Tournament fisherman

I just wanted to say that over the last 2-3 weeks, I had the opportunity to get to know a lot of tourney anglers. Usually after a big tournament all you hear about is how they ran somebody off the river or how they thought they owned the river…..I must say, I met some of the “big name” tourney guys and they all were down to earth and fun guys to hang out with. (Ok not ALL of em! ), but I just wanted to say thanks to all the tourney guys that stayed here. It was fun to see the strategy and the bs stories told to each other ) Now when I see your names on the leaderboard, I can put a face with that name. Congrats to Tim Minnema 8th place, Dale Gilbert 26th place, Nate Provost 53rd place, Bruce Gruening 68th place, Eric Naig 80th place, and Jim MInnema 85th place. All stayed here and placed in the top 100! Way to go. (Next time we’ll hand pick those crawlers EVERY DAY Tim!!! ) Thanks again to all!

I met Bruce Gruening at the landing at Diamond Bluff one night a week before the tourney. We visited a while and I found out he hadn’t much luck pre-fishing. I offered to show him a few spots on lower pool 3 and he accepted. Turns out he had a little bad luck during the RCL. He opted to release two fish (18 and 19″) early on day one and ended up only weighing 4 fish, one of which was a 16 incher caught late in the day, and his co-angler lost a 28″ish fish on day two. If he had kept the two fish from day 1 and was able to land the big fish on day 2 he would have made the final cut to fish on Friday. I know…shoulda, coulda, woulda….Anyway, I just wanted to chime in an let people interested know that Bruce is one heck-of-a-guy, and does a little guiding around Rhinelander, WI if anybody is up there and looking for someone to guide them in that area.