years. Putting that knowledge base to good use they put together a smallmouth pattern for Norfork. Being from Michigan, and fishing our northern smallmouth lakes, they were adept at targeting that species and did so effectively. They took off in the third flight, boat 192 out of 605! They fished pea gravel points with soft plastics the first day. Skies were cloudy, temperature was in the low 70s and the water temp was in the high 60s. When they got to their first point three other boats were there so they went into the cove around the point and boated three smallies in the first half hour, a real confidence booster. Gary told me earlier that his wife asked him how she should pray for him, and he told her that he just didn't want to get embarrassed and would like to catch a limit each day. Providence on their side they fished on down a couple of more points and in another hour and a half they were culling. Even though they were sorting fish, they weren't gaining much. Most of the smallies were pretty close in size. Later in the first day, they moved to an island they had prefished. It was there, late in the day, that Dave caught their biggest fish of the weekend a 3 lb. 11 oz. largemouth giving them a first day total of 13.82 lbs. The hometown paper there the Baxter Bulletin did a great job fronting and following the tournament. They have some video, pictures and lots of stories.After the first day of fishing, there was a dinner for the anglers at the local high school and during the dinner Rick Pierce from BassCat talked about the current leaderboard. He said that because of the consistent size of their fish that Baker and Evans were the team to beat. Not only can Rick build winning boats he's a heck of a prognosticator. Gary said the butterflies really started after that and they built to a crescendo by the next day. Man I can only imagine, deep breaths lots of deep breaths.
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