Tales of the Tape

30/30 Recovery

Well, it's been a few days since we finished our 30/30 fish-a-thon and finally, I think I'm not only caught up on sleep but also got all my fishing gear back in order. Talk about a wild ride! This was an unbelievable trip. Arriving in the Traverse City region a week ago, Tony and I had all sorts of interviews and news media to attend to. Once that was somewhat taken care of, we hit the water for an afternoon of fishing. Nailing down a couple species, we had Monday morning to pre-fish again before the media kick-off event at Gander Mountain at 1pm. I hit the boardman river pretty hard and Tony once again targeted an inland lake nearby. By Monday night, we had nailed down some plans that included Tony starting on Duck Lake and me hitting the port of Frankfort the following morning for the 7am start time.

At 7am, I was standing on the deck of the Nibbles, a charter boat captained by Wes Newberry, one of the premier boats in Frankfort. We had lines set at 6:45 in anticipation, just hoping the first hit didn't go till after 7. On the boat with me were MUCC Executive Director Erin McDonough,  Intern Mike Nelson running the camera and first mate Ryan Matuzak who was helping us out for this whole event and runs his own boat called Streaker. A few hours later, I had 5 species of fish and was heading back towards Traverse City and Tony who was wittling away on the bass and panfish species. All in all, it was a hectic, crazy, tiring and sometimes utterly frustrating journey that accomplished exactly what we had set out to do. We showed just how diverse our fishery is here in Michigan and how much we stand to lose by allowing asian carp into the Great Lakes.

We are currently putting together the video from the event and should have that up shortly on the website. Until then, I guess I'll be heading out fishing for one specie at a time. Seems so boring now...

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