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BREAKING
IN AND CATCHING FISH!
By: Ron Wilson
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Tim with his trash
pile bass! |
April 22, 2004.... The
black bass bite at
Lake McClure and
Lake Don Pedro has been red hot, making it hard to go to another lake
to play for the day. But that’s exactly what Webmaster and Black Bass
Fishing Pro Tim Paes and I did last Saturday.
We headed up to
New Melones
to see what kind of bite we could find. The outing was basically to break
in Tim’s new 20 foot
Stratos Bass Boat.
We watched the Turlock
Fire Department tournament blasting off as we launched the boat. Tim fired
up his new 225
Evinrude
and we headed to Mormon Creek.
Tim was dressed for bad
weather. It was supposed to be 38 degrees and raining, but you’d think it
was snowing by the way he was dressed!
I had a t-shirt and
windbreaker along with some excess fat to keep me warm. I have a hard time
believing our weather forecasters anymore. They look at a cloud front
coming in and start predicting all kinds of stuff. Most of the time they
miss there predictions big time!
I love the ride of the
Stratos Boats, nice and smooth especially if you have a skilled driver at
the helm.
Tim eased of the throttle
on the big Evinrude brought the Stratos of plane as we arrived at our
first spot. I told him, “I found that 38 degrees, it’s in my cheeks from
the chill of the ride!”
We started fishing and
missing fish right away. Heck, I had one walk off with my bait while Tim
was rigging up.
Tim rigged up a jig and
Super Pork combo
and we headed down the bank working our baits through the brush. We’d miss
a fish every 10 to 20 feet as we traveled down the bank. We thought they
were small fish until I nailed one and it wrapped me up and I couldn’t
tell exactly how big it was.
We finally got a couple to
the boat, but they were small ones. We decided to leave and head south to
Bear Creek. We wasted a little more time there with just a couple small
spots to show for our efforts.
We moved further south
with about the same success. By then I told Tim, “I’m done messing around,
it’s after 11:00 a.m. and time to get busy!”
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A
nice chunky Melones Spot! |
I threw out a
Keeper
1001B with a purple darthead and was rewarded with a spotted bass. As I
reeled in the fish Tim’s cell phone started ringing. While he was talking
on the phone I caught a largemouth then another spot. Then I heard Tim
say, “I’ve got to get off the phone and get to fishing, Wilson is kicking
my butt!”
We moved towards the back
of a wind blown cove that was loaded with garbage. Tim exclaimed, “I’m
going to catch a nice fish out of that trash pile!” He pitched his pig
and jig into the trash, the line twitched and the next thing I see is his
St Croix flippin
stick bowed up and a 3 pounder skiing towards the boat! He was right it
was a nice one.
We went driving up river,
putting some hours on the boat and looking the lake over. Tim stopped the
boat on a point and we started working our way down the bank.
I looked over at a
secondary point and said, “When we get to that next point, I’m going to
catch a nice fish.”
We worked our way to the
point as I pitched out my trusty 1001B worm. I felt a tick as the bait
dropped off a rock; I set the hook and was rewarded with a spot close to 3
pounds.
A short time later, I had
another spot in the 3 pound class eat my bait. We continued down the bank
and for the next 200 feet, we were rewarded with several more fish.
Tim looked at me and said,
“You know Ron, we could have been doing this all day and saved a lot of
running around. I gave him a quizzical look as he said, “Our best fish
have been right where we said they were going to be, we should be
listening to what our gut has been telling us!”
I told Tim all the
motherlode lakes are the same right now, the fish are in bunches, but the
bunches are scattered. When you find them, they can be caught, but when
you quite catching them, you’d better go find another bunch!
We had a great day on the
water; we caught lots of fish and put a few hours on Tim’s new Evinrude. I
was curios about the break-in on these new high powered outboards and had
Tim give me the breakdown.
It actually doesn’t take
as long as the old outboards used to. The first 10 minutes are at fast
idle in gear then the next 50 minutes are at 3500 RPM’s or less. The
second hour is at ¾ throttle with an occasional burst at wide open
throttle. After that the next 8 hours can be ran at wide open throttle for
short periods with intermittent changes in speed. After that she’s ready
to rock and roll! |
