Johnston, Wright top local duo

    The Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship crowds had plenty of friends and family to cheer for with half of the top 10 teams hailing from the region, led by Guy Johnston and Doug Wright of Fort Frances in third place.
    The team put up two of the best bags of the weekend—20.53 pounds on Thursday and 19.24 on Saturday, marred by a 15.90 total on Friday, largely due to mechanical issues.
    “There’s a lot of really good local talent and fishermen around here and we’re beating them, so that still makes it pretty good,” Johnston said.
    “There’s lots of guys from Sioux Narrows area and all that, and we’re doing better than they are,” he added. “I do think we have an advantage being a local team out there on our own lake.”
    It was the team’s second time they had finished as the top local duo (the other being in 2004), which is a real point of pride for Johnston.
    Wright, meanwhile, said his experience of going through the big tent at the Sorting Gap Marina as a member of the top 10 after Day 2 of the tournament was unequalled.
    “You see that local crowd and that’s what it’s all about,” he enthused. “I wish every angler could see or experience that. It’s a great feeling.”
    “It’s a great feeling, and you go to the stage and you stand on there and you’re on the ‘hot seat’ as they call it. . . .” agreed Johnston. “It’s pretty unnerving up there.
    “And you got 2,000 people standing there, sitting there watching you.”
    The total was somewhat bittersweet. The duo had experienced troubles with their livewell on Saturday and had lost a fish when they decided to cut their day short by more than an hour—unaware they would bring in the third-best haul of the day.
    “I felt confident that we should’ve won that tournament with the fish we had,” Johnston said.
    Just behind them in fourth place were Janice Wickham (Kenora) and three-time FFCBC champ Dave Lindsay (Sioux Narrows).
    The team that got into this year’s tournament through the draw wound up with 16.59 pounds on Thursday—well out of the first flight on Friday morning. But they rebounded with bags of 18.65 and 19.59 pounds, the latter being the biggest on Saturday.
    The couple held hands on stage as their 54.83 pounds bested many in the top 10 parade before Johnston and Wright came along.
    “We had some tense moments but we got through it as a couple,” Lindsay said on stage. “And she is, by far, the best-looking partner I’ve ever had.”
    Bill Godin (Devlin) and former three-time champ Norm Lindsay (Sioux Narrows) finished in sixth place—strangely, the only team from last year’s top five to make this year’s top 10.
    Hiram Archibald (Sioux Narrows) and Joe Prichett (Kenora) earned seventh place while Jim Sandelovich and Karl Howells of Fort Frances placed eighth for the second-straight year.
    Last year’s top two teams—Mark Libitka (Kenora)/Dave Bennett (Sioux Narrows) and Morgan Cadene (Emo)/Doug McBride (Devlin)—wound up 18th and 19th, respectively, this time around.