Saturday Morning Out on the Delta

My good friend and fishing buddy Brian told me he and his family were moving out of their neighborhood due to crime and theft issues, and he told me they were moving into an apartment for the time being. With no more extra room Brian has no place to store his boat, so rather then pay to put it in storage he asked if I would be willing to store his boat at my house and I could take it out whenever I want. Who could turn down a deal like that? I told him to bring it over and I'm make sure to keep the warm for him for when he wants it back.



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Packing the boat back into the backyard.

He brought the boat over and I already had plans on getting it out. With Brian working now I called up Garrett and asked him if he was busy. He told me he was free to do some fishing in the morning, so off we went. Saturday morning 9/24/11 we launch out of Wimpy's Marina and get on the water around 0600. Its only been 3 years since I've backed up a trailor so it took me a few times to get the boat going straight down the ramp, but it all came back to me pretty fast.

We took off and got to our first spot in no time though. Right when got there fish were jumping everywhere. We could tell most of them were bass, some were carp, and there were a few stripers in the mix. We tied on our spooks and started working for that early morning top water bite. I stuck with the smaller Super Spook Junior size, but Garrett threw a Super Spook, 1 because thats all he had, and 2 he thought he had a better chance for a random striper with it. We start tossing Garrett manages to get the first blowup.



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Little guy had some balls hitting that Super spook. I end up getting one shortly after a bit smaller then Garrett's and Garrett gets one dinker. After that the sun got a bit higher and the top water bite died off. Garrett ties a crankbait on and I try a fluke for a bit. I told Garrett the crankbait probably wasn't the best idea because he would have a hard time with the weeds, but he tried anyways, and sure enough a few minutes later he proved me wrong.



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Garrett sticks a nice Largemouth on his shallow diving sexy shad color crankbait. He ends up catching a few more dinkers and I've still only got the 1 fish, so I eat my words and switch over to a crankbait. 3 or 4 cast into it I'm looking down and right as my lure comes into visible water I see a flash, my lure is gone, my rod doubles over, and my line starts singing. I scream fish on and told Garrett I was gonna need his help landing a nice lunker. Garrett looked at my rod though and told me it was a striper and not a Largemouth. I didn't want to believe him at first because I thought a crazy 8lb Largemouth sounded more exciting then a striper, but I got it in and sure enough Garrett was right.



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Not what I thought it was, but hey thats one nice fish and I'll take it. Threw his ass in the live well and I got a good dinner to look forward to later.

A few more dinkers came out here and there. We decided to move on and try another area though after that. After that we found a lot of fish hugging different rock banks. Garrett stuck with his crank bait, but I started getting more numbers throwing 4 inch pumpkin seed colored Senkos. Around 1100 our battery for the trolling motor died. I forgot to plug in and charge the batteries the night before. Rookie mistake, I'll remember next time I take it out. Still getting used to the boat. Great having it though. Opens up all kinds of options for me.

That was it for the day, Garrett had to get back home anyways for his Homecoming dance. Must have caught close to 20 sub legal bass each. I got my striper and maybe 2 or 3 around the 1 1/2-2lb range between the two of us. Great day on the water though and I can't wait to get it out again. Thinking the Sherman Island area for my next trip for some Stripers maybe? We'll see, I've got lots more places to chose from now.

Till Next Time Guys
Mark

Union Valley Smallies 9/7/11

Today I decided I wanted to break out the pontoon and get on some bass out at Union Valley. I picked up my friend Mike to come along and we took off up the hill. We ended up getting on the water around 1400 and started heading over to my cove I like to fish for bass.

Mike is still very new to fishing so as we get up to our spot I give him and myself and Roboworm on a Shaky head. He was using a warmouth color and I was using the baby bass color.



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I'm explaining to Mike what the bite is going to feel like as he cast out to a rock and his rod doubled over the second it hit the water. He set the hook but missed the fish. I cast in the same spot and missed the same fish I'm sure. Crafty little SOB.

Water level was really low so most of the cover that I usually fish was up above water so I had to find some new area's to fish. After I while I find a submerged rock pile in about 15ft of water and we drop our baits down get bit immediatly. I drew first blood with this small smallie.



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Even in clear water mike couldn't see the rock pile without polarized sunglasses, man on man do they make a world of difference, so I was telling him where to cast the whole time, but besides that he was slamming fish all on his own, and doing a good job at it too.



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All fish were pretty small, nothing legal, but they sure do still put up a nice fight on light gear. After nailing a few bass we took off and started trolling a bit looking for some trout. My dad got me a new smoker for my birthday and I need to get some fish to break it in. Thought a few trout would be great. We troll around with kastmasters and super dupers. Mike misses a few bites on his Kastmaster, but nothing stuck. Evening came around and we started seeing trout boiling everywhere around us.

We cut the motor and just started casting to boils. Mike stuck with his kastmaster and I switched to a white crappie jig on a 1/16th jig head. After casting a while Mike again missed a few hits and I couldn't get one trout to bite my jig. I was getting chasers and I saw some swiping at it, but they kept missing or wouldn't commit to it. I end up getting bites eventually, but from the wrong species.



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I ended up getting two smallies with my jig and not one trout.

With the trout not wanting to bite I figure we would just got back to full swing on the bass. I introduce Mike to the world of top water. I hand him a Zara puppy and try to show him how to walk the dog. He didn't really get the right motion down, but it didn't matter on his first cast a smallie jumped clear out of the water with the spook in his mouth. Smallest fish of the day actually and the craziest hit. Funny how top water works like that.

We had a few more boils but neither of us could stick anything. Headed back to the ramp before it got too dark. Another great day on the water, nothing big, but lots of fun and honestly its a nice break from waking up at 0400 in the morning casting a spinner all morning to most likely get skunked casting for salmon. Its starting to wear on me.

Til Next Time Guys
Mark