Well-prepared Big Fred narrowly misses the $$ in Lake Norman
April 29, 2007
They say that luck is where preparation meets opportunity and that was the theme…sorta…on Thursday and Friday when our man, Big Fred Contaoi, hit the water at the FLW Wal-Mart pro tour stop at Lake Norman in Charlotte, NC.
Big Boy was well-prepared for the event and had and very good game plan. Since the bass in Norman run on the small side, a 5-fish sack each day weighing in the neighborhood of 10-12 pounds was what experts figured would keep a guy in the hunt.
Fred went out and posted 10-pounds, 2 ounces on day one, which put him in very good position going into Day 2. At that point, he was only 4 pounds out of the lead and about a pound out of the money.
“It was tough today — I got 7 bites, and landed 6 of them,” he said. “One was short and the rest were keepers. Basically, I pretty much got everything that bit.”
Day 2
The fishing got better for Fred on the second day and he hooked a lot of fish. Opportunity came knocking that afternoon, in the form of a pair of good bass in the 2- to 3-pound class that both came off right at the boat. The unlucky break saw Fred end up weighing in 3 fish for 5-pounds, 14 ounces.
His two-day total of 16-even wasn’t enough to make the cut (the field got trimmed down from 200 pros to 10 for the final two days) but, with the two that came unbuttoned, things would have looked a lot different.
Say he’d landed those two fish, which would have given him somewhere around 21-22 pounds for the first two days…guys who posted scores like that took home $10,000 to $12,000 each.
While disappointed, Fred felt good overall about the tournament because he fished well enough to earn a check…it was simply a little stretch of tough luck that made the difference.
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