|
YOU NEED TO DO YOUR
HOMEWORK!
By: Ron Wilson
February 23, 2006....
Nor-Cal Bass held its 2nd Pro-Am Tournament of the
year recently at New Melones Reservoir. My day started off bad as I
slipped off the back of a boat and pulled a muscle.
Pro George Azevedo and I were paired together.
George took 2nd place at the first event of the year at Lake McClure.
Even though he had a broken trolling motor I felt I had gotten a good
draw.
Blast off came and we headed toward Angles
Creek and then stopped at an Island before we got there. "You catch any
fish here", I asked. "Nope I didn’t have time to do any pre-fishing,
I've been to busy selling real estate", he said. I began to worry a
little at this point.
He spinnerbaited and threw a swim bait with no
luck. When he got at the other end of the island he used a pig and jig
off the point to catch a small spotted bass. I thought, "all right we
got the skunk off the boat."
George then headed over to a cove and we
worked the wood and brush and then started down a rocky bank. I
put a spot in the boat about 2 pounds and then missed 4 fish in a row
using a Keepers 082 red, green and blue
flake bait. I told George I had figured them out, the fish were on the
beds and we could catch them a little later with no problem.
George worked on down the bank and pretty soon
I hear a splash and a flushing of water from the front of the boat as
the trolling motor hit the water. O' Boy my worries returned!
George picked it up and said a screw came out.
He screwed the trolling motor back together so we could continue down
the bank looking for fish.
At 11:00 a.m., with time running out, I told
George, "I really think your lack of prefish has made it tough for you
to know what the fish are doing". I asked him to take me to a spot I
knew down past the dam. It had rock shelves that would be holding fish
like the spot we had left earlier.
When George pulled up at the spillway I about
came unglued. I told him the dam was about a mile or so
further south and I wanted to go past that to a spot I knew would be
holding fish. I finally got him headed down to where I wanted to go and
before long George was saying look at those fish down there I can see
them!
I dartheaded a couple keeper fish and then
used a weightless worm for another one. I then used a Keeper Senko to
nail a spot in the 2 ½ pound range.
I had a hard time getting George to get away
from the non-eating fish he was looking at. I told him that we should go
back to a cove where we saw a 5 pounder roaming around. I had a couple
ideas I wanted to try to get him to eat. I had fooled some heavily
worked fish already with this technique.
George didn’t want to leave the area. He
finally caught another small spot that didn’t help us and then it was
getting close weigh-in time. The big engine had been coughing and
sputtering every time he tried to take off and I was wondering if we
would even make it back to weigh-in.
By 3:00 p.m. we had arrived back near the
marina. By this time I had given up and was more than ready to call it a
day.
A couple friends of mine chewed me out for
keeping George in the top 10 but what they forgot is that we were in the
same boat and if we didn’t weigh in a limit I wouldn’t have been in the
top 20 where I at least hope to be at the end of the year.
I couldn’t help but wonder how George felt
with me firing a dart head by his head while he was throwing a
spinnerbait, crankbait or swim bait during the day, but I knew what the
fish were doing and what I had to do in order to put them in the boat.
To me catching is what fishing is all about!
 Well
the following weekend it was get even with the bass time as I took Ron
Fisher a fellow Crossett Fishing Club member to the clubs private ponds
to catch a few bass.
Ron had been using rattle traps to catch them
but they were not having any part of it last Saturday. I think maybe the
snow and rain falling off and on, and the water temperature dropping
might have had something to do with that bite dieing. I used a darthead
with a Keeper 082 6" inch worm with a chartreuse tail and started
catching fish.
In one honey hole I threw out 7 times and
caught 7 fish, boy were they on the bite! I then went over them and Ron
dragged a 4 inch black and blue senko to catch a couple more fish from
it before I moved on.
I turned around and we hammered them again for
another half dozen fish with Ron nailing a 4 pounder before
the rain and cold got to us. We headed back to the truck to warm up and
eat a bite of lunch.
After lunch we added a layer of cloths and
went back after them. We started catching more bass but when the wind
changed directions and started blowing snow clouds back over us it was
time to leave! By the time we got everything ship shape the flakes were
falling again! Total for the day was 32 and 20, a 52 fish day, not bad
for this time of year I guess.
Monday Norval Pimentel and I arrived at the pond a little after 10:00
a.m. Great weather, nice and sunny, but the fish had lock jaw. Areas
where I had nailed them on Saturday just wouldn't produce. It was a pick
up one here and there day. While the numbers were not the same, the
quality was better as the fish were all 2 pounds and up. Total for
Monday was 11 and 9, a tough day on the pond but some nice fish that
made the day.
The geese were paired up getting ready to
nest, the honkers were not in the big pine tree nesting yet and they
may not as a mature bald Eagle was perched on one of the big branches
near the nest. Norval thought he saw a white head in the nest. To high
for the darn geese anyway, I thought but we will see what happens in a
couple weeks.
Something new at the pond this year is a white
goose the size of a honker that resembles a honker but has a
yellow bill and feet but the wings are gray like the goose was the
results of cross breeding. Its mate is a full fledge 15 pound Canadian
Honker, I don’t know who is who but their chicks should be interesting
to see if they have a successful hatch. |
