04-02-2019, 03:35 AM
Ice_sled and I had planned to go fishing on Saturday but the snow and the wind convinced us otherwise. So we went today. Before we could get Ben's boat in the water here came Boatloadakids with one of his grandsons. We shot the bull for a minute and then said you go that way and we'll go the other and promised to try to join up and check on each other's success later in the morning. We both ended up turning left out of the harbor. BLK started fishing off the springs and we went on down by the orchards.
It didn't take long to get into fish. I was blessed with a 24"er which filled my third spot and got me over the 70-point mark. Good start. Ben also caught one and then I was again blessed to get a 25" and a 27"er. I reflected that I had not gotten anything longer than 26.5" until very near the end of the contest last year. Then things went kind of dead so we decided to go over by Benjamin Slough and see if we could do any good. We soon discovered why they call it the flats. We got into 3-3.5 fow and no matter how far we moved away from shore it stayed that depth. It was pretty dead until I got another cookie cutter. We then joined up with BLK. He told us they had limited out and were going home. I guess it was his little nod to April Fools because he soon admitted that they had only gotten three between them.
We decided that we had had enough of the shallow water and decided to go back down where we had had success earlier. We went right back where we had been early in the morning, we thought, but we hit a patch where we were constantly getting hung up. We got pretty sick of that after a while and motored on out further, into 7-8 fow. Still no good. The wind started coming up a little so we decided to call it. It had been a beautiful calm day, but everything has to come to an end. We ended up taking the four smallest cats home to turn into fillets for the Flotilla on May 4.
We started out fishing with both cut white bass and carp meat for bait. The fish soon showed a marked preference for the white bass. We caught fish on the heads, the tails and the middles. I think the only way it could have been better is if we had fresh-caught bass instead of the frozen that Ben had brought. They didn't seem to show any special preference for one rig over the others as long as we were dragging bait along the bottom behind .5-1 oz. weight at around .5 mph. They seemed to like it about as well with a floaty or without.
Water temperature hovered around 52-53° as long as we were there. Air temperature became rather pleasant after the sub-freezing temperatures when we got there. I love going fishing when you can see your breath in the air.
All-in-all it was not a bad day. When I got home I checked and found that last year it had taken me until July 23 to reach the same score that I am at today. Not only am I getting off to a nice early start but the contest in general is way ahead of what it was last year. It took until at least May 4th to reach the team scores that we are at now. It sure is shaping up to be real competitive this year.
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It didn't take long to get into fish. I was blessed with a 24"er which filled my third spot and got me over the 70-point mark. Good start. Ben also caught one and then I was again blessed to get a 25" and a 27"er. I reflected that I had not gotten anything longer than 26.5" until very near the end of the contest last year. Then things went kind of dead so we decided to go over by Benjamin Slough and see if we could do any good. We soon discovered why they call it the flats. We got into 3-3.5 fow and no matter how far we moved away from shore it stayed that depth. It was pretty dead until I got another cookie cutter. We then joined up with BLK. He told us they had limited out and were going home. I guess it was his little nod to April Fools because he soon admitted that they had only gotten three between them.
We decided that we had had enough of the shallow water and decided to go back down where we had had success earlier. We went right back where we had been early in the morning, we thought, but we hit a patch where we were constantly getting hung up. We got pretty sick of that after a while and motored on out further, into 7-8 fow. Still no good. The wind started coming up a little so we decided to call it. It had been a beautiful calm day, but everything has to come to an end. We ended up taking the four smallest cats home to turn into fillets for the Flotilla on May 4.
We started out fishing with both cut white bass and carp meat for bait. The fish soon showed a marked preference for the white bass. We caught fish on the heads, the tails and the middles. I think the only way it could have been better is if we had fresh-caught bass instead of the frozen that Ben had brought. They didn't seem to show any special preference for one rig over the others as long as we were dragging bait along the bottom behind .5-1 oz. weight at around .5 mph. They seemed to like it about as well with a floaty or without.
Water temperature hovered around 52-53° as long as we were there. Air temperature became rather pleasant after the sub-freezing temperatures when we got there. I love going fishing when you can see your breath in the air.
All-in-all it was not a bad day. When I got home I checked and found that last year it had taken me until July 23 to reach the same score that I am at today. Not only am I getting off to a nice early start but the contest in general is way ahead of what it was last year. It took until at least May 4th to reach the team scores that we are at now. It sure is shaping up to be real competitive this year.
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The older I get the more I would rather be considered a good man than a good fisherman.
