Is this any way to practice for a tournament?

Ronnie Garrison wrote:

I got my boat to the dock, tied up and went back to the truck. The guy
next to me
was looking out over the lake - I asked if he was hoping someone would
ride by and
want to take their boat out. He said he was supposed to pick up his
buddy at 10 - it
was 9:45 now. I wonder if he would have backed down and blocked the ramp if
there had been people waiting to launch? Glad there weren’t - I parked,
got in my
boat and left. Never did see a boat headed toward the ramp.


I fished a little place yesterday for a half day. There's only one house
and an exclusive prep school on this lake that are accessible by road.
Other than that, a couple cabins that you have to boat your way into,
that are at the other end of the pond from the boat ramp. Only one other
boat came out, and he was electric only. About 10AM, I heard a motor
roaring from the far end of the lake, which took me by surprise, because
I hadn't heard anyone else come out with a gas motor. Eventually a
little 11 foot aluminum semiV with an ancient one lunger, complete with
'hors hoe' tank comes by, headed to the boat ramp. The guy gets there,
turns around, and goes back up the lake to the cabin he came from. An
hour later, I'm fishing my way to the boat ramp and there's now a
minivan parked across the ramp. 3 elderly folks (by elderly, I mean even
older than me) are unloading stuff from it onto the dock at the ramp.
Groceries, suitcases, lawn chairs, coolers, a propane tank, etc. The
completely fill the dock with this stuff by the time I get there. The
oldest coot asks if I've seen anyone headed this way. "An hour ago," I
tell him. "But he left." Now they start blowing the horn. "Excuse, me,
but could you move your van so I can use the ramp?"

Then, after a few minutes of jawboning with each other, all 3 of them
got in the van and drove away, leaving all their gear on the dock. I can
only assume that they were going up the road to a spot directly across
from the cabin to blow their horn some more. I wonder how m uch of their
stuff was still there when they cam back.

On another note... You don't need practice! I was just going fishing
today, but came upon an open team tournament at the lake I was going to
fish. What the hey, let's fish it! So we did. 5 fish per boat limit. We
ozmoed a limit in 30 minutes out of a deep (17 foot) cabbage bed, then
spent the rest of the day drop shotting, caught 20 some odd fish and
culled out 3 of the first limit in the process. Ended up with 18.6
pounds. 2nd place had 13.3.