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NIGHT TOURNAMENTS CAN BE GRUELING

By: Ron Wilson

June 5, 2003.... Night black bass Tournaments, while they are nice to fish without all the heat that we have during the day, the one thing that I hate about them is that they ruin the weekend. Instead of two days of playing in the outdoors a night tournament angler is limited to one grueling night of fishing!

Last Saturday evening I fished one of those weekend destroyers. I was at lake Don Pedro fishing the annual Nor-Cal Bass night team tournament.

I paired up with Norval Pimentel, of Modesto, to fish the event. We also ended up doing the boat checks, which amounted to some checking and lots of visiting. It sure was nice to see a lot of old fishing friends there. I got a surprise when Professional Black Bass Angler Mike Reynolds of Modesto showed up to fish the tournament.

I took a little time to talk to Mike about his latest feat of making the Bassmaster Classic. Mike said he did real good this year and managed to win $36,000 dollars. I said "well Mike you just about broke even then". I don't think Mike liked that but when he started to tally in his head the $18,000 in entry fees and all the nights he had to pay for lodging and then adding the food bills to that, he said, "you know Ron you might be right, I'll have to check my bank book on that one".

With his great success this year fishing the pro tour and coming in second in the CITGO Rookie of the year race, I am sure his entry fees will be picked up next year with sponsorships.

Mike said, "my goal this year is to take the last place finish from my last Classic and turn it around into a first place finish this time". If he does, he won't have to worry about spending money for awhile as the sponsors will be beating on his door for him to represent them in the sport he loves. 

Forty-four boats checked in, and while they were waiting near the boy line for blast off they were treated to a flash show by a young lady who was overjoyed with her day of being in the great outdoors. Many of the anglers were overjoyed also!

Blast off came and Norval headed to the underwater hump near Buzzard Island. He soon had fish number one in the boat, which he caught on a Senko. Norval soon caught his second fish, but it was short of the 13" minimum length. When I picked up on my rod, I found that a fish had ate the Predator Purple Ghost bait that was laying on the bottom. This would be number two for the livewell. We caught a few more fish but nothing to put in the livewell so we left and headed up Big Creek to a rock pile.

I caught a spotted bass and showed it to Norval. He confirmed what I had caught and said "I sure hate to see them get started in this lake"!

Norval went down the bank and soon had fish number 3 for the livewell. When I looked down in the clear water to net this beauty I thought it was our 5 pound kicker we would need to separate us from the rest of the pack as all I could see was mouth and gut as the fish came up from the depths. Once in the net I could see that the fish was short and fat like a football. In the 3 pound class but not the fish we needed to make any money!

Dusk came and Norval moved the boat to the mouth of second bay and we quickly had our 5 fish limit in the
boat. Now we needed mister BIG, one of those in the 8 to 10 pound class.

Norval then headed over to Ramos Creek where we caught 7 bass off one rocky point including another in the 3 pound class. This made for a nice limit, but we were still lacking that one fish needed to separate us from the middle of the pack.

Daybreak came and we headed into the Waterford Hole area, where we fished some underwater hill tops that had been holding some nice fish in the 6 to 10 pound class. However, if they were there someone had already picked them up during the night, because we got no bites and the depth finder showed that nobody was home.

While we caught a good 20 plus keepers we just couldn't get the right bites. Norval used Senko's and jigs along with curl tail worms to make his catches while I dartheaded watermelon red brush hogs and purple ghost worms to make my catches.

We tried lots of other baits but the fish didn't seem to want to eat them. We ended up with around 12 pounds and the money went down to 13 pounds. We were just one bite away, but then that's the case in any tournament, you have to get that big fish bite before you can hope to pick up a check!

For more information check out the Nor-Cal website at www.nor-calbass.com.