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DUCKS & BASS MAKE A FULL
WEEKEND
By: Ron Wilson
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This has been a typical weekend for me this
year! |
The reports I've been getting have painted
a pretty dismal duck hunting season to date. However, my trips have been
great compared to the reports I have been getting.
Last Saturday was a little cloudy and hazy
to start with, but my partners and I had some good shooting. By noon we
had knocked down a limit of mallards.
One of my partners said, "I never miss the
opening weekend of pheasant season, all the mallards that live in ponds on
private lands are kicked off by the pheasant hunters." This improves a
hunters chance of killing ducks, they have to have somewhere to go.
Sunday the birds were flying good. The
valley was fogged in making the sunny foothill ponds and waterways a prime
location for the ducks to be.
The birds were flying over the fog, heading
for sunshine areas that they could see. I don t think they like flying in
the fog any better than we like driving in it.
We must have had 50 ducks working the
decoys on the first flock that came in. When we opened up would you
believe only 3 mallards hit the water!
Terrible, just terrible. I have never seen
us shoot that bad. It wasn't just one of us, it seemed like we all were
off.
The ducks were just not cooperating like
they usually do. They were so spooky, they just wouldn't decoy in like
they're supposed to! They would set down out of range, or one or two would
come in and just as the rest of the bunch would start to come in they
would flush and leave us wondering what the heck happened.
It was fun to watch and participate in but
losing a half dozen mallards in the tules is a waste of game, something that we
don't like at all. We like to put the ducks on the straps and get home
early enough to watch some football, sometimes with our eyelids shut.
By 9 a.m. we were limited on mallards. My
shooting was horrible as I think I would shoot a duck at least twice
before I brought him down and the longest shot was 40 yards! I guess I was
just hitting the ducks with the edge of the pattern. I know in the last
few weeks when I nailed them at the same range feathers would fly!
Oh well another great weekend of duck
hunting was over and by 11 a.m. the birds were cleaned.
I called my cousin Blaine to see if he had been fishing over the weekend
and he said none of my friends had called to take him to the private
fishing club we belong to! He said he hadn't heard from Everet Beckner,
who after retiring from the Modesto Bee has got a job checking nuts or Al
Autry who has been busy chasing quail, stripers and salmon or my webmaster
Tim Paes who seems to have his plate overloaded even at this time of
year!. I said how would you like to get some afternoon fishing in and he
said ok I will be there in 30 minutes!
Around 1:30 p.m. we had the boat in the
water and were fishing at the club. I used a Keeper brown and green senko
and was quickly rewarded with a fish that grabbed the bait and took off
with it! I lifted the rod and the fish ran sideways for about 20 feet and
then spit the bait. "Darn maybe I should have set the hook," I thought to
myself. I threw the bait out again and a fish did me the same way again. "Hummmm,"
I thought to myself, "I am having one of them days, can't shoot and it
seems that I am not doing that much better at fishing!" I picked up a
stiffer rod and the next bite I almost jerked the poor fishes head off!
"One in the boat," I said to my cousin who
was busy fighting his first fish of the day. We traveled on down the lake
and ran into a father and son coming up the bank. "Any luck," I asked. The
son close to 60 said, "my biggest was a 3 pounder on a fly that resembles
a minnow,"
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Blaine with a nice pond lunker. |
I don t think he believed me when I said,
"we've got a dozen so far in about 30 minutes of fishing, but nothing of
size." I pointed to an old oak that was in all its fall coloring and said,
"right in front of that oak there is a nice school of fish." They were
there when Ron Fisher and I sat there a few weeks ago and caught 40 fish
casting in a circle around the boat!
We moved on down to the dam covering water
way to fast but we didn't t have the time to pick the area apart like
usual. I dumped a couple more fish and landed one in the 5 pound class and
dumped a few while Blaine picked up a couple more.
"The fish seem scarce and have really
slowed down in the lower end," said Blaine, "but the quality is much
better."
I hurried back to where the fish were
biting and we soon were hooking up doubles and laughing.
The last couple of years has taught my
cousin how fun catch and release can be. Instead of catching five bass,
killing them and going home, now he likes catching 10, 20 or 50 and
turning them loose to be caught again.
They will be there when you return and you
don t have to clean them. I had done all the cleaning I wanted to with the
ducks. That's the only thing I hate about hunting, once you make up your
mind to pull the trigger it's a done deal, of course if you can hit em!
How did we do, we caught and released 41
bass in a little over 3 hours of fishing! |
