EAST WINTHROP – When competitors in the BASS Federation Eastern Divisional Tournament talk about the “pressure” at Lake Cobbosseecontee, they’re not necessarily referring to the daily show-us-what-you-got ceremony, although it, alone, puts everyone’s antiperspirant to the test.
The long, winding queue to Wednesday’s bottom line was subtle as the weigh-in ceremony for celebrities on a fat-to-fit reality show. One by suntanned one, each angler deposited the contents of his live well into a mesh bag and lowered his catch onto a scale for the world to see.
This merited a collective roar, a round of polite applause or a heaping helping of Dixie-twanged heckling from the master of ceremonies. Then the stars of the show started planning their strategy to put up heftier numbers today and Friday.
Which is precisely where the second connotation of “pressure” comes in. It refers to the exorbitant number of fishermen (more than 180) relative to a finite number of bass. Ol’ Cobb has absorbed such a beating from vacationers and pros alike in recent weeks that even the guys who hit double digits on day one were cursing their crummy catch and wondering if they could hope to duplicate it before week’s end.
“I thought it was terrible,” said Darryl Fitzgerald of Livermore Falls, who hooked his limit of five bass at a combined weight of 12 pounds, 10 ounces.
On this day, he begrudgingly submitted one or two to the scale that would have been thrown back without the blink of an eye under normal circumstances. Fitzgerald said he caught only eight “keepers” all day, which began at sunrise and concluded with the 3 p.m. weigh-in.
“Usually I catch 15 or 20 in one day when I fish here,” he said. “It could be all the pressure. It could be the warmer weather. I don’t know. This lake’s seen a lot of fishing for so many weeks.”
Still, as so many T-shirts and bumper stickers tell us, a rotten day on the water trumps the best day pushing a pencil or swinging a hammer. And this becomes an even sweeter way to spend a week when you consider that it’s two not-so-giant steps away from bass fishing’s holy grail.
Fourteen states and the Canadian province of Ontario are represented in the divisional tournament based at Lakeside Cabins on Route 202, with the Eastern and Mid-Atlantic divisions running concurrently.
Top the other competitors in your state with the highest combined catch weight for three days and it’s off to the regional. Win your bracket there and you’ll snag one of 62 berths in the annual Bassmasters Classic.
“That’s the dream,” said Steve Harris of South China. “You don’t just want to go. You want to win. You want to hoist that huge trophy over your head. That and the $500,000 check.”
Harris gave himself a head start with a 14-pound, 1-ounce take, leading the 12-member Maine BASS Federation Team in the opening round of the three-day competition. As the last to weigh in, he also gave his team an advantage of more than 12 pounds over Vermont in the team sweepstakes.
Competing with his twin brother, Scott, in his third regional competition, Harris conceded that it was a tough day at the office but chalked up the challenge to Cobbossee’s fickle personality.
“We could all come out (Thursday) and have it be the exact opposite,” Harris said. “Cobbossee doesn’t owe anybody anything, and me the least.”
There is a wide range of aspirations in the New England field, from Fitzgerald (“I do all the weekend tournaments I can,” he said) to Joel St. Germain of Cumberland, R.I., who wears an embroidered uniform with a dozen sponsor logos and even has his own Web site.
St. Germain, who said he practiced here 15 days over the summer, landed the largest catch of the day at 8 pounds, 2 ounces.
“I owe it to my partner (Jason Mitsin of Hollis). He lost a couple on that side of the boat in the morning,” St. Germain said. “He showed me the spots.”
Partners change each morning, but St. Germain has no trouble making it on his own. Two years ago, St. Germain qualified for the Classic and finished 29th.
“I’ve got a lot of great sponsors for a guy like me who is only semi-pro and wanting to go pro, but getting there takes money,” he said. “And luck. All the money in the world won’t buy you luck.”
Luck, or lack of it, fostered the typical barrage of fish stories. One competitor claimed to have caught his limit before the biggest fish “jumped back in the water.”
Phil Paradis of Minot good-naturedly declared himself a team player after falling two fish shy of his limit.
“I did a good job today guiding,” Paradis said. “My partner’s got a good bag.”
Sitting atop the leader board won’t change Steve Harris’ personality. He classified the best approach to the team competition within the individual chase as “sportsmanship without giving away your secrets.”
“There are millions of fish in here,” he added. “Millions! At least that’s what I tell myself when I’m fishing, so I don’t get to thinking that I’m after the only one that’s in there.”
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