This was a frantic situation. Twenty minutes to go before tournament weigh in… my brother, Tony, and I make a last ditch effort and run up to a spot in the opposite direction of the weigh-in dock. Knowing we had enough time to make a couple casts at the very most. As we pull up to the spot… I run up, drop the trolling motor, grab one of my rods and make a very quick cast. While I am doing this (the boat has not even come to a rest yet from pulling up to the spot), I hear "I GOT ONE…" from the back of the boat.

I look back and see this fish jump in the air and I quickly realized we needed this fish bad, but in my mind I am thinking, "how on earth did Tony hook into this fish so quickly." So I dropped my rod on the deck of the boat (my lure is still in the river now from my quick cast). I grabbed the net and ran to the back of the boat and net this big fish.

After a collection of high fives and some slight obscenities… I hear a commotion from the front of the boat… and there goes my rod off the deck of the boat from a fish grabbing my lure. I tried to grab it and missed it. We both looked at each other and realized we had no time to try to retrieve this rod. We made it back to the weigh-in dock with a minute or two to spare… EXCITING TIMES!