Team Billy V Spring Derby Report May 19th, 2013

[Billy V]

Jay and I took my boys William and Ben out for a morning of derby fishing today.  We left the dock at about 6am and headed north of Myers. 

 

 

The boys had their game faces on and were ready to whack a few fish!

 

 

Our goal was to see if we could get one of the boys a fish for the leader board, so we put them to work in the back of the boat all morning and told them that if they want it they have to earn it. They both put in lots of effort reeling in fish, helping clean up the floor after a fish hit the deck, picking out new lures when we needed to make a change, and re-setting lines.  Of course they both also got a good nap in when the bite slowed later in the morning!

 

 

We had a good bite for the first couple of hours and then it settled into a steady pick until we called it a day at about noon.  We primarily targeted 100-150 FOW up near Milliken and spread our gear from the surface all the way to the bottom in the hopes that we could find a lunker or two. Today was all about spoons with a NK Die Hard and the Dreamweaver Super Slim Feelin' Irie and Seasick Waddler taking most of the bites when fished off of our Cannon's down at varying depths from 65-120' depending on where we were.  We didn't find the larger lakers that we had hoped for - they were mostly 2-3lb'ers, but we did find a good pod of LL's that wanted to play, and we also took a beautiful brown. When the boys were sleeping I had two Altantics on one stick bait at once today - that was fun until the larger of the two came off and I was left with the smaller one.  Those two fish hit a Green/White Jr Thunderstick fished off of a planer board.

 

 

 

Ben's 4.9lb brown took a Dreamweaver Super Slim Seasick Waddler fished off of a 6 color core.  Not bad for an 8 year old!

 

William took this 3.7lb Atlantic on a DW Superslim Feelin' Irie fished off of our deep rigger - 120' of cable out - go figure.

 

 

 

 

At the end of the day the boys were happy to see that they had both put fish on the board in the Youth division, with William taking third and Benjamin placing second with his brown.  Ben's brown was big enough that it would've tied for 4th in the adult "B" division had he been a few years older.

 

 

We had a great time together today.  Many thanks to Barney and Bear for putting together this fun event, and congratulations to all of those who placed in the derby.

 

 

[Yankee Troller]

[Fishtails]

Awesome Bill.....great pics and report    Good job getting the boys on the board and more importantly showing them the "fun side" of friendly competition.  More dads need to get kids involved in these events.  I need to take a lesson from you and teach the boys how to clean the boat after slopping it up

[Billy V]

Thanks Rod.  Hopefully they stay interested and in a few years we'll have a legit tournament team again and will be back up on the big lake getting after it with you guys!

[fish-on]

Very nice job guys. Had our game on Saturday, Sunday just a ton of little ones.