Just a few comments on this thread.
Firstly,
Legacy with respect to your perception of Dave Chong at the weigh-in. I have known Dave for a number of years. He is a gentleman, a professional, a great ambassador to the sport and a fierce competitor. He is not satisfied with anything less than a win. To be one of the top anglers you have to go into each competition with the mindset that you can/will win. To take what you heard and put it into the proper context I would expect that Dave was being quite facetious with his statement. I am quite sure he was very happy for Bob and Derek but was simply not satisfied with his own performance. He was probably thinking about what went wrong and what they could have done differently to come out on top. Dave has always been very congratulatory to all anglers in competition.
Secondly, on the topic of whether or not Lake Ontario should be cut-off from tournament competition. Everyone in the tournament played by the rules. You do not cut off water simply because someone wins a tournament in a certain area. I fully agree with QFS’s decision to cut off the Lake in the early portion of the season, but this was for the benefit of the fish not the anglers.
A number of teams including Bob and Derek, Dave and Jeff, Chris and Matt, and others felt their best shot at winning the “bass” tournament was to target smallies in Lake Ontario. You can’t blame them. The fish can be huge out there, especially this time of year as they’re beginning to feed up. If they can get to the fish, get them to bite, land them and then get back to the weigh in you are not going to beat them with largemouth most days. They all accepted the known risks involved, the weather was good to them and Bob and Derek waxed us all fair and square.
However, as Kevro and Teppy point out, this is not always the case. On the first day of the Bassmania Trenton tournaments this past August Erny Janzen and I were fishing beside Bob and Wayne Izumi all morning. At 10AM we are talking to them and they tell us they have one good largemouth and 4 dinks. We have 2 good largemouth. They up and leave and head east. We continue to fish largemouth the rest of the day, weigh in 18 lbs and finish 13th. They go to the Lake, catch 4 good smallies to go with their largemouth, weigh in 20lbs and win. They gambled and made the right decision…that day.
The next morning the conditions look ideal for the guys heading to the Lake. We see Bob loading his boat with ice at a gas station. It appears to us that we will need a huge bag of largemouth to compete on this day. At the end of the day Bob and Wayne weigh 13lbs of smallmouth and we weigh 19 ½ lbs of largemouth. They again took the risk and it did not work out.
It’s all about decision making.
Now this is where my long-winded story has a large hole as Desforges and Brownridge also made the long run on day 2 and win with 22 ½ lbs of smallmouth. DAMN SMALLMOUTH!!
Thanks for listening guys.
Jeff