EYE OF THE STORM 20060501 Lake Barkley Fishing Tournament

I'm not sure if any of you have seen this or if it's been posted her yet or
not but since I know Robbis is on AOL I'll post at this time.
Long live USENET.
Mike Kolodziej
Storm's in Hamilton TX



Lake Barkley Fishing Tournament

By Robbis Storm

LAKE BARKLEY, Kentucky -- Thank goodness for email.

If good friend Charles Summers hadn't contacted me over cyberspace, I
wouldn't have driven up from Texas to this beautiful body of water. I
wouldn't be having a good time playing cards and shooting the bull with
fishing buddies. I wouldn't be feasting on pheasant from Michigan or German
bratwurst from Chicago.

And I wouldn't have met the Incredible Shrinking Fish.

The event is the annual Southern Classic Bass Tournament held annually
for members of a USENET organization: Recreation Outdoors Fishing Bass or
ROFB for short.

Now, when you think of a bass tournament, you might well conjure up
images of highly-promoted, televised events attended by professional bass
fishermen who compete for thousands of dollars.

We're not like that. Not at all.

Not that some of the guys here aren't highly-skilled. Some are even
professional guides, and one -- Steve Huber -- hosts his own television
show, Outdoor Frontiers. But most of us fit somewhere between rank
beginner and above-average angler.

What we have in common is the Internet. All of us like to read and
post fishing information on a newsgroup called Recreation Outdoors Fishing
Bass (ROFB).

What's happened through the years is that we've become a real
community -- a group of friends who do far more than share bass fishing
questions, comments, and tips. We've come to know each other as individuals
and twice a year we try to get together for a fishing trip. We call that
fishing trip a tournament and indeed, we pay entry fees and compete for
prizes.

But the camaraderie trumps the competition. Sure -- we're here to
catch fish, but we're also here to catch up on each other's lives. We're
here just to get together. To renew old friendships. To make new ones.

Every year someone brings some special food. One year Steve brought in
Wisconsin venison and I've been known to provide the group with Texas-style
hamburgers. This year Shawn Barton grilled twenty pheasant breasts and Pat
Gustafson showed up with about three dozen of Chicago's finest bratwurst
which he boiled in beer and onions.

I'd been a regular on the group since the 1990s, but back in February
2005 my Internet server AOL decided to cancel access to all USENET groups.
Since that date, except for an occasional phone call, I've been out of
contact with the other guys.

Until I got back together with the guys, I didn't realize how much I'd
missed them -- their ideas, their support, their jokes, and the fishing.

Lake Barkley is one of the huge reservoirs built back during the
Depression when the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) dammed up the
Cumberland River. (The TVA is Appalachia's equivalent of our own LCRA.)

When I say huge, I mean huge! The surface area, at 57,900 acres, is
roughly twice that of Lake Buchanan. This body of water has over 1000 miles
of shoreline and stretches 134 miles, well down across the state line into
Tennessee.

If you love the outdoors, this place is paradise. Most of the same fish
we find here In Lake Buchanan also make their home in Barkley, but you can
also catch walleyes, saugers, and smallmouth bass. Wilderness areas around
the lakes providing thousand acres for hiking, hunting, and birdwatching.

I was delighted to draw Steve Huber as a partner. Steve and I have
fished together a number of times in the past, I've always enjoyed sharing a
boat with him,

We caught a few good bass early in the day. Then heavy rains came, and
while we stayed out on the water for the entire nine hours allowed by
tournament rules, during the downpour, we had few bites, and fewer keepers

We'd boated one fish that had been very close to minimum size, so at the
last minute Steve decided that he'd better check again. Tournament
regulations state that you're automatically disqualified if you bring in an
undersized fish.

It was a good thing that Steve was cautious. Now this was a bass that
both of us had measured more than once. Eight hours earlier, its tail could
easily be pinched together so that it hung a good quarter of an inch over
the magic 15 inch marker.

But just before weigh-in, it didn't seem to matter how often we measured
it, this bass kept coming up short. It was the tiniest "nth" of an inch shy
of the mark, so we had to throw it back. At the weigh-in our stringer was a
few ounces short of first place.

If we hadn't had the bad luck to catch the Incredible Shrinking Fish,
we'd have won.

But you know something -- for me, this tournament is about far more than
trophies or bragging rights or folding a few extra dollars in your wallet.
It's about friendships, community, good food, and good clean fun and I've
enjoyed plenty of that.

Thanks Charles!

Always a pleasure to hear from and about Rob. Thanks for posting it, Mike.

Joe
--------------------------
"Storm's Hamilton" htcomp.net@storms wrote in message
...

I'm not sure if any of you have seen this or if it's been posted her yet or
not but since I know Robbis is on AOL I'll post at this time.
Long live USENET.
Mike Kolodziej
Storm's in Hamilton TX



Lake Barkley Fishing Tournament

By Robbis Storm

LAKE BARKLEY, Kentucky -- Thank goodness for email.

If good friend Charles Summers hadn't contacted me over cyberspace, I
wouldn't have driven up from Texas to this beautiful body of water. I
wouldn't be having a good time playing cards and shooting the bull with
fishing buddies. I wouldn't be feasting on pheasant from Michigan or German
bratwurst from Chicago.

And I wouldn't have met the Incredible Shrinking Fish.

The event is the annual Southern Classic Bass Tournament held annually
for members of a USENET organization: Recreation Outdoors Fishing Bass or
ROFB for short.

Now, when you think of a bass tournament, you might well conjure up
images of highly-promoted, televised events attended by professional bass
fishermen who compete for thousands of dollars.

We're not like that. Not at all.

Not that some of the guys here aren't highly-skilled. Some are even
professional guides, and one -- Steve Huber -- hosts his own television
show, Outdoor Frontiers. But most of us fit somewhere between rank
beginner and above-average angler.

What we have in common is the Internet. All of us like to read and
post fishing information on a newsgroup called Recreation Outdoors Fishing
Bass (ROFB).

What's happened through the years is that we've become a real
community -- a group of friends who do far more than share bass fishing
questions, comments, and tips. We've come to know each other as individuals
and twice a year we try to get together for a fishing trip. We call that
fishing trip a tournament and indeed, we pay entry fees and compete for
prizes.

But the camaraderie trumps the competition. Sure -- we're here to
catch fish, but we're also here to catch up on each other's lives. We're
here just to get together. To renew old friendships. To make new ones.

Every year someone brings some special food. One year Steve brought in
Wisconsin venison and I've been known to provide the group with Texas-style
hamburgers. This year Shawn Barton grilled twenty pheasant breasts and Pat
Gustafson showed up with about three dozen of Chicago's finest bratwurst
which he boiled in beer and onions.

I'd been a regular on the group since the 1990s, but back in February
2005 my Internet server AOL decided to cancel access to all USENET groups.
Since that date, except for an occasional phone call, I've been out of
contact with the other guys.

Until I got back together with the guys, I didn't realize how much I'd
missed them -- their ideas, their support, their jokes, and the fishing.

Lake Barkley is one of the huge reservoirs built back during the
Depression when the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) dammed up the
Cumberland River. (The TVA is Appalachia's equivalent of our own LCRA.)

When I say huge, I mean huge! The surface area, at 57,900 acres, is
roughly twice that of Lake Buchanan. This body of water has over 1000 miles
of shoreline and stretches 134 miles, well down across the state line into
Tennessee.

If you love the outdoors, this place is paradise. Most of the same fish
we find here In Lake Buchanan also make their home in Barkley, but you can
also catch walleyes, saugers, and smallmouth bass. Wilderness areas around
the lakes providing thousand acres for hiking, hunting, and birdwatching.

I was delighted to draw Steve Huber as a partner. Steve and I have
fished together a number of times in the past, I've always enjoyed sharing a
boat with him,

We caught a few good bass early in the day. Then heavy rains came, and
while we stayed out on the water for the entire nine hours allowed by
tournament rules, during the downpour, we had few bites, and fewer keepers

We'd boated one fish that had been very close to minimum size, so at the
last minute Steve decided that he'd better check again. Tournament
regulations state that you're automatically disqualified if you bring in an
undersized fish.

It was a good thing that Steve was cautious. Now this was a bass that
both of us had measured more than once. Eight hours earlier, its tail could
easily be pinched together so that it hung a good quarter of an inch over
the magic 15 inch marker.

But just before weigh-in, it didn't seem to matter how often we measured
it, this bass kept coming up short. It was the tiniest "nth" of an inch shy
of the mark, so we had to throw it back. At the weigh-in our stringer was a
few ounces short of first place.

If we hadn't had the bad luck to catch the Incredible Shrinking Fish,
we'd have won.

But you know something -- for me, this tournament is about far more than
trophies or bragging rights or folding a few extra dollars in your wallet.
It's about friendships, community, good food, and good clean fun and I've
enjoyed plenty of that.

Thanks Charles!

A perfect explanation of what a few of us in here have tried to tell others
about our "tournaments".


"Storm's Hamilton" htcomp.net@storms wrote in message
...

I'm not sure if any of you have seen this or if it's been posted her yet
or not but since I know Robbis is on AOL I'll post at this time.
Long live USENET.
Mike Kolodziej
Storm's in Hamilton TX



Lake Barkley Fishing Tournament

By Robbis Storm

LAKE BARKLEY, Kentucky -- Thank goodness for email.

If good friend Charles Summers hadn't contacted me over cyberspace, I
wouldn't have driven up from Texas to this beautiful body of water. I
wouldn't be having a good time playing cards and shooting the bull with
fishing buddies. I wouldn't be feasting on pheasant from Michigan or
German bratwurst from Chicago.

And I wouldn't have met the Incredible Shrinking Fish.

The event is the annual Southern Classic Bass Tournament held annually
for members of a USENET organization: Recreation Outdoors Fishing Bass or
ROFB for short.

Now, when you think of a bass tournament, you might well conjure up
images of highly-promoted, televised events attended by professional bass
fishermen who compete for thousands of dollars.

We're not like that. Not at all.

Not that some of the guys here aren't highly-skilled. Some are even
professional guides, and one -- Steve Huber -- hosts his own television
show, Outdoor Frontiers. But most of us fit somewhere between rank
beginner and above-average angler.

What we have in common is the Internet. All of us like to read and
post fishing information on a newsgroup called Recreation Outdoors Fishing
Bass (ROFB).

What's happened through the years is that we've become a real
community -- a group of friends who do far more than share bass fishing
questions, comments, and tips. We've come to know each other as
individuals and twice a year we try to get together for a fishing trip.
We call that fishing trip a tournament and indeed, we pay entry fees and
compete for prizes.

But the camaraderie trumps the competition. Sure -- we're here to
catch fish, but we're also here to catch up on each other's lives. We're
here just to get together. To renew old friendships. To make new ones.

Every year someone brings some special food. One year Steve brought in
Wisconsin venison and I've been known to provide the group with
Texas-style hamburgers. This year Shawn Barton grilled twenty pheasant
breasts and Pat Gustafson showed up with about three dozen of Chicago's
finest bratwurst which he boiled in beer and onions.

I'd been a regular on the group since the 1990s, but back in February
2005 my Internet server AOL decided to cancel access to all USENET groups.
Since that date, except for an occasional phone call, I've been out of
contact with the other guys.

Until I got back together with the guys, I didn't realize how much I'd
missed them -- their ideas, their support, their jokes, and the fishing.

Lake Barkley is one of the huge reservoirs built back during the
Depression when the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) dammed up the
Cumberland River. (The TVA is Appalachia's equivalent of our own LCRA.)

When I say huge, I mean huge! The surface area, at 57,900 acres, is
roughly twice that of Lake Buchanan. This body of water has over 1000
miles of shoreline and stretches 134 miles, well down across the state
line into Tennessee.

If you love the outdoors, this place is paradise. Most of the same
fish we find here In Lake Buchanan also make their home in Barkley, but
you can also catch walleyes, saugers, and smallmouth bass. Wilderness
areas around the lakes providing thousand acres for hiking, hunting, and
birdwatching.

I was delighted to draw Steve Huber as a partner. Steve and I have
fished together a number of times in the past, I've always enjoyed sharing
a boat with him,

We caught a few good bass early in the day. Then heavy rains came, and
while we stayed out on the water for the entire nine hours allowed by
tournament rules, during the downpour, we had few bites, and fewer keepers

We'd boated one fish that had been very close to minimum size, so at
the last minute Steve decided that he'd better check again. Tournament
regulations state that you're automatically disqualified if you bring in
an undersized fish.

It was a good thing that Steve was cautious. Now this was a bass that
both of us had measured more than once. Eight hours earlier, its tail
could easily be pinched together so that it hung a good quarter of an inch
over the magic 15 inch marker.

But just before weigh-in, it didn't seem to matter how often we
measured it, this bass kept coming up short. It was the tiniest "nth" of
an inch shy of the mark, so we had to throw it back. At the weigh-in our
stringer was a few ounces short of first place.

If we hadn't had the bad luck to catch the Incredible Shrinking Fish,
we'd have won.

But you know something -- for me, this tournament is about far more
than trophies or bragging rights or folding a few extra dollars in your
wallet. It's about friendships, community, good food, and good clean fun
and I've enjoyed plenty of that.

Thanks Charles!

Thanks Mike for posting that. Say hi to Robb from all of us!


On Tue, 4 Jul 2006 19:53:17 -0500, "Storm's Hamilton"
htcomp.net@storms wrote:


I'm not sure if any of you have seen this or if it's been posted her yet or
not but since I know Robbis is on AOL I'll post at this time.
Long live USENET.
Mike Kolodziej
Storm's in Hamilton TX



Lake Barkley Fishing Tournament

By Robbis Storm

LAKE BARKLEY, Kentucky -- Thank goodness for email.

If good friend Charles Summers hadn't contacted me over cyberspace, I
wouldn't have driven up from Texas to this beautiful body of water. I
wouldn't be having a good time playing cards and shooting the bull with
fishing buddies. I wouldn't be feasting on pheasant from Michigan or German
bratwurst from Chicago.

And I wouldn't have met the Incredible Shrinking Fish.

The event is the annual Southern Classic Bass Tournament held annually
for members of a USENET organization: Recreation Outdoors Fishing Bass or
ROFB for short.

Now, when you think of a bass tournament, you might well conjure up
images of highly-promoted, televised events attended by professional bass
fishermen who compete for thousands of dollars.

We're not like that. Not at all.

Not that some of the guys here aren't highly-skilled. Some are even
professional guides, and one -- Steve Huber -- hosts his own television
show, Outdoor Frontiers. But most of us fit somewhere between rank
beginner and above-average angler.

What we have in common is the Internet. All of us like to read and
post fishing information on a newsgroup called Recreation Outdoors Fishing
Bass (ROFB).

What's happened through the years is that we've become a real
community -- a group of friends who do far more than share bass fishing
questions, comments, and tips. We've come to know each other as individuals
and twice a year we try to get together for a fishing trip. We call that
fishing trip a tournament and indeed, we pay entry fees and compete for
prizes.

But the camaraderie trumps the competition. Sure -- we're here to
catch fish, but we're also here to catch up on each other's lives. We're
here just to get together. To renew old friendships. To make new ones.

Every year someone brings some special food. One year Steve brought in
Wisconsin venison and I've been known to provide the group with Texas-style
hamburgers. This year Shawn Barton grilled twenty pheasant breasts and Pat
Gustafson showed up with about three dozen of Chicago's finest bratwurst
which he boiled in beer and onions.

I'd been a regular on the group since the 1990s, but back in February
2005 my Internet server AOL decided to cancel access to all USENET groups.
Since that date, except for an occasional phone call, I've been out of
contact with the other guys.

Until I got back together with the guys, I didn't realize how much I'd
missed them -- their ideas, their support, their jokes, and the fishing.

Lake Barkley is one of the huge reservoirs built back during the
Depression when the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) dammed up the
Cumberland River. (The TVA is Appalachia's equivalent of our own LCRA.)

When I say huge, I mean huge! The surface area, at 57,900 acres, is
roughly twice that of Lake Buchanan. This body of water has over 1000 miles
of shoreline and stretches 134 miles, well down across the state line into
Tennessee.

If you love the outdoors, this place is paradise. Most of the same fish
we find here In Lake Buchanan also make their home in Barkley, but you can
also catch walleyes, saugers, and smallmouth bass. Wilderness areas around
the lakes providing thousand acres for hiking, hunting, and birdwatching.

I was delighted to draw Steve Huber as a partner. Steve and I have
fished together a number of times in the past, I've always enjoyed sharing a
boat with him,

We caught a few good bass early in the day. Then heavy rains came, and
while we stayed out on the water for the entire nine hours allowed by
tournament rules, during the downpour, we had few bites, and fewer keepers

We'd boated one fish that had been very close to minimum size, so at the
last minute Steve decided that he'd better check again. Tournament
regulations state that you're automatically disqualified if you bring in an
undersized fish.

It was a good thing that Steve was cautious. Now this was a bass that
both of us had measured more than once. Eight hours earlier, its tail could
easily be pinched together so that it hung a good quarter of an inch over
the magic 15 inch marker.

But just before weigh-in, it didn't seem to matter how often we measured
it, this bass kept coming up short. It was the tiniest "nth" of an inch shy
of the mark, so we had to throw it back. At the weigh-in our stringer was a
few ounces short of first place.

If we hadn't had the bad luck to catch the Incredible Shrinking Fish,
we'd have won.

But you know something -- for me, this tournament is about far more than
trophies or bragging rights or folding a few extra dollars in your wallet.
It's about friendships, community, good food, and good clean fun and I've
enjoyed plenty of that.

Thanks Charles!




I've learned that I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy it!

Remove the x for e-mail reply
Amateur radio enthusiast, N9JBF
Bass fishing Aficionado!
www.outdoorfrontiers.com
www.SecretWeaponLures.com
A proud charter member of "PETAF", People for Eating Tasty Animals and Fish!!!

"Dan, danl, Redbeard uh Greybeard now" wrote in message
...
Thanks Mike for posting that. Say hi to Robb from all of us!

Will do!
mk

"Storm's Hamilton" htcomp.net@storms wrote in message
...

I'm not sure if any of you have seen this or if it's been posted her yet
or not but since I know Robbis is on AOL I'll post at this time.
Long live USENET.
Mike Kolodziej
Storm's in Hamilton TX

I'm proud to say that Robbis is a great friend of mine and a regular
contributor to OutdoorFrontiers.com. I received his article and have just
published it to OutdoorFrontiers, complete with some photos from the event.
I love the way he writes.

Here's the link,

http://www.outdoorfrontiers.com/modu...rder=0&thold=0
--
Steve @ OutdoorFrontiers
http://www.outdoorfrontiers.com
G & S Guide Service and Custom Rods
http://www.herefishyfishy.com