Lucas Punkari
For a team that wasn’t set in stone until two weeks before the start of the 15th-annual “Bassin’ for Bucks” on Friday in Sioux Narrows, it didn’t take long for the pairing of Bryan Gustafson of Fort Frances and Winnipeg’s Darrin Bohonis to make their presence known.
The duo jumped out into the lead on Day 1 with what proved to be a tournament best one-day total weight of 21.27 pounds, and would then go on to capture this year’s title with a three-day total weight of 55.91 pounds, which was enough to beat Jeff Gustafson and Mike Reid by 1.75 pounds.
“This win is right up there at the top for me,” Bryan Gustafson smiled.
“This is one of the three big tournaments up in this area, so to win one of the events that is considered to be a major is a pretty sweet feeling,” he added.
“Ultimately it comes down to the quality of the anglers that are in these tournaments, and at this one you have the best of the best from not only this area, but the United States as well,” Bohonis noted.
Making this win even sweeter for Bohonis, who along with Gustafson was making his second appearance in the “Bassin’ for Bucks” tournament, was the fact that he made the decision to enter this year’s event at the last minute.
“Bryan called me a couple of weeks ago and I wasn’t even sure that I would be able to fish it this year as I’m actually getting married at the end of this month,” Bohonis explained.
“I didn’t think I was going to be able to squeeze it in, but it all worked out pretty good in the end,” he smiled.
“We talk all the time and we fish together for fun a few times a year, plus he’s a good guy to fish with so it was a no brainer to have him come along,” Gustafson added.
Right at the start of the tournament, Gustafson and Bohonis got off to a great start as their 21.27-pound haul on Friday was well ahead of the 17.89-pound bag from Gustafson and Reid to take the early lead.
“Whether we had won or not that first day was the just the most overwhelming feeling that I’ve had in weighing in a bag,” Bryan Gustafson recalled.
“Everything about that day was special and I’ll probably remember that day for the rest of my life,” he smiled.
“It was like the planets aligned and we managed to get a little bit of a pattern going, and we were hoping that would stick for us for all three days,” Bohonis added.
But while their weights were impressive during the tournaments, both Gustafson and Bohonis noted that the amount of fish that they were catching was nothing that would put fear into their competition.
“We only caught six fish total on that first day and the other two days were about the same. We just were able to catch the right ones,” Gustafson said.
“Honestly it really kind of varied throughout the day,” Bohonis added.
“In the morning we would catch a couple of fish here or there, but there were some long periods of one or two hours where we just didn’t catch anything.
“We just managed to changed things up a little bit as the conditions switched,” Bohonis noted.
After catching 17.55 pounds on Saturday, Gustafson and Bohonis entered the final day of the tournament in second place behind the new leaders in Gustafson and Reid, but were only 0.22-pounds away from the lead.
“We just went into the final day exactly like we did on the first day and that was to go out and catch the biggest fish,” Bryan Gustafson explained.
“The idea was not to cut any corners and to not swing for anything other than those big fish, and it worked out for us,” he added.
When everything shook out at the weigh-ins, Gustafson and Bohonis’ weight of 17.09 pounds was enough to give them their first “Bassin’ for Bucks” title, with the title officially going in their favour after the five fish haul from Gustafson and Reid weighed in at only 15.12 pounds.
“We knew we had caught some good fish and we knew that we had some big ones, but we had no clue if we had enough to beat Jeff because he was just smiling at us the whole time,” recalled Bryan Gustafson.
“I was pumped that we had enough to win, but I was kind of shocked though because I thought they would top us,” he added.
For Gustafson and Reid, while they had finished in the runner-up spot for the second year in a row, the fact that they were close to capturing the crown left them both disappointed.
“I’ve said a bunch of times that it’s so hard to win these tournaments, and when you come close right at the end you want to win it,” Jeff Gustafson, who is from Kenora, explained.
“We had some things that we were doing over the last couple of days and we were catching some big fish, but things changed up out there today and we had to change up how we went at things.
“We put together a pretty decent catch, but it wasn’t the winning catch,” Gustafson sighed.
“I think it might of been a case of luck just not working out in our favour,” Reid, who is from Sioux Lookout, added.
“On Saturday we had three bites that were lucky bites and today while we saw those fish, we weren’t just as lucky in catching them,” he noted.
Rounding out the top five were Drew Reese/George Robison (51.48 pounds), Ted and Louis Stewner (49.74) and Terry McClymont/Tim Strempler (49.54).
The biggest smallmouth bass of the tournament was a 4.48 pound lunker caught by Gustafson and Reid on Saturday, while the biggest largemouth bass was also caught on Saturday as Bart Stebnitsky and Jon Olson hauled in a 5.01 pound beauty.
