The far side of the weigh-in

While most eyes were on the weigh-ins under the tent Saturday afternoon, it was equally as intense out on the docks.
The top-8 teams were tight-lipped as they talked about their day, eyeing the bags other people were bringing up the dock, careful not to let anything slip.
“We have five little pigs today,” was Joe Thrun’s cryptic message when he and partner Jim Moynagh were docked outside.
Clint Barton didn’t mind sharing part of his day.
“We had a slow morning,” he said. “The TSN cameras were on us . . . and we couldn’t catch a single fish!”
Phil Killeen and Alex Keszler also had an interesting morning.
“The last two mornings in a row, before we went a quarter-mile, we’d each lost two pairs of sunglasses,” Killeen said. “We’ve lost a pair of shoes, two rods . . . we must have lost some quality stuff.”
“I had nine rods, Phil had six; together, we had 15 rods,” Keszler began, referring to that morning. He described how two rods snapped over the course of the day when the teammates carelessly leaned on them in the boat. “We killed two of them!”
“No wonder,” Keszler mused, laughing. “We had 13. Unlucky 13.”
But the atmosphere on the docks wasn’t all light as the sixteen fishermen waited nearly two hours to bring their fish in, listening to the weights called out from the tent. There was a noticeable tension in the air.
“We aged 15 years out there today,” Ted Krause said, his face burned by days in the sun fishing with his teammate Jimmy Bell.
Frank McClymont, partnered with his son Terry, looked back on the day. He said he knew what went wrong.
“You have to be open to chance when it’s not working,” he started. “Try something new from your bag of tricks.
“The best fish came in the afternoon all week long. Today they didn’t. Perhaps we should have tried a different structure, different things. . . I think today we’ve got nine or 10 pounds in total. Maybe not even 10.
“That’s how things can change. It changed for us, anyway.
“Overall, we’re feeling good, overall. We were disappointed today–not necessarily with our performance. We were disappointed with how the fish performed today, not on our performance,” he added.
“If we’re in this line here, we all did good. Now the weight goes in to see how things check out,” said Al Lindner.
His son and partner, Jim Lindner, was hopeful.
“I know we’ve caught more big fish than ever,” he said. “We’ve had a four-pounder every day.”
Norm Lindsay and Jess Swenson shared his enthusiasm.
“It went really good,” Lindsay said. “It went great. We had a fabulous time. We didn’t lose any big fish through the whole tournament. It’s not often you can look back and say that.”
Win or lose, most of the anxious fishermen seemed to be proud just to be driving under the tent.
“It’s quite a thrill–this is the first time going under the tent,” said Bruce Ness, partnered with Brad Carlson.
“Our goal when we came was to be driven through the tent,” Krause reflected. “That was the goal. We’ve achieved that goal. That’s gotta feel pretty good.”
“We’ve exceeded ourselves,” Denis Barnard said enthusiastically. “Now we’re going through the tent instead of standing outside–we’re going through. We got the chance to run with the big dogs, it’s very exciting.” He chuckled. “You got a lot of respect.”