Saugatuck Big Lake Classic

Elbow deep in fish guts is how we spent our weekend.

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But there were fish guts involved.

 

 

We spent Saturday and Sunday helping with a fishing tournament where Kelly's family works each year operating the weigh-in station. Each day, the competitors lug their giant coolers full of fish and pick their one biggest catch of the day to weigh for the 'Big Fish' contest, then weigh their total fish. They receive points based on the total weight of all their catch, plus points for total number of fish caught. The fishing teams were split into Pro Division and Amateur with rules and regulations regarding the number of fish, lines in the water, species, etc. 

 

 

 

 

Here's the Tweedle Brothers hanging up the 'Fish Drop-Off' sign. This is the one time a year that Kelly breaks out the shorts, can you tell?

 

While his stepdad was out fishing, the boys were in charge of weighing the fish, which meant grabbing them by the gills and setting them in the bucket. They'd first weigh the 'Big Fish', then add the rest of them for the total weight. Then came the fun part when all of those fish were dumped back into the team's cooler, causing a revolting splash of slimy guts, scales and blood to spray up their arms and acros their shirts. EWW. And I hope you weren't reading this over lunch.

 

 

 

 

I was pretty upset that I wasn't able to get my hands all up in that bucket.

 

Kidding. His mom and aunt were in charge of completing the scorecards, while his sister ran the cards from the weigh station to the scorekeepers table. After they were logged into the scoring system, I ran them outside and wrote the final scores on the giant boards for the teams to see after they docked and came up for lunch.

 

It was the first time I'd been to a fishing tournament and it was really cool! I loved seeing all of the different boats with their bajillion fishing poles and colorful lures. The DNR had a station next to the weigh-in where they would do a little research on the fish after they were weighed. On the second day, they brought us over half of a smoked salmon that one of the teams had caught the day before. It was so yummy I could've eaten the whole thing myself.

 

 

 

On Saturday his grandma came and hung out for the day, then on Sunday his other sister joined in the fun. I wish I had more pictures, but we were so busy once the boats started coming in with their fish that I got distracted and didn't even think about it.

We had a sun-filled weekend by the lake and now our freezer is stocked with salmon, that's pretty okay in my book.