Zoey Duncan
After Day 1 of the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship, a big gap separated locals Darren Ward and Sean Good and their tournament-best 19.61-pound catch from the grandfather-grandson duo of Paul Kielb and Tyler Long, who caught just a single 1.63-pound fish their first day out.
With one day of fishing behind them, nobody was ahead of Ward and Good while only four teams—none of whom had reeled in any fish yet—were behind Kielb and Long.
But even more notable is what brought the two teams together: a busted trolling motor.
“When we came back in [on Thursday], we had three- to four-foot rollers coming on our boat and everything was bouncing like crazy, including us,” recalled Kielb, a Minnesota resident fishing in his seventh FFCBC.
“And just all of a sudden, the [trolling motor mount] just cracked right in half and was laying in the bottom of boat, unfortunately.”
Kielb and Long asked tourney organizers where they could get the mount fixed. But when the suggested shop couldn’t make the repair, Ward’s name came up.
“He phoned right as we were walking into the arena with our fish,” Ward noted Friday afternoon.
“I just told him give me an hour,” Ward added. “I said, ‘I just want to see what we weigh and we’ll go from there.’”
The men met up shortly afterwards at Ward’s home, where he set to work—rebuilding their chances to enjoy two more days of fishing on Rainy Lake.
Ward, a welder by trade, spent three hours welding together the three pieces that had cracked apart.
“It was a little bit intricate,” he admitted.
“It’s a cast aluminum base and it broke right on the junction where it locks in on the bow, holding the motor down in the water,” Ward explained.
“It’s pretty key to be accurate when you put it back together.”
Ward hit a bump of his own during the job when he initially was unable to get enough heat from his equipment to do the job.
“I phoned [M.L. Caron Electric] and, being my personal sponsor, as well as the sponsor for the tournament, he came to the house and changed my fuses over so that I could do the job,” Ward remarked.
“Everybody kind of pulled together,” he noted. “That’s what this tournament’s about.”
Long, a recent high school grad who has been fishing with his grandfather for the past six years, said he was impressed with Ward’s kindness.
“I just [have] a newfound respect for my fellow anglers,” he said. “It’s inspired me to do something nice now, too.
“He did not have to do that,” Long stressed. “He has to get to bed like all of us, so I was very grateful for that.”
Ward, who ended up finishing in seventh place overall with Good in the championship division, said he didn’t hesitate at all when he was asked for help.
“Everything turned out well and they were on the water [Friday],” he noted.
“And I talked to them when they were weighing in,” Ward added. “They got four fish and you know what? That’s four more fish and one more day on the water that they wouldn’t have got.”
