LAST EDITED ON Dec-19-00 AT 09:53 PM (PST)

Hookup!
This year WAS pretty sweet. The highlight of my year was of course the 15-12 largemouth at San Pablo. That fish was the culmination for me of so many hours of trout plug fishing and experimenting with gear and lines and plugs etc etc. To have the right setup and be at the right place at the right time with the right plug on the end of my line. And then to have Summer there to get all the great pictures. That was a definite high point. Other great memories, of course the seabass trip on the Seahawk to Santa Rosa with Brian and Brian #2. We start out with a bunch of log barracuda in the grey which turned into a decent seabass bite. I put 3 or 4 in the boat and Brian bags the 23 pounder before we ran around to the front side where it gets stupid. I caught 9 legal seabass that day, something I don't know if I will ever do again, not to mention at least a dozen just humongous cudas. Speaking of cudas, I finally got into some good surface iron action this year on two trips on the half day. The first was down at the horseshoe kelp with Jason and a full boat. We pulled in and fish were foaming everywhere. I was throwing a Tady A1 and caugh 18 cuda and 6 nice calico. The cuda were wolf packing your iron on every cast blowing out of the water. I even had an estimated 20lb seabass roll, head out of the water, on my jig but miss it. That was fun. The other trip was with Pete and Susanne Skarda. I got them set up with some Tady 45'and we knocked them that day. Don't remember how many cuda and bass but it was real good.

I did a lot of fishing at Margarita this year in hopes of catching some bigger bass. Caught a few over 5 and on one particularly good night I caught a 7-0 and my buddy Austin caught a 6-3. I think our best 5 that day were around 22 to 23 pounds, a really nice bag for Margarita. Don't think I ever reported on it, but the last day that I fished Margarita in June I missed two fish that were both 8 pounds throwing a 12 inch slammer. The first fish boiled and hit it, missed it, and then chased it to the boat with two 6 pounders one on either side. It was a mental picture I will never forget, those 3 big ol bass just eyeballing my plug 10 feet from the boat. The second fish did the exact same thing, this time flanked by 4 pounders. By that time I was jumping up and down the boat! Never did catch a striper this year down there but tried hard at it and saw a few boils. One of these years I'll get one. I did catch a nice 10lb striper this year at Morro Bay on a swimbait, that was cool, my first saltwater striper.

What else? Goleta float tubing was great this year although I didn't hit it up nearly as much as I would have liked to. Had a fun day with about 6 or 7 guys, Ben K, Brian, my Dad, Ben Hallock, Leapin Bass, we were all out there. The 32" halibut I caught at the end of the day was a nice bonus! Only fished the harbor a little bit too but caught a decent number of short seabass. Brian, Brian #2, and Leapin Bass were just killing me witht thier reports. The fish sure have gotten bigger over the years. 3 or 4 years ago we never caught legals. Last year I got 4 legals, and then this year it busted out and Brian had a 13 and a 15 pounder, not to mention the many other legals caught!!! When am I moving back to SB???

Tournament bass fishing was a new deal for me this year. My best tournament was at Clear Lake with John "Swimbait Johnny" Lake in November. We did the trout plug/swimbait thing and brought in a 21lb bag. That was a great redemption after fishing the WON pro/am there as a AAA in the Spring and coming in about 400th place. Had some fun too with the guys in the SB Bass club fishing at Margarita and at Cachuma. Learned some good jig tips from Dennis Wright and had a blast at Margarita throwing the swimbaits again for 5th place there.

2001 To do list:

Go to Willow Beach with Mike Shaw and fish for monster stripers.
Fish the early spring at San Pablo for giant bass.
WON Bass Team tourneys at Margarita, Clear, and the Delta.
Get out seabass fishing at Rosa at least once.
Go salmon fishing out of Half Moon bay or Monterey.
Catch frog fish like crazy on the delta in August.
Catch a few halibut at Goleta Beach in my tube.
Catch a fish period at Lake Chabot (peferably that 13 pounder that chased my plug! )