Congratulations to Chris on the great win. Here's what I did. I had not been on the lake since the last Federation tournament in the winter of 2005. I drove up on Saturday after work and made it to the lake around 6pm. My prefish consisted of walking the shoreline around Bidwell launch ramp for about 2hrs. I threw a chatterbait in the mudlines but only had one bite in an hour of fishing it. I was hoping it would produce but it was showing me it would not produce like I wanted it too. I knew there were fish in the area so I walked back to my car and got a Reaction Innovation Screwed Up Jighead and 6" green worm on 8lb test Pline fluorocarbon. I caught 5 keepers on the point in about 15 minutes, with one pushing 2lbs. I knew the fish should be on a typical summertime pattern and I would spend my time fishing main lake points. I got to my hotel and was asleep by around 10pm. Getting up at 3:30am I made it to the launch ramp and partner draw. I drew boater, Steve Dollard. As luck would have it he also wanted to fish main lake points. We started out on the first big point between the spillway and Bidwell. I started with a topwater but only had little ones (4inchers) try and eat it. Steve threw a drop shot and was the first on the board with a small keeper. I quickly switched to the jighead worm and put two keepers in the boat. He added two more small keepers before we ran to the point I fished the night before. We had several bites but did not put any fish in the boat. The next point had us both throwing topwater. A fish about 2lbs, it got completely airborne over my bait, kept boiling on both our topwaters but would not eat them. I ended up catching one about 10" on the top water. When I grabbed it to take it off the hook it started to thrash. It ended up sticking the back treble into the knuckle of my left thumb way past the barb. Man, did it hurt. I got the fish off but couldn't get the hook back out of my thumb. I asked Steve if he knew that trick to get a hook out by using fishing line. He said he didn't. He looked at his cell phone to call someone to get directions on how to do it but his cell phone was dead. I ended up taking some pliers and cutting the front treble off the bait. I then twisted the hook around and had it positioned the way I thought it went in. I asked Steve to yank it out since I couldn't pull it out myself. Steve looked at me and said, "are you sure"? I told him, "make sure you yank hard enough so we don't have to do this a second time"! I looked the other way and Steve yanked it out. This was at 6:30 in the morning so not the way I wanted to start out my day. My thumb was sore but it didn't bleed as much as I thought it would. We ended up getting several small keepers here then ran to the next point. This next point had a ton of bait and I ended up getting three quality (for this lake and the time of year) fish all between 1.75lbs and 1.99lbs. I knew if I could get a 1.75lb average it would put me in the top 5 which is always my goal. The balance beam got a work out and I ended up getting two more fish both around 1.5lbs. All my fish came on the jighead worm. I think I caught around 30 fish with 20-25 being keepers. We ran back to weigh in at noon. One of my small keepers ended up dieing while we were waiting to weigh in. I weighed 8.58lbs but had a .25 penalty for the dead fish. My big fish was only 1.99lbs. Instead of getting 4th place I ended up in 6th place because of the dead fish penalty. The dead fish cost me about 100 bucks but there wasn't anything I could have done about it. We kept the livewells on and we put Keep Alive in their water. It is one of the bummers of summertime hot water fishing. We also put some ice in to keep it cool. I can't complain since I didn't really prefish. Steve ended up in 7th place with 8.32lbs and his big fish was 2.29lbs. Next stop Clear lake July 23rd. Hopefully I will be able to prefish but it's not looking good right now. Later.

Pat.

Great report Pat, that sucks about the hook in the hand ouch!!! See you at Clearlake.

cz

Great Report Pat thanks. Congrats on your finish leader for AOY. Keep it up man.

Thanks for the detailed report Pat. I always enjoy reading them.

Good report Pat. I have yet to barry a barb, I hope it doesn't come to soon. July 23rd at Clear Lake might be in the plans. Keep on slaying Pat.

Rich