Pair of tourney winners

Well, I finally have results for you from the Lake German Tuesday Nite Walleye Tourney that took place July 14.

Nate Brunz and his teammate Andy (see below for more on Andy) pulled off the win, weighing two fish for a 10 pound, 8 ounce stringer.

Brothers Tom and Ken Davis finished second with one fish weighing in at 6 pounds 4.6 ounces. This also happened to be the big fish winner on German, which netted the pot money for big fish from East Jefferson. If you'll remember, the field was skunked at Jeff and all prize money carried over to German.

Third place went to the team of Troy Bessman and Steve Wolfe. The duo weighed one fish at 4 pounds, .8 ounces.

The tournament returned to Lake Washington Tuesday. Tournament director Tim Hobbs said the walleyes weren't nearly as big as the first time the tournament hit Washington — Stu McKee and Roger Kramer edged Bill Holland and Dan Griep despite weighing one less fish — plenty of small walleye were caught.

Bessman and Wolfe pulled in first place with a three fish, 4 pound 8.4 ounce stringer. Coming in second was McKee and Kramer. They weighed two fish at 2 pounds, 3.6 ounces.

Holland and Griep weighed in one fish at 1 pound, 4.1 ounces, which narrowlly handed them third place. Hobbs said he weighed in four other fish that landed between .9 ounces (wow, that's small!) to 1 pound, 2.4 ounces.

Hobbs said he expects a full, official tally of the standings later this week. I'd been tracking the progress of Holland/Griep, Kramer/McKee closely, because early on these two teams were the teams scoring all the points. Unofficially, I have them locked at 44 with two regular season tournaments to go.

This is very unofficial, however, as points for each tournament can be awarded for just showing up, and also for just weighing a fish. And I also have a sneaking suspicion that the team of Bessman/Wolfe isn't far behind the other two teams.

More on Andy
As a journalist, I'm trained to track down the facts. If you can't verify something, you cut it out or write around it. But here on this blog, and specifically with these walleye tournaments, I'm in a unique situation.

Nate Brunz and Andy were the German winners, but Hobbs couldn't come up with a last name for Andy. And with the increasing popularity of cell phones, I couldn't find a listing for Brunz to call and ask him.

Now, if this were going in our newspaper, I'd start calling other anglers from the tournament, hoping one or the other would know his name. Then I'd call him and verify. I will still do this to make sure Andy gets his proper credit, but I don't want to short change him now by not mentioning him along with Brunz as winners of the German tourney.

So if you know who Andy is, drop me a line. If you're out there Andy, drop me a line. In the meantime, I'll do my homework.

You might wonder how this could happen since both were fishing in a tournament, but until the newspaper started snooping around the walleye tournaments, there was probably little need for Hobbs to gather last names and correct spellings and such. Several of the anglers in this year's field have said that the best thing about fishing the tournaments was the camraderie.

Several of the anglers admit knowing a lot of the competition strictly through the walleye tournaments, so things like last names don't always crop up and complicate things.

Leave it to me to come along and make a casually event just a little more formal. Doh!

Boater up

Do you remember your first car?

I do — a 1986 Honda Accord with a moonroof and power windows. The radio wasn't that great, but it had a tape player, which I thought was the coolest thing next to the moonroof and power windows.

I bought that Accord after my senior year of high school. While playing a legion baseball tournament in Minnesota Lake, the moonroof went out on me and it rained that night. This was my first mechanical experience with a car, and needless to say, if it happened again, I'd be able to fix that moonroof.

Of course, I've had a few vehicles since that Accord. Starter cars are a must if you plan on respecting what you come to own later in life.

But, until recently, I've never owned a boat. I always imagined my first boat as a 14-footer with a one-armed bandit for a motor. I've operated plenty of those boats, but never had I owned one.

Now I'm the proud owner of a 1988 Lund Tyee — with a blown motor. I have no mechanical skills when it comes to boats, much like I had no mechanical skills when I bought that Accord. Yet I'm still very excited to get started.

This boat has a steering wheel, depth finder, trolling motor and a livewell — the equivalent of the moonroof and power windows from that Accord. It was my brother-in-laws starter boat before it became mine.

He upgraded to a new Lund Tyee, which is a beautiful boat by the way. I look at all the outings I had in his old boat, my new boat, and I feel fortunate to be able to start with this Lund. I also look at his ability to upgrade after paying his dues with an older boat, and I'm excited to know that I'll learn what I need to learn now, so some day I can upgrade to a newer boat, as well.

But for now, I'm learning; I'm learning about motors, I'm learning about boating regulations, and soon I'll be learning to back up a boat trailer. If it goes anything like the small trailers I backed up when I worked at U-Haul, well, I'm probably screwed.

So if you see me in the near future struggling at a boat landing, make sure you come up and laugh in my face. And then, after you gather your composure, reassure me that you were once a rookie at the boat launch, too, and that everything will get better.

Choice reading

We're in that time of summer where we get bogged down by hot weather (not so much this year), summer plans and life in general. For me, this means very little fishing. But I'm still able to get in some reading from time to time, and I came across a great bass article from Russ Bassdozer on weed fishing. Don't let the bass angle in this article throw you, because plenty of fish like the weeds.