Editor's Note: Rangers reliever Darren O'Day talks about what he and some of his teammates did during their off days on the recent road trip. Get your rod and reel ready.

We just returned from a 10-day road trip in KC, Minnesota, and Chicago. It was odd scheduling, but we had three days off while on the road.

On our first off day we had our meeting with all parties involved with the sale of the team. That was definitely my most official business day off. The second one, in Minnesota, was my most Bill Dance approved day off. The third, a Memorial day barbeque in Chicago with extended family, involved the most grilled meat products. Today I will focus on the second one, seeing as the O'Day/Odachowski BBQ needs a blog of it's own.

About a month and a half ago Dustin Nippert, our team outdoorsman, started asking around if anyone wanted to go fishing during our downtime in Minneapolis. What started as a small excursion turned into what I have anointed as the first annual Texas Rangers fishing tournament. Thanks to his persistence, we finalized with 13 fisherman in six guided boats on Lake Minnetonka. We were fishing for walleye, pike, small and largemouth bass, crappie, and whatever we could foul hook.

The teams were as follows:

Nippert/O'Day
Ray/ Feliz
Francisco/Oliver
Treanor/Lewis
Smoak/Holland/Borbon
Hawkins (Bullpen Coach)/Frasier (bullpen catcher)

Team Nippert was voted the early favorite to be mistaken for real fisherman, based solely on Nippert's attire. Team Ray was the wild card of the bunch, no one knew what to expect from those two. Team Francisco was the favorite to complain so much, the fish jumped into their boat just to make it stop. Team Treanor was the favorite to win the tube sock competion. No kidding, they both independently wore old man tube socks fishing. Must be a Cali thing. Team Smoak was the favorite to have a drowning victim. There were three in a boat and it was Derek's second fishing trip of his life, and we weren't sure about his swimming ability. Hence, the floaties he wore all day. Lastly, team Hawkins was the favorite to actually catch the most fish.

After all the time spent organizing and smack talking, we completely failed to establish a firm set of rules. We tried to go with total length of fish caught. Well, some teams took pictures of their fish on the measuring board, some just took pictures holding them, some just kept a "tally" on the honor system, and others gave up on fishing and went to eat and have a drink at a lakeside bar. That's right, the team of Oliver and Francisco gave up on fishing and made their guide take them to dinner. To be honest, I don't blame them, as they got completely shut out on the lake. Zero fish. In six hours. That is hard to do.

Everyone else actually did pretty well, which makes the blanking even more remarkable. Because of the confusion, no winner was decided, but a loser surely was. Next year, the rules will be agreed upon before the event, and I'm sure we will have as much fun in 2011 as we did this year.