Bass tourney ends in historic first: co-champs

After three days of fishing, it came down to an impromptu backstage meeting to determine the winner of the 2011 Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship.
But following a lengthy discussion, it was decided Richard Rud and Jon Austin, from International Falls, and Thunder Bay’s Glenn Leroux and Trevor Zimak would share the tournament title after both teams finished in a dead heat with a three-day total weight of 52.42 pounds.

The official rules of the tournament state that in the event of a tie for the top spot in the standings, both teams would head right back out onto Rainy Lake for a one-hour fish-off.
And if there still was a tie after that, a coin flip would then determine the winner.
“With the winds as bad as they were today [Saturday], and with one team [Leroux and Zimak] suffering a broken steering column, having a fish-off wasn’t the right thing to do at the time,” explained FFCBC chairman Gord Watson.
“We looked at the other options and at the end of the day, the anglers came to their decision, and I honour their decision,” he added.
As for the anglers themselves, they seemed to be the most pleased with how the situation was handled.
“It was a unanimous decision among us all four anglers to come up with that, and it was the right thing to do,” Rud said.
“We are both fine with it,” added Austin, who has fished with Rud in the FFCBC for the last five years.
“Both of us fished hard for three days, and I think both of us felt that we deserved to be champions,” Austin continued.
“We are both content with being co-champions and it really works out the best,” he stressed.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” noted Leroux, in his second FFCBC with Zimak.
“You don’t want to see one team lose out over a coin toss, so we might as well share the wealth with the winnings and the prestige that goes along with that,” he reasoned.
“To finish up as co-champions is really cool,” Zimak enthused.
“All four of us worked so hard all weekend, and it takes the biggest 15 fish to win this thing.
“It just so happens that this year it happened to finish in a tie, so why not have co-champions?”
Rud and Austin had a solid showing when the tournament started on Thursday, catching 17.86 pounds to sit in fourth place in the standings after Day 1.
“We had a decent day on the first day,” Austin said.
“The wind was howling out there and we were taking a pounding because we cover a lot of water out there,” he recalled.
“But we caught our fish and we were very happy with our bag on that first day.”
Day 2 saw the International Falls duo bring in a five-fish total of 15.46 pounds, which put them in fifth place going into the third and final day of competition.
Leapfrogging them on the leaderboard were Leroux and Zimak, who were in ninth place after Day 1 with 16.11 pounds, as the Lakehead tandem weighed in 18.60 pounds—the second-highest total on Day 2 behind the 19.26-pound haul by Joe Thrun and Ben Miller—to vault into fourth spot.
“Thursday didn’t go quite like how we planned it,” Leroux admitted.
“We got lucky at the end of the day as we caught a couple good fish that really helped us out, and what we found out on Thursday followed straight into Friday.
“We used the exact same pattern and we ended up getting a really nice bag,” noted Leroux.
The late-day catches on Day 1 left Zimak starting to feel that things were tilting in their favour.
“As the things we did towards the end of the first day carried into the second, it felt like we could do no wrong,” he remarked.
“Everywhere we were going, we were catching fish. And I think the biggest thing for us is that we never changed anything from the pre-fishing to the tournament itself.
“We wore the same clothes, we ate at the same time, we showered at the same time, and we watched television at the same time,” Zimak said.
“I don’t know if it was a part of anything, but it all worked out.”
But as dawn broke over Rainy Lake on Saturday, the “worst nightmare” for Leroux and Zimak came true as high winds and overcast skies greeted anglers as they awoke for Day 3.
“The main thing that worried us was the weather,” Zimak admitted. “We were really hoping for some sunny, hot, and calm weather, basically similar to what we had on Friday.”
“But once the weather changed, we had to totally change direction again with our tactics and everything, but we got lucky and everything just worked out,” noted Leroux.
Rud and Austin also found themselves in a similar situation going out on Rainy Lake on Saturday.
 “When we got up this morning and saw the wind ripping like it was, with the cold temperature, our strategy was to hopefully get five fish, plain and simple,” Austin said.
“I actually caught a fish on my first cast of the day, and it just never stopped from there.
“We kind of kept saying, ‘This is a crazy day,’ and while we certainly didn’t expect to take the lead, it was a nice surprise,” he smiled.
“We were just hoping to put five into the boat, come in with 12-15 pounds, and not embarrass ourselves,” Rud chuckled.
While things were going smoothly for Austin and Rud, Leroux and Zimak found themselves in a precarious situation as the afternoon rolled around when they suffered a mechanical issue with their boat’s steering.
“I was just driving to another spot, and I was trying to turn a corner, I couldn’t turn the wheel and it just locked up,” Zimak recalled.
“I said to Glenn, ‘Something’s wrong here. This isn’t good,’ so as soon as we stopped the boat, we started to take the [steering] column apart.
“The knuckle in the bracket was broken, and a bolt was broken right in half and we couldn’t get it out, so it was binding on the column and we were only able to turn the wheel about an inch either way,” Zimak explained.
“We just decided to take our chances, and take a long, slow ride back and just hope for the best,” added Leroux.
For Zimak, the situation with the boat’s steering reminded him of what happened during his last triumph with Leroux, which took place in Atikokan two years ago.
“It seems like any time that we do well, we have a situation,” he remarked.
“In Atikokan, we had to get towed in on our first day. And then on our second day, we had to idle to our spot which was 10 miles away and we had to leave two hours early just to idle back.
“I said to Glenn out there that ‘If we get a good bag, maybe we’ll win this because we have a major situation again,’” Zimak remarked.
As both teams made their way to the Ice For Kids Arena for the final weigh-in, Rud and Austin stepped to the scales first and took the lead away from Lauren Ras and Chuck Olson thanks to a Day 3 best 19.10-pound haul.
The next team to show up was Leroux and Zimak, whose 17.71-pound catch not only was the second best of the day, but also enough to cause a tie for the tournament lead.
“It was a feeling of disbelief at first to find out that we were both tied,” Austin recalled.
“I haven’t been tournament fishing for very long, and while I have seen [fish] within a couple of ounces of one another, to have an actual tie is unheard of,” he added.
With all four anglers sharing the hot seat, the co-leaders only could watch as the final three teams of Mark Raveling/Mike Luhman, Thrun/Miller, and tournament leaders Darren Ward and Sean Good all rolled into the arena to show off their catches.
But when none of those teams could knock the co-leaders off their perch, the tie for the FFCBC title was assured.
“With those guys and those names behind us, we didn’t think what we had was going to be enough to hold up,” Zimak conceded.
“Raveling is a phenomenal guy and he’s so consistent, and there’s not much else you can say about Joe as he’s won here five times.
“When we saw that they didn’t have the weight, we were both just shocked to stay up in the lead,” Zimak added.
“Obviously, you are nervous when you are watching all of that take place,” Austin said. “There is always scuttlebutt here and there, with people talking about the kind of fish they’ve got.
“Joe is always tight-lipped but he’s had some huge bass here in the past so you have to always worry about him, and it’s the same thing with Raveling and Darren,” he stressed.
“It does the ease the nerves a little bit, though, when you see them pull out a couple of small ones,” Rud smiled.
As the team received pats on the back and handshakes from their fellow anglers, Rud and Austin were quick to point out a key person from International Falls who helped them get to where they were.
“The biggest thank you that we have to give is to John Cann,” Austin said. “He let us use his boat for the three days here, which was a godsend given the weather we had to deal with.
“That was very generous of him to do that.”
Leroux and Zimak, meanwhile, were especially grateful for the volunteers and the organizing committee who put this year’s tournament together.
“Without them and the entire Town of Fort Frances stepping up, there wouldn’t be a tournament, we wouldn’t be here, and we wouldn’t be the co-champions of this tournament,” Zimak enthused.