District 19 TBF Semi-Final September 25-26, 2021
The event ran quite smoothly beginning with the Friday Evening registration and banquet. We had an awesome pulled pork, salads and baked bean dinner, lots of food! Following dinner, we went over a few rules and safety issues. After this we got into the pairings. Basically, following the provided paper work everything went great with no issues.
The morning boat safety check and take off went well. There was some concern of morning fog so we had a short window to get every one checked through and launched, same thing for day two. Weigh-ins went very well with everyone accounted for and no late arrivals. We only had one fish die during the entire event.
Fishing was under blue bird skies with little or no wind and no rain however there was an algae bloom going on which may have affected the fishing as the bite was a little slow and the weights were running about 5 lbs. below average. The winning boater, Randy Siemens of Kalispell, did manage to squeeze out over 15 lbs. each day. Big fish was a Smallmouth of just under 6 lbs.
The home state team took the majority of the plaques with 8 of them to Idaho’s 2. This was refreshing as this was reversed last year when we fished on Idaho’s home water and they will more than likely beat us next year, however we plan to make them work for it!
From the Left: Karl Okerman 4th Boater, J.D. Woods 5th Co-angler and standing in for Jim Conlin 5th Boater, Randy Siemens 1st Boater overall, Jason Crone 3rd Boater, Tim Johnston 2nd Boater, Hunter Dahnke Top MT and 2nd overall Co-Angler, and Mark Hilyer 3rd Co-Angler
MT Top boater – Randy Siemens, left and MT Top co-angler – Hunter Dahnke, right
Thanks to help from Randy, Karen and Katie we pulled off another excellent event.
Don Collins
President: The Montana Bass Federation
www.mttbf.com
