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I arrived home after towing my broken boat back to my house from Lake Mead on Saturday morning. Since I had to go home, I decided to stick around for mothers day and leave for the TBF Southwestern Divisional at The Delta on Monday morning. I unloaded the rest of my boat and loaded my gear into my dads boat. I left around noon on Monday and drove the 7 hours north to Russo's. Stopping twice for gas because I had to fight crazy wind almost the whole way from the Grapevine to Russo's. I wait till the Arco Station by Bethel Island to fill up the boat and grab some stuff to eat and drink during the day. I get to Russo's about 745 and call our state team captain. I head over to where hes staying and get briefed on whats going on with the team and when the meetings are and stuff like that. Then I head back to Russo's and grab my campsite for the next 4 nights. Back the boat in, plug in the charger to top the batteries off and make room to sleep in the back of my Tahoe.
Wake up before first light and jump out of the truck. Theres only a couple trailers in the lot so I know Im getting an early start. We head to be off the water by 2 so I only had time to cover a couple areas I know hold alot of fish. Juat to start off with and get the bugs out, I hit a couple openings in Franks Tract. I instantly catch one on my electric orange chatterbait. Its small but I love catching fish on that thing :). 2 more openings and a trip down the meatwall later and no more bites so I decide to run down into the middle Delta to check a few areas. I get down to where I want to go and I grab my old school Fenwick Dee Thomas flippin rod. I havent seen this much grass in the Delta in a few years so I tie on the 1 1/2 ounce tungsten and a double wide beaver and I go to work punchin. I start getting bit right away, but theres no size at all. The water is clear so I punch the boat through and start looking in the holes for spawners and see a nice 5 pounder on a bed. I do another 10 feet and see another big one sitting just off a bed. I figure I have a good shot at 1 if not both of those fish so I'm stoked. I keep up the punchin deal but I cant even get one to hold thebait for longer than a tap tap so I decide to pull out a crazy 3 piece rat bait thats about 9" long and start winging it around. No love at all, not even a follow, after about an hour, I put it down. So, by this time, my practice day was getting shorter and shorter. I had a choice to make so I ran over to a deeper area that I like alot and know holds big fish. I just start throwing a 6" Senko in the grass and I catch a small keeper. Man, the Delta's being stingy this trip. I get a couple more bites in there and figure I can catch some so I bail out and just look around at some new stuff for the last hour or so and head back for registration. Get registered and paired up and then get to my boat and start rigging up the basics to just go fishing.
We get out there in the morning and the tide is dropping fast. Its going to drop out to a negative tide in the afternoon so it was ripping down the channel. So After we blast off, I head up to the opening I started in the day before. I know the dropping tide helps those fish so Im ready to catch them. My partner catches a little one but I get nothing and after 15 minutes we bail out to get those bed fish. I get down there and come at them from the other direction cause it was easier to cut through the slime that was. Theres alot of snot out there that loves to choke my Motorguide :(. I catch sight of the first bed, but the fish is nowhere to be seen. So I sneak up on the next bed and see the 5 pounder. As soon as my bait hit the water she bailed and got lost in the grass. Didnt see her for 5 minutes so I got over it and left. I went and punched a couple short fish in the area and finally got a 3 pounder half way through the snot and it came off.. That sucked. But shortly after that, I got a small keeper so at least I had 1. Ha, its the Delta and Im stoked to have a small keeper :). I figure I would do a little more pre-fishing and make my way over to my senko spot. On the way I catch another small one on a senko. I finally get to the other area with an hour to go before weigh in. I catch a short on the senko and back it up with 2 swings and misses. They were running with my bait through the grass, but I couldnt connect. With a half our to go, I catch #3. it was about 3 pounds. Then I get bit, sweep set on the senko and break the line. Weird. After that, 2 more shorts and a tap tap drop and it was time to rock and roll back to Russo's. So after the hammer was dropped, I had 3 fish for 6-6. Sweet. And whats sad, I was actually still in the game.
So that night, I start alking to one of my friends that lives just down from Russo's and he gets a call from another buddy. Hey man, my friend just found em he tells me after hes off the phone. He starts telling me where they are and I instantly know where hes talking about. Its clear on the other side of the world as far as the Deltas concerned but its a place that I fish every time I go there in practice, except this time! Im way jazzed when he tells me they are in there so I gear up the heavy stuff and get ready for day 2.
Blast off and we just start cranking outside of Little Franks just to see if theres some post spawn fish out there, but get nothing for a half hour so it was time to make the long journy to the spot. After about a half hour of no idling full speed running, we settle in to the canal and start pitching at the wood and tulies. After about 30 minutes no bites for either of us and Im starting to think how you should never fish another mans fish. Then I get bit by a 5 pounder. 20 more mins go by and I get a 3, then another. My oartner connects with one, but his line was over a hanging branch and the fish came off. We spent most of the day in there and slowly added to the total. I pulled 6 fish out of there and my partner pulled 4 including the one that came off earlier. Typical Delta, I knew the fish would be back, made about 5 flips under the bush and then his first flip, he gets it. I think that happens every time I fish there :)... After it was all said and done, I had 18-13 and he had just over 10 pounds. Suddenly I was very much back in the game with only a 6 pound deficit going into the last day.
Day 3 comes and Im excited because I know Ive got another hour of tide to fish. Once the low hit this area, it was too shallow and they shut off. I get in there and the water is almost 2 feet higher. Sweet, but no bites for the first hour or more. Crazy, I figured they would be all over it. I know they were, but they just didnt want to chew yet. But when they did, they did and we picked them off steadily one every 15-20 minutes till the tide bottomed out and we had to do something. I had plucked 7 more out of there and my partner got a limit but they shut off so we left for some of his spots. He had some big ones he said were on beds so we went back towards Russo's and hit his area. There were like 5 fish over 7 in this one area, but there were also 6 boats and I know they all fished these fish cause they were so scared it was funny. Needless to say we got nothing else and went to weigh in with what we had. So heres where it goes bad. When I get back to weigh in, the livewell is off and all the fish are on the bottom of the well. Somehow in the last 2 hours the switch got turned off. I dont know how it happened but it did and I lost 3 fish anf my partner 1. I was way bummed out! I could care less about the penalty, but I hate killing fish. Period!! I shamefully went across the scales and weighed 14-4 but with the penalty I had only 12-12. My partner had 11 something. There were alot of fish in that little palce and I am lucky I got them handed to me otherwise I would have done very bad. But as it turned out, I finished 3rd on the team and 6th overall with 37-15. heres the kicker. I had a 1-8 penalty for my 3 dead fish and I missed advancing by 11 ounces. Its actually cool though because I am going back to school and wouldnt be able to go to the next level anyways so whatever. But the journy was far from over for me there.......
I packed up my stuff and readied the boat for the drive home that night. You see, I had a tourney in San Diego at El Capitan the next day :). So I go ripping down the freeway and actually make kick butt time. I get home around 130 in the morning and park my dads boat. I unload all my stuff into the house and start looking through all my stuff for El Cap that day. Thats a hard thing to do when your going on 22 hours without sleep. My partner said we had mad room for rods and tackle so I set the record for a non-boater and his gear. I grabbed 11 rods and more boxes then I could caount and loaded them into my Tahoe and headed south. Its a good hour and a half drive and I barely make it down there with about 20 minutes to spare. We get signed up and load all my gear in the boat. Man I brought alot of crap :).... I wanted to be ready for anything because it was the last tourney of the season and we were tied for the lead for angler of the year so I didnt want to miss a beat. Plus I hadnt been to the lake in 2 months and it was up another 15 feet from last time so it was all new to me. The lake hasnt been this high in 7-8 years so we headed as far as we could go back into the trees. I mean pushing through thick stuff to get back to pockets of shad. It was super fun fishing but we only caught 4 little guys back there. There was good fish busting all over in the front of the trees so we thought we had blown it for sure, but when we came out, everyone was gone except a couple boats. They said they only had small ones to. That pumped us up a little and right then I got one almost 3 pounds on the Basstrix. It was a crazy tough day of fishing mentally, especially since by weigh in I was up for 35 hours straight. When it was all said and done, we had 9.67 pounds and knew we were done for AOY. The other team was in the 3rd flight so we chilled in suspense for a half hour. The whole time we are hearing how bad the weights are. Everyone had 8-9 pounds. Finally one of the guys on the other team comes up and we ask how they did. Hes all happy cause he a couple uys told them on the dock we had 9.27 pounds. Of course when we were talking I said we had 12 pounds, but then he said they had 9.48 and thought they had won it. I said we had 9.67 and he was bummed. I showed him our slip just to be sure and we knew we had it. As it was, the weights were low. One 11 pound bag, one 10 pound bag and we finished 5th with our limit and wraped up the WON Bass Teams AOY race for San Diego.
Once again, a rollercoaster ride up and down on the tournament journey. I think with this school thing coming up I am going to have to take a couple steps back to make something of myself and then hopefully get back into the game soon with a stronger foundation. I still have the big show to look forward to in August. Look forward to a nice report on what the Forrest Wood Cup is like and how it feels to accomplish a life long dream!!!! I cant wait to beat on the spots at Lanier :) :)
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