Well, that’s all she wrote! The 2019 regular season is in the books.

Twenty-six of MAKB’s finest fished Long Pond and Little Long Pond in Plymouth today for our season closer. Many who pre-fished reported less than stellar results, lots of small fish, and…that’s pretty much how it played out today.

As always, we also ran some optional lunker pools. This time smallmouth and pickerel.

Valber Santos walked away with the pickerel cash. He thanks Mike Elrick—who caught a giant—for not opting into the pickerel pool.

Both smallie and largemouth lunker went to Gabe Portes, who had a 12.50 and 20.50, respectively. He thanks Kevin Amaral, Jr.—who caught a 14.75-inch smallie—for not opting into the smallie pool, and also Doug Savage for allowing his 15-inch smallmouth to flop off his board and back into the lake. Haha.

Most of us launched into Long Pond to start, while five or six, myself included, dropped into Little Long Pond. I had my first fish on the board at 7:03 AM, an 8-incher. Little did I know that I’d be intentionally hunting those a few hours later…

And I wasn’t the only one.

At some point Angelo David jumped over to Little Long Pond and quickly dropped five on the board, four of them dinks—and small dinks at that. But that was the name of the game today. Anchored by a 15-incher, his 50.50 pushed him up into fifth place for the day. Congrats!

Jared Meegan had a nearly identical limit—a 15, two 9s, and two 8s, same as Angelo—just with a few that were slightly bigger. With 51.50, he took fourth place and a little scratch in just his second tournament with us (his first was last year). Great job, man!

As I mentioned, my first fish came three minutes in. A few hours after that, struggling to find a limit, I went shallow and deliberately targeted the schools of tiny bass roaming the shallows. I quickly filled out my limit and started to upgrade, one measly quarter inch at a time—all 8- and 9-inchers. At noon, I switched sides and managed one small upgrade—an 11.75 smallie—to give me 59.25 on the day. Not impressive, but good enough for third place.

Kevin Amaral, Jr. had, I thought, one 8-inch bass when he and his pops, Kevin Amaral, jumped over to the big lake. But no, Kevin’s a sandbagger. Evil, basically. No one likes a sandbagger, Kevin! So out of nowhere, he rudely knocked me down to third, taking the second-place spot and holding it to the finish line. He had 62.50.

He is also unofficially the 2019 Angler of the Year! He’s not on Facebook, but he’s a good kid and a great angler, so if you’re on Tinder, congratulate him!

I will get the AOY standings updated soon and make everything official.

Now, remember what I said about sandbaggers? Did you know that I was in first place for a split second? At 11:38 AM I uploaded a whopper of a 9.50-inch bass, which put me in first place. As I was break dancing on the front deck of my kayak and screaming a la Mike Iaconelli, Kevin Jr. pedaled by and said, “Did you see that Gabe put up a twenty?”

Indeed he did. A 20.50, which he’d caught in the morning and held onto for the right moment, that perfect time to crush my dreams! Haha.

(Not sure why this got so goofy. Sorry!)

Seriously, though, that big bass made all the difference today. Without it, Gabe would have had 58.75 and third place, instead of 69 inches, first place, and lunker.

Congrats, bro! Two wins in a row! Kick ass.

Check out the standings here.

Thanks to everyone for coming out, as always, and for supporting this trail and group all season. It’s been great fun.

Thanks to Donald Davis, Bruce Levy, Mike Elrick, and everyone else who has helped out at these events. Especially Sarah Wood, our judge. The value of that seemingly small contribution is immeasurable.

As always, we will try to run a few more events, as long as interest is there, until it gets too cold. We want to try a team event before then, but first…OKTOBERFISH!

Absurd graphic courtesy of John Ferreira. Haha.

In two weeks, October 5th and 6th, we will run an online no-limit event. You pick one day to fish, Saturday or Sunday, 6 AM to 6 PM, any public body (or bodies) of water in the state of Massachusetts, as many fish over 12 inches you can catch in those 12 hours!

I’ll get the event uploaded to TourneyX soon! Who’s in?