Gold Medal at the Summer Corporate Games

It was Friday afternoon and I was looking forward to a quiet, relaxing weekend. As I started to save the documents that I had been working on, Seth from the Wellness Center approached me saying that someone had dropped out of the fishing competition for the Summer Corporate Games. We would have to forfeit unless we found one more person. Just then my phone rang. It read “Micro ID” on my caller ID. Just a minute Seth, I better take this call. Now Geremy was asking if I wanted to participate in the Corporate Games. When does it start? The boat needs to be ready to launch at Jordanelle Reservoir tomorrow morning by 6:00 AM.

At midnight, after shopping for the necessary fishing equipment, packing the car and taking my wife on a date, I set the alarm on my cell phone to go off at 3:45 AM. If I hurry I can eat a quick breakfast and make it to Geremy’s apartment by 4:45. He had planned on picking up the boat the night before, after the wedding he was attending up at Alta. I had printed the directions to the apartment the evening before so I would have no problems finding it in the dark. I took the exit off the highway and looked for Main Street. The map said turn left on Main Street. I couldn’t find it anywhere. After driving between 700 W and State Street a couple of times, I saw on the map that further down the road, 700 W was called Main Street. I finally made it to the apartment by 5:00. We better hurry.

Geremy and I arrived at the Jordanelle Reservoir right at 6:00. We paid the $10 park entrance fee and met our teammates Milton and Jordan. They are quite dedicated and actually went up the night before to camp, get their boat launched and check out the fishing. Geremy and I got signed in for the tournament, of course wearing our ARUP Corporate Games shirt and showing our ARUP Laboratory badges.

The format for the competition was: Four people per company team. Each team could keep eight fish. The winner is determined by the total weight of up to eight fish. The Utah fishing regulations applied: trout limit is four, bass limit is six. All bass over 12 inches must be immediately released.

We headed to the boat launch ramp. On the way I took pictures of a skunk raiding the picnic tables. Since we didn’t have a big power boat we stuck close to the dock, fishing along the shore between the dock and the dam. There were some nice bushes along the shore where we first started fishing. The Minn Kota battery-powered trolling motor was perfect for this. At first we tried yellow Fox spinners and didn’t have any luck. Then we tried Gary Yamamoto power bait jigs. These also didn’t yield any fish. Then we tried yellow Panther Martins, no luck. Well, how about a yellow curly-tail jig? Milton had mentioned that they had luck with the bass previous years with yellow spinners so I kept trying various yellow offerings. Bingo, I had a strike. The fish even stole the curly tail. I put on another one and sure enough. I caught a little smallmouth bass. By now we were near the rocks right before the dam. Maybe yellow curly tail jigs near the rocks is the ticket.

Within the next hour we caught a dozen small bass, enough to fulfill the eight-fish maximum. We let the smallest ones go. As we caught bigger ones, we would swap out the smaller ones and let them go. We got on the phone with Milton and Jordan. They had caught two trout and decided to meet up with us at the dam. As we met, they caught another bass. We pooled our catch together, keeping the biggest eight and again, letting the smallest go.

Just before heading back to the dock for weigh-in, I had a strike right at the surface as the curly tail hit the water. This fish was not one of those little ones I could just crank in. It took out line and went deep. This was the fish we were after. Even after a couple of minutes of fighting we still couldn’t see it. Finally we got it near the boat but then it would go under the boat and take out more line. The pole bent all the way into the water. Geremy grabbed the net and as I used the fish’s momentum to bring it near enough to the boat, Geremy netted it. What a beautiful fish! It measured 16 inches and weighed 2.5 pounds. Because the bass was over 12 inches long it had to be immediately released and didn’t count in the competition.

The ARUP Laboratories team took the gold medal. Not only was the aggregate weight of the team’s fish the largest, we were the only team to catch eight fish, and for that matter, the only team to catch more than one fish. Great performance team!!!