The day in review:
Thanks to that big rig which flipped over and caught on fire near the Altamont...I didn't drive up Fri night. Instead, I woke up at 2am and met my partner at the ramp. Started off a bit annoyed when I found out that he hadn't fished Th/Fr like he had told me and had instead come up Fri pm. But, he told me that I could run the boat when fishing my water and I accepted since I figured that would be fair. It was actually probably tougher to be the guy running the boat because of the weather....winds in the 20's w/ gusts in the 30+'s along w/ heavy, heavy rain all day.
We started heading towards my early morning spot. We saw a blue/white Skeeter there, so stopped a bit early and fished our way there. A little bit later, we saw some kinky stuff going on in the Skeeter...guys were patting each other down and everything. 'Found out later that my pre-fish buddy had hooked his partner in the back. Whoops!
My partner caught a couple of dinks and started giving me a hard time, "hey, we're supposed to take turns...why don't you catch one?" So, I caught the next dozen or so. I caught a 16"er and a 14"er from the early morning spot on a darthead and Ray's special colored flirt worm. Then the wind picked up, and I had to switch to a jig. We headed up to the naptime bank and I finished out my limit on a mix of 14's and 15's. It started pouring rain, and the wind was incredibly nasty...I was pretty much leaning on the trolling motor full time and still had trouble...good thing that the Triton had a 109lb motor. I was catching them at 30' on home-made hand-tied 3/4 brown/orange jig w/ cinn/purp tails. Felt bad when I was culling and my partner only had 1 13'er...so I gave him the bow.
Big mistake. He put the boat in about 20' and kept pounding the bank fishing almost horizontally. When he snagged and broke off, I took back the bow and didn't give it back.
I caught another couple of slot fish at 30'...Then I made mistake #2....I offered him one of my 3/4 football heads. He ties it on and then sticks a 17" right on the bank in the same cut that I had cast to about 3 times. Sigh. I guess that's karma punishing me for thinking evil thoughts.
We headed back downriver...caught another slot fish and culled once to get a limit of overs. Knew I needed more fish in the 17-19" range to have a chance. Then went down to hit some more protected areas. Fished a protected bay and both rock walls. I picked up more slot fish, but couldn't find any of the better fish. My partner picked up a few small keepers right on the bank on a dropshot, but couldn't fill out his limit. He pounded the banks all day even though I was catching them pretty steadily at 20-30'.
Postgame:
Thought I could manage 11-12 lbs, 10.85 was close, I guess...Was a little disappointed that I couldn't catch at least one of the better quality fish. I finished 10th. My pre-fish buddies came in 7th and 3rd. They found it was calmer upriver and they were able to catch 'em really good on darthead worms.
On the other hand, I was pleased that I managed a limit of overs...Before pre-fishing, I don't think I could have caught jig fish in howling winds at 30mph. Hindsight being 20/20, I guess I left fish upriver to find fish...I had too much confidence in those areas down south after the numbers and quality that I had found last week....didn't pay off. I probably spent too much time pounding areas and didn't cover enough water...especially when I had my limit of overs...maybe should have gone on blitz-mode and hit high-percentage areas looking for bigger fish. I didn't occur to me that it would be calmer upriver...thought it would have been nastier if anything. But, I'll remember that for next time.
***And btw, as nasty and cold and wet as it was upriver, it was infinitely WORSE at that darn baby class the other day. Man...they should bring a keg for the guys...
One highlight: They broke the guys/girls into groups and asked us to write down our fears and what we liked most about the pregnancy. The girls had a list a mile wrong. The guys had "We're afraid something will go wrong." and "We like how the boobs get bigger."
