Tension mounted at final weigh-in

While the other twosomes carried their fish across the stage to be weighed Sunday afternoon, the teams of Dave and Norm Lindsay, Frank and Terry McClymont, Mike Salvador and Ken Wright, Gary Lake and Randy Amenrud, and Rick Savage and Steven Green waited on the dock.
These five teams were the first out in the morning and had to return for weigh-in Sunday afternoon at 2:30–then sit waiting while the other 100 teams went ahead of them.
The sound system would carry across the water, the crowd would cheer and they would exchange glances with their partner to see if they had heard the weight.
For two hours they waited.
Frank McClymont, who had arrived first at the dock, occasionally would open his live well and peer in. He hoped he had 13 pounds of fish to stay in the running for the top prize.
“Normally, I’m light,” he said. “But today I might be heavy in wanting that first prize.
“I don’t know.”
Sunday had been a good day for fishing for the McClymonts.
“We caught a lot of culled fish,” they said, adding you could tell looking at their mouths. “It’s tough winning with culled fish.”
And sure enough, they would slip to ninth place at the end of the day.
Using Berkley power baits, the pair only had three fish in the boat by 9 a.m. Sunday.
“I don’t have the confidence in my crank baits and spinner baits on Rainy Lake,” Frank McClymont noted. “They work for me at the KBI but not here.
“If anyone was watching us fish today, they would think that we were fishing for walleye,” he added.
The Lindsays were next into the docks, followed by Mike Salvador and Ken Wright, who had brought in the big catch (20-plus pounds) and record single fish (a 5.11 pounder) on Saturday.
“We had our chance,” Salvador said, following a big cheer and an announcement from the tent of a new leader. “The fish was there and the line broke.”
That lost fish helped them slip from third to 11th place by the final weigh-in.
Gary Lake and Randy Amenrud, last year’s champs, were the first of the final five to pull their boat from the water and wait in the parking lot.
“I’m going to get a new scale as soon as I get back,” Amenrud commented. “We had three in the boat and we couldn’t get two similar readings.”
Although they had five fish in the boat by 8 a.m., using only “Husky Jerks” on Sunday, Lake said the bass were real slow biting.
“They would come up look at the lure, occasionally bump it, but just wouldn’t take them,” he said.
Thinking they had just under 13 pounds, when it was announced that Jim Moynagh and Joe Thrun had weighed in over 47 pounds as a three-day total, they knew they weren’t going to repeat as champs.
Rick Savage and Steve Green, who started Sunday in second place, found fishing difficult on the final day. They said the spots they used Saturday for fish had boats in them on Sunday, and they lost fish.
“It’s disappointing but that’s the nature of tournament fishing,” Savage noted.
They would end up in 13th place overall.
Meanwhile, the Lindsays, leading from Day One, waited on the dock. Anyone who came along was told the brothers thought they had about 13 pounds. And they were acting pretty subdued as each blast of cheers echoed across the marina.
Actually, the Lindsays knew they had the tournament in the bag upon reaching the dock but they were keeping the suspense up. They really had estimated their catch at 17 pounds.
And when they finally entered the tent, they were all smiles. And as the final two fish came out of their second live well, the crowd also realized the Lindsays were going to win the FFCBC for the second time in its three-year history.
Their weight for the day was 16.30 pounds, less than their estimate but enough to give them a three-day total weight of 51.32 pounds–almost 3.5 pounds more than their nearest rival and a new tournament record.
It will be the mark to shoot for next year.