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I'm going to do my best to get the site updated tonight.......although it might be late. WOW.....I'm beat. That tournament is a grueling sucker. It is such a challenge....although sometimes it can be frustrating. I had fun visiting with everyone again.

I think it's safe to say we arrived in Grand Forks with an open mind and very few expectations. This was my 5th time fishing the tournament and my previous best placing was 33rd......so we weren't exactly beaming with confidence going in. Our goals were to improve, learn and compete all tournament hours. We left Glasgow at 8:30 on Wednesday night and got into GF about 5:30 A.M. on Thursday....needless to say we were a little tired. We had plenty of good bait and brought a freezer with us to freeze some.

For those who don't know much about the tourney, it's broken down into two different sectional boundaries. The south ramp is above the Grand Forks diversion dam and is about 23 miles of river to the tournament boundary Thompson Bridge. It is a much deeper section with less visable cover. The North boundary is located below the diversion dam. It is a much shallower section with visable cover lining the banks as far as the eye can see. A max of 100 teams can launch at the South ramp and 75 at the North. So that makes up just over 35 river miles with 150 boats rip roaring up and down......get a visual of that. This was my fifth year of fishing the Incredible and I've fished North twice and South twice. This year we decided to go South for various reasons.

Thursday- Went scouting from about 10:00-3:00 and fished with poor bait....predominantly checked out the graph and looked for areas that looked intriguing.

Friday- Went pre-fishing from about 9:00-3:00. We had limited success pre-fishing, however, I put very little weight in that. We had our spots picked out for Saturday and we were going to give it a shot. Had a nice sit down with the Hanson's at Applebees and went to the pre-tournament meeting.
Saturday- The boat launch is almost worth the $200 entry in itself. Running up and down the river against $40,000 Walleye boats is so much fun. The River Pro doesn't handle the waves very well but it sure does make for an exciting ride. We arrived at our first spot around 7:30 A.M.....in a spot I've had success with in past tourney's. We unfortanatly didn't get any fish there or anywhere else until about noon. We landed our first and only fish of the day, it was about 8 pounds. One bite all day and we landed the fish. We obviously didn't do something right. Our confidence was shot, however, we regrouped at dinner and went out with a plan.

Sunday- The day started out slowly again for us, however, as the day went on the action slowly picked up. We landed a 9 lbr. and decided to put it in the livewell. The way fishing had been going it was no gaurentee that we would be doing any better than that. Our three slot fish came pretty easily and finally landed our 15 lbr. at about 2:30. We had our limit and weighed in around 34 lbs. We had a great day of fishing and our plan worked. Now was it luck? Maybe, however, we felt like we had a good plan....had good boat positioning, were patient and it was a good day on the water. We caught 7 fish at 6 differnet locations on Sunday. It would have been ideal to put 2 days together like this......that would have managed us a top 10 finish (how many teams are saying that ). Two day total of just over 42 lbs and 55th place overall.

Cats Incredible positives:

1. 150 teams every year.....so impressive.
2. Great people and we get the opportunity to meet new catfisherman and see old friends.
3. The Red River is the best Channel Catfishery in the world....monster cats caught every year. 22 lbr. was the tourney's biggest this year.
4. I think they work hard to try to make this a premier social event and I think they accomplish that goal. Numerous volunteers put in long hours to make this thing work. Running a tournament with 150 teams I'm sure is a logistical nightmare and they do the best they can to accomidate the fisherman.

Cats Incredible negatives:

1. Payouts are junk. It's pretty much a money making event for the Grand Forks Chamber and I guess that's all right, but just don't plan on winning any money on the weekend if you are an out of town team. You will probably have to place top 5 to make any money.

2. Weigh-ins from about 3:45-4:30 are super crowded and long wait's before you can weigh-in. Some people wait a good 1/2 before weighing in their fish. We witnessed 15-18 lb cats in about 6" of water for over a 1/2 hour. Disgusting. Something needs to be done to improve this process. How many of those fish are weighed in alive and then swim off to die a couple of hours later due to high stress? The fish are post-spawn and stressed already.

3. The boat launch acess is horrible. You have to arrive at about 5:30 A.M. the morning of the tourney in order to ensure your boat will be in the water before the start of the tourney at 7:00. Not sure what to do about this, although they do have another boat launch about 2 miles upstream that we used on day 2 (although we kind of got in trouble and were told we weren't supposed to use that ramp). You have the ability to leave your boat in over night (which we did on Friday night), however, when you park your boat on shore you have to deal with huge cement rip/rap with rebar sticking out all over the place. Not a very boat friendly environment.

4. The no-culling rule. I don't have a problem with the rule if it was enforceable. I think it's extremely difficult to have a rule that you're sure many in the tournament aren't following. There is really no way to enforce this rule unless you have a tournament official in every boat.

I'm sure I could think of plenty of other positives and negatives. I'm not trying to be overly critical of the tournament because I do think they do a pretty solid job there. It's a super intriguing tournament because it such a challenge. The conditions are different every year and I really haven't done that well there for 2 days in a row so we'll see what the future holds. I'm sure Brenner, Jason and Nate would be able to add to this post of their thoughts on the event. If anyone else has any questions about the tourney, feel free to post below. I think it would be awesome if we could have a few Montana teams go over each year and compete. It really is fun, although it can be extremely frustrating when you aren't catching fish.