OCAA anglers entered in the July 26th Bass Tournament will remember this tournament for years to come. They will remember the extreme weather conditions rather than the weigh-in results. Given the rainy summer this year, anglers came prepared with their rain gear when there was a forecast for possible thunderstorms. Little did we know, this would be the mother of all thunderstorms on Rice Lake this year. It was a major storm coming straight through Rice Lake. I would have to rank this day as one of my most scariest days of fishing. I have experienced hail, high wind and high waves on Lake Erie. I have experienced high wind and sleet on Rice Lake. The thunder, lightning and intense downpour today tops all the previous days of bad weather.

About 2 hours into the tournament, dark clouds rolled in and blanketed the western end of Rice Lake. Thunder and lightning was occurring in the distance on the north shore. We kept a constant watch on the clouds. The thunder was occurring in greater frequency. Flashes of lightning caught our attention. The light rain turned into an extreme downpour in seconds. We had to stop fishing when the thunder could be heard directly above us. Since we were too far from Bewdley, we ended up docking the boat at a private cottage where we joined another team in tournament getting shelter under a porch deck. The rain fall, lasting at least 1 hour, was so intense that the ground was turned into little lakes. When the thunder and lightning subsided, we resumed fishing. The other team was fishing out of a rental boat and had to bail out all the water that had accumulated in the transom. I heard other boats returned to Bewdley and waited for the storm to end. Unlike previous downpours this summer lasting 15 minutes, there were multiple occurances of downpours during the tournament.

The storm passing through Rice Lake definitely made fishing difficult. I hear most anglers caught their fish before the thunder and lightning started. Durning the downpour, it appeared nobody caught fish, but that may be because they stopped fishing with the lightning. I didn't hear anybody mention about them catching fish after the rain finally stopped for the day. The sun finally made its first appearance of the day at the 4:00pm weigh-in. It was definitely a challenging day of fishing.