LARYSA SWYTLIK: A FIRST FOR EVERYTHING
UNLEASH THE
BEASTS
scream “Holy sh*t, huge pike!”, but then started freaking out because we realised there was no steel wire on his set up! We didn’t want the pike’s teeth to cut the line, which was a high possibility without the steel leader. I quickly grab the net and Patrick’s yelling at
me, “Don’t mess this up, you are only going to get one chance at this!” The pressure is on! He brought the pike up, I leaned over as far as I could and scooped up the pike’s head into the net, but the fish didn’t fit! At that moment I realised I had leaned over too far and lost my balance, heading straight for the water. I didn’t care! I had part of the pike in the net. Patrick saw me going and quickly grabbed my belt and pulled me back in the boat along with the pike in the net I clenched onto. We couldn’t help but start celebrating right away screaming our heads off! Patrick’s first pike measured 97cm and we were happy to get that fish logged in! After our mini- celebration it was back to fishing. We hit another spot and in about 15 minutes
of working down a ledge Patrick hooks up on a small zander, but it counts, so now we were maxed out! Now it was time to look for perch. We found some rocks and decided to try
fishing for perch like we would for bass. We know they hang out in shallow water so I started throwing a Livingston Lure wake bait into the rocks and reeling it in while we drifted down the rocks. Bam! A perch hit it. I brought it in to measure and take a photo then straight back to fishing. Five minutes later another one hit and this time it was bigger. Then I hooked another one and Patrick hooked his first. We did two drifts near those rocks and caught three perch each drift helping us upgrade to our three biggest perch! We were maxed out by 2 pm on an area we never fished! We went into it blind, but with some local knowledge and applying our fishing experience and skills, Team USA maxed out day one. We spent the rest of the day trying to upgrade our zander but didn’t get another bite. We ended in 3rd place after day one! So many people came up to us after that day
saying they were shocked how well we fished and they were surprised we even caught fish! And then they would just say it’s all going to change and that was only day one. Those comments were just fuel to the fire.
It felt good to show the rest of the competitors that Team USA came here to fish and we were serious about it!
Day Two
We felt good going into day two because it was the section we spent most of our time practicing. We went straight to a zander spot we found
our first day of practice – a nice hole in that area holding zander. I ended up hooking a huge zander, but was really nervous about bringing it in when I saw how big it was. I didn’t want to lose it. We got it safely in the boat having caught our first fish in less than 15 minutes of the start of the tournament. After more passes on that spot, Patrick caught two more zander – maxed out on zander in less than an hour! We moved right onto perch. We worked an
area and could see them but kept missing them. Patrick told me to cast in that direction and I end up hooking a decent one. We kept working the area but couldn’t get them to bite in the bright sun so we made a change and went to a spot
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