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FIGHTIN' THE WIND &
CATCHING FISH!
By: Ron Wilson
May 13, 2010.... Darn weather, I figured
out the Striped Bass and how to catch them and the wind starts blowing
day after day keeping me off the water.
What I found before someone turned on the
wind machine was that I could work the baits up a sandbar from 12
feet of water and the linesides were hanging in the 8 foot of water
section on the sand bar. Harold and I left Bruno's and headed out to the
bedroom for nada, next we trolled the new run, no luck there and we were
marking very few fish. As the tide was on the outgo we figured maybe the
patio would hold a few fish. We trolled it and the graph said nobody was
home.
We then made the run to Peacock where we
managed a shaker from a pod of fish that on the graph looked like it
held a decent female but we couldn't get any of them to take our lures.
Next stop was the barges in front of
Eddo's and we made a run from the deep water channel down to the East
entrance with no love. Lost a good fish near the first barge and then
headed back to the snag out in front of Eddo's and the sandbar it sits
on. As I worked the sandbar holes Harold nailed a 16 pounder in 8 feet
of water. Finally got a decent one in the box.
We worked our way back upstream as the
tide slowed for no love until we got to Santa Clara Shoals where Harold
finished his limit with one over 12 pounds. It was on the same pattern
as I drove the boat up the sandbar shelf from 12 to 5 feet of water and
zig zagged back off it when she hit. The second keeper fish made our day
and we headed for home trying to beat the 5 o'clock traffic.
Dr. Quen Young came over for a few days
R&R this week. We headed to
lake Don Pedro where it had came up a good 10 feet plus in just
over a week. The bass I was on seemed to have stayed where they were but
a few Smallies wanted to play so we obliged them until the wind came up
early so we loaded the boat and headed to a private pond near
Angels Camp.
 Doc
loves this place as he gets up and close to mother nature and there is
always action to be had there. A crappie here a bass over there, a
Osprey diving in to catch a fish for him and his mate who is in the
nest, honkers flying and lighting up high in the oak and pine trees near
the water, swans and there cygnet
dabbling along the shallow waters eating weeds and pairs of honkers
with there young scampering up the shoreline eating bugs and grass. For
someone who loves mother nature like Doc does its just a wonderful place
to fish. Of course the catching part of the outing is what its all
about, Doc could take it or leave it but to me going fishing is catching
and I don't like just fishing.We had 14 bass for the day.
The next day of R&R for the doc started
at daylight with bass after bass and we had a dozen fish boated in the
first hour. We would catch a bass it would tear part of the Wright Bait
6 inch worms we were using and would bite off a piece of the worm and
catch another one. We soon found out that when we got the bait down to 4
inches the crappy started eating the bait by the time we left at 1 p.m.
we had over 30 bass and a dozen crappie that we had boated. Doc and I
were getting tired so we called it a day.
On Wednesday Doc had to
head for home in
the evening so we headed to Lake Don Pedro again for some bass'n! We
arrived at day break and headed into middle bay and hit some rock walls.
The fish were biting funny and I watched Doc miss a couple while I was
doing the same. I figured the bite out and started nailing largemouth,
spotted, and smallies all in the same area. These spotted bass that were
transplanted there by a bass club are slowly taking over quite a bit of
territory of the lake. Don't get me wrong I like catching them as they
are so aggressive but I think someone made a bad mistake here.
We made a move toward Jenkins Hill and a
rock pile and We started boating fish. Nothing like a 7 pounder to get
the juices flowing. The started picking up so I moved the boat to the
Jenkins Hill point where the wind was blowing into it and the bass were
on the chop. The wind was making a current and the bass were moving up
shallow feeding.
After working the area over and the wind
now making white caps on the water I moved across the bay to another
point where the wind would push me down the edge of a major point and it
was game on. The fish were chomping and on the first 200 plus foot drift
there were 10 bass boated. Next drift 5 more came to the boat and the
next drift another 5 made the same mistake. All the fish were caught on
Wright Baits WB003 6 inch straight tail worms. Its a crawdad pattern
bait and when we got home at noon and cleaned the fish we found out
that they were eating crawdads. |
