For the third year in a row, I took a small group of students from Athens District High School to the Edu-Cast High School Fishing tournament near London, Ontario. The tournament is a 2 day shore fishing tournment on private ponds, where approximately 800 students complete on one of the 2 days for the biggest 3 fish bag (bass, pike, trout combined). The top 10 anglers from each day, qualify for the Edu-Cast Championship tournament on June 24th at Turkey Point fishing with local bass tournament anglers on Lake Erie.
Here is a quick summary of our trip ........
Wednesday, May 30th, 12 noon.... We loaded up in the SUV, myself and 6 students and leaft Athens heading to London. We made a couple pit stops along the way to stretch our legs and also picked up some last minute gear at JB's fishing Depot in Toronto. Arrived in London, checking into the hotel and went for dinner and early to bed.
Not sure what driving school this guy went to ....
Thursday, May 31st .... Left the hotel and heading for the tournament site, Pleasant Valley Trout Farm south of London. After registering and the pre-tournament meeting fishing started at 9:30am. The weather was nice, but given the storm there a couple days before, combined with 300 plus students fishing the same waters 2 days ago, fishing would be tough. A majority of the students were using live worms on bottom or suspended with a bobber. My students used various artificial baits, until they figured out wacky rigged senko type baits were starting to produce a few fish.
By the end of the tournament, one of my students had caught 5 bass, a 2nd had caught one bass, a 3rd had caught 1 pike, and the other 3 got skunked.
We had high hopes that my one student who had caught 5 bass, would have enough weight for his top 3 to place in the top 10 and qualify for the championship tournament. And we were not disappointed as he was announced as one of the top 10 finishers!!!!!
Awesome, the 2nd time in 3 years we have had a student qualify for the championships!!!
After the tournament we took the back roads towards Mississauga, stopping at Port Dover to check out the pier and enjoy a Lake Erie perch dinner.
After dinner we continued our drive and stayed Thursday night in Port Credit.
Friday, June 1st ... The original plan was to take the students on a Lake Ontario salmon charter, as we have done in the past. We had booked 2 charter boats, but unfortunately the rain and 50 kph plus winds had other ideas, with our salmon trip cancelled, we made a few stops on our drive home, included Bass Pro arriving back in Athens around dinner time Friday evening.
Unfortunately our salmon trip didn't work out but a great trip none the less.
I will be heading down to Lake Erie to the Edu-cast Championship tournament the June 23rd-24th weekend, with my one student that qualified for the championship, will probably take 1 or 2 other team members along for the trip as well and hopefully we will reschedule our salmon trip for that weekend.
I will complete Part 2 of this report after we return from the championship tournament. In the mean time looks like I will be teaching my student that qualified about dropshotting and how to use a baitcaster.
JimW
Athens District High School
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