November 27, 2006.... Happy Turkey Day, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. This will be my last article until next year. I haven’t been writing to many stories lately because my hand is almost constantly in pain. I will be having surgery on it in a couple weeks. This will put me out of commission for several weeks so I hope your up coming holidays are happy ones!

I recently fish the Nor-Cal  Pro-Am Championship that was held at New Melones Reservoir. I could not have picked a better pair of pros to fish the event with.

On day one I fished with Bruce Wallace. We blasted off and headed through the rain toward an island top near the Black Bart area. The crankbait and spinnerbait fish he had going there weren't biting, but we did manage to boat a couple 2 pound spots off it, that got the skunk off the boat.

We headed back in Angels Arm Cove but we never got a nibble there. Next stop was up river past the bridge on the right hand bank of the lake where Bruce and I caught bass after bass but the 3 pounder's he had been catching were nowhere to be found. I tried dart heads shallow and deep while Bruce threw a white spinner bait and also tossed a swim bait but we just could not get the big bite we needed to separate us from the rest of the field.

I really had fun fishing with Bruce even though the weather was lousy. I loved the way he had fixed up his Champion boat. He had re-carpeted it and also while he was at it he lowered the seats about 4 inches so that
when you were traveling it was like you were Riding in a sports car.

At the weigh in Bruce and I with our 11 plus pounds and the rest of the fishermen found out that we had a big mountain to climb as Joe Bruce and his partner George Broekema had a 5 fish 38.88 pound bag at the day one weigh in!

My partner for day 2 was Alex Niapas, I could tell by Alex’s rods and reels that he was also a big bass specialist. When you look in the boat and see  3 rods with swim baits and 3 rods with jerk baits on the deck of his Bass Cat bass boat you know this pro is serious about trying to put a big hawg on board.

We blasted off and headed up river past the bridge and to a road bed on the right hand side of the lake. Alex tossed out a white spook and a 3 pound largemouth ate it! He followed that up with a couple spotted bass on a jerk bait and then it was time to move. I had two short bites on worms and missed them both.

Alex’s next bite was a blow up that sounded like somebody pushed a wash tub underwater, but the fish missed the bait completely.

Next move was across the lake to the right hand side. I told Alex I caught a couple fish off the large rocks the day before. I guess no other bass moved in and the others were still sore mouthed as we had no takers there.

Alex moved the boat down the bank and we would catch a fish here and there gradually upgrading our limit and by 10 a.m. we had at least 11 pounds in the livewell. Alex then started going point to point looking for that one big bite that could put him in the money. While we knew 1st and probably 2nd place money was out of reach, we still were shooting for maybe a 3rd or 4th in the event and that would also pay us some greenbacks. We threw and moved and threw some more but it was not meant to be as we just didn’t get that big bite we were hoping for.

I could not have picked a better pair of professional bass anglers to fish with in a tournament and I squeaked into 4th place money to boot!

With the season over all I can do now is hope to be healed up in time to fish the first Nor-Cal Tournament of 2007 at Lake McClure on January 6th.