Lucas Punkari
With Mark Raveling and Mike Luhman finally getting the monkey off their backs by winning the Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship on Saturday, it could be argued the moniker of the best team yet to win the tournament now belongs to Kenora’s Jeff Gustafson and Bemidji’s John Peterson.
The duo’s three-day weight of 50.55 pounds left them with a third-place showing in the final standings, marking the third time the duo had finished on the final step of the podium in their six years together.
“The fishing was a bit of a battle for us all weekend,” Gustafson admitted.
“We were in an area that had some big fish, and we were kind of focused on catching those big ones,” he noted.
“And while we had three of them today [Saturday], it would have been nice to have two more.
“We are happy with the finish, though, and we had another awesome week in Fort Frances, so I’m just disappointed that I have to go back home now afterwards,” Gustafson stressed.
Sitting in ninth place after Day 1 on Thursday with 16.63 pounds, Gustafson and Peterson reel in five fish Friday that tipped the scales at 18.23 pounds, allowing them to move up to third place heading into Day 3.
“On Thursday, the weather was obviously challenging, so we were lucky that we got five pretty good fish,” Gustafson explained.
“The way that we were fishing this week was in pretty shallow water, and nice weather helps a lot of with that.
“So when the weather Friday turned out to be really good, we had some pretty good expectations that we were going to have a good day, which we did,” he added.
Needing a weight of 16.98 pounds to take over the hot seat from eventual runner-ups Chad Johnson and John Janousek, Gustafson and Peterson’s five-fish total for Saturday came in at 15.69 pounds, which left them in third place overall.
“The weather was beautiful again today [Saturday] and we’re surprised that we didn’t catch as many fish for whatever reason,” Gustafson said.
“In our area that we were fishing in, we had four or five other boats around us,” he added. “And while everyone caught some fish, no one in that spot had a great day.
“That’s the part of the challenge and the fun about fishing in these tournament, though, as you never know what is going to happen.”
Finishing behind Gustafson and Peterson was the local pairing of Jim Sandelovich and Karl Howells. Their three-day weight of 50.06 pounds put them in fourth place, which topped a sixth-place showing they had two years ago.
“We’re really happy with that,” Howells smiled.
“We had a really good tournament where everything went our way, and in the end everything turned out really good,” he added.
Having started the tournament off with a 17.25-pound haul on Thursday that left them in fourth place, the local tandem slid down to ninth after Day 2 after catching 16 pounds.
“The first day for us was really good, but our second day was a little bit slower out there,” Howells conceded.
“We just didn’t get on the bigger fish that we had on Thursday, but it was still an all right day.”
Saturday, however, turned out to be a little bit better for the pair as their catch of 16.81 pounds moved them back up to fourth place in the standings, and gave them the title of the top local team in this year’s FFCBC.
“This was a really good day for us,” Howells enthused.
“After yesterday [Friday], I didn’t think that we would make it this high, but we didn’t feel any pressure out there and it turned out good.”
Rounding out the top five was the brother tandem of Leo and Ted Heyens, who finished with a weight of 50.05 pounds.
“We are very happy with this,” said Ted Heyens, who lives in Stratton.
“This is as good as we have ever done here, and this was the first time that we got to ride into the arena, so that was an awesome feeling for us,” he enthused.
“We could have done better, but we also could have done a whole lot worse.”
After kicking off the 2012 tournament with 15.37 pounds on Day 1, the Heyens’ jumped from 18th place to fifth following Friday’s weigh-in thanks to an impressive 18.27-pound catch.
“We were hoping to get around 15 pounds each day as our pre-fishing was not so great,” explained Leo Heyens, who is from Kenora.
“Day 1 was okay, but on Day 2 we tried a few different things with a couple of different spots, and that seemed to position us well for the last day,” he noted.
Like so many others who crossed the stage Saturday afternoon, the Heyens’ Day 3 weight of 16.41 wasn’t enough to knock Johnson and Janousek out of the lead.
But it was enough to give the brothers their first top-five finish since they started fishing the FFCBC back in 1997.
“We felt a little bit of pressure today, but not so much as we knew we would still have a top-15 finish,” Leo Heyens reasoned.
“We wanted to get some good fish so we worked away at our number-one spot all day, and we worked hard to get what we got, so we were happy with that,” he added.
Rounding out the top 10 in the championship flight were Scott Ourada/John Allen (50.02 pounds), Troy Norman/Jay Samsal (48.93), Darren Ward/Tony Holenko (48.89), Denis Barnard/Scott Gobeil (48.33), and Duane Peterson/Travis Peterson (48.17).
The Petersons caught the single biggest one-day total weight on Friday as their 20.58-pound bag rocketed them from 44th place to seventh in the standings heading into Day 3.
