Fred Roumbanis – Highs and Laughs Elite 12 at Toledo Bend, Blow up Dolls at Pickwick

I’m at the PAA All Star event at Ray Hubbard Lake in Texas, and I just left my best event of the season so far at Toledo Bend. I’m really happy to have finished fifth at the last tournament. Having had a rough couple of seasons over the past two years; to make an Elite 12 cut, and be on that stage on the final day is a really good feeling.

I had a lot of fun catching them at The Bend; I found some fish on a little ridge and I caught them on a 5-inch Optimum BLT swimbait and a one-ounce green pumpkin Pepper Jigs Football Jig with an Optimum Double Diamond and a double tailed grub as a trailer. I was speed swimming the jig and to keep it in contact, I had to throw it on 15-pound-test P-Line Fluorocarbon. I tossed it on my iRod Magic Stick and an Ardent XS1000 reel.

I broke a couple of fish off in the standing timber because I was using lighter line than what I wanted to, but I couldn’t get the bait down to get bites if I didn’t go lighter; so there’s always a give and take.

I finished 34th at Pickwick before that, and I was really happy to scrape by with a check and the points for a decent finish. Of course I always want to do better but sometimes that’s just the way things work out.

I’m sitting 7th in the Toyota Tundra Bassmaster Angler of the Year points, and I’m happy with the position, but I want to climb even higher and have a chance to contend for the Angler of the Year title.

Something happened at Pickwick that I really need to talk about. We had to get off the water early on Tuesday’s practice day because of the severe storms that hit the area. I was pushing it to get a little more practice in when Julie called and asked if I was getting off the water. Just as I was hanging up with her I heard the wind pick up and the trees cracking and rain and hail coming.

I strapped everything down, put on my mask and took off out of the backwater area I was in onto the main lake. The wind was building big rollers on the water and my Triton was bucking the waves through the hail and I was getting soaked and riding the waves like a roller coaster.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something flashing near the shore and when I looked closer between waves and I saw a pair of hands waving. When I got a really good look I saw that there was a head that was bobbing up and down too.

By then, I was just about past the area, so I gunned my Mercury and turned the boat around to head back. I swamped the boat, and took a bunch of water over the side, but it didn’t matter; I wanted to see if I could help. The closer I got, the more frantic the hands were waving and they were pale and puffy, so it appeared they’d been in the water a while.

I started to get really sick to my stomach thinking I’d found another dead person on the water like I had in Detroit a few years ago. I felt like I was going to throw up, and as carefully as I could; I got closer to them. As I stood up to see what I could do, I found out that it wasn’t a person after all; instead, it was an inflatable adult blow up toy.

It was raining too hard to take a picture because I didn’t want to ruin my phone, but I showed my Marshal on the first day of the tournament, and by then it was pretty funny.

Anyway, I’ll talk to you guys again soon.

Visit Fred on the Web www.swimbaitfred.com