Crackle Cup Bass Tournament and Lake Simcoe Do It Again!
NEW CANADIAN RECORD!

Jayson Saliba, Bob Formosa – the team that caught the fish
and Crackle founder and president – Des Barnes to the right.

29.59 POUNDS FOR FIVE BASS!

Gilford, Ontario Canada, 2003-10-25 … Lake Simcoe, one hour north of Canada’s largest city of Toronto, has once again rocked the bass fishing world by smashing last year’s record setting Canadian tournament winning weight of 27.1 pounds by producing a mind boggling bag of five smallmouth bass that tipped the scales at a whopping 29.59 pounds. Not only that, but the gorgeous bag of sickingly overweight smallmouth were caught at the same Crackle Cup Tournament by the same two anglers who won last year’s event with over 27 pounds.

The team of Jayson Saliba from Windsor and Bob Formosa of Toronto caught their record setting smallmouth bass in 20-35 feet of water by doing what most avid fall smallmouth bass anglers do - dragging and throwing tube jigs.  The difference is that somehow the dynamic duo has the uncanny ability to entice copious quantities of bass over five pounds … instead of being “plagued” with those smaller four pound “dinks” like the rest of the field. The runner’s up, Mike Lemoine and Curt Arnst, on the other hand threw Rapala Husky Jerks in nearly the same depths of waters. They revealed that the key to getting bit was to allow the suspending bait to just sit there and the bass would quietly slurp the hard-bodied bait in.

“This 29.59 pound bag is really something incredible,” said Crackle founder and president Des Barnes a lifetime member of the Aurora Bassmasters, “It reinforces the claim we made last year when we said that Simcoe is the finest smallmouth lake in North America. In fact, it probably has more trophy smallmouth over five pounds than any other lake on the planet! If you compare our Canadian tournament weights with those from south of the border it becomes apparent that our lakes and the tournament weights they produce, can rival almost any on the continent,” Barnes concluded.  To show that there are more than just one big bag of bass swimming in Simcoe, check out these weights of the five top teams in this years’ Crackle Cup:
 

Most of the teams who fished this event ran north of Cooks Bay for smallmouth bass, braving high southeast winds to fish the lakes’ islands, shoals and submerged humps in water ranging from 15-35 feet deep.

The 3rd Annual Crackle* Cup is hosted by the Aurora Bassmaster Club which is one of about 25 clubs belonging to the Ontario BASS Federation. All bass caught during the Crackle Cup were weighed on EQUALIZER® Scales and live-released back into the cold (50 Degree F.)  waters of Lake Simcoe.

*Crackle is a small gel-coated capsule filled with freeze-dried crystals that emit an enticing sound once it comes into contact with water.  Typically, anglers insert a Crackle capsule into their tube-jigs … believing that the sound produced is not unlike that of a crayfish as it scurries across the bottom.