Despite the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship seeing its lowest number of anglers since 1997, a local rookie duo bucked the trend and came aboard.
Rollie Roy of Fort Frances and his cousin, Ryan Hastie, who currently lives in Neepawa, Man., entered as Team #145 team and learned some valuable lessons along the way en route to a three-day total of 4.98 pounds.
Hastie spent many summers growing up in Fort Frances, and he and Roy always have followed the FFCBC closely.
“If I could live here, I’d be here in a heartbeat,” Hastie enthused. “I grew up fishing this lake every summer here. My grandparents were here and I came down religiously until I had to start working during the summers in the city [Winnipeg].”
Hastie, 24, used some of his leave time from the RCMP to come out to fish the week while Roy, 20, took time away from his job at West End Motors here to do the same.
“We had a really good spot in pre-fishing, stopped there for 15 minutes, and we saw follow-ups from four good-sized bass, one of which had to be the biggest I’ve seen on this lake,” Hastie recalled.
“I’ve seen a five-and-a-half pound one before and this thing made it look like a baby,” he stressed.
But despite having high hopes going to that spot on Day 1 last Thursday, it didn’t produce many tournament-sized fish—just a lot more northerns than they cared to remember.
“We caught about 15 bass between 10-and-a-half and 11-and-a-half inches [minimum length is 12 inches] on that first day,” Hastie noted.
Despite not getting the results they were looking for, the duo still enjoyed themselves on Rainy Lake and look forward to fishing the FFCBC again down the road.
“I learned the lake a lot over the last week,” Roy said. “I knew the south arm but we got familiar with the north [arm] and I’m excited for next year.
“We’ll just work harder and find those big fish,” he vowed.
Despite being overmatched by larger boats with big motors and more experienced anglers, the two young anglers were able to enjoy the experience—and even laugh at themselves at times.
“We had a smaller boat than a lot of the boats, most of them were 21 feet [long],” Hastie remarked.
“We were getting passed all over the place, both sides at the same time, going 40 m.p.h. and getting passed like we were standing still,” he laughed.
To make matters worse, Roy had one rod break just reeling in on Day 2 while another one mysteriously disappeared.
“Rollie caught one and saw a follow-up bass at the same time,” Hastie recounted. “I purposely started casting over to catch the other one while Rollie got the first fish unhooked and in the livewell, but after he got done with that, he turns around and goes ‘Where’s my rod?’
“He starts looking all over the place in the boat and can’t find the rod,” Hastie added. “We’re thinking either the lure was left hanging over the edge of the boat and the follow-up bass grabbed it or when he put the fish in the livewell out of the net while holding his rod, the net stayed in the boat and the rod didn’t.”
The day after the tournament ended, the pair went fishing for just over an hour and came up with four bass.
Ouch.
“I’ll be fishing hard the rest of the summer. Catching those fish [Sunday] was tough, but that’s just the way it goes,” Roy noted. “We got a lot of advice from guys like Phil Bangert, and learned a lot.
“We had good sponsors who helped us a lot, and we’ll be back,” he pledged.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
