B-n-F Tourney Story: “You find the boat...I’ll pay the fees!”

By Keith Westra

3rd Place team

Monday, June 9, 2008

"You find the boat and I'll pay the fees!"

That's what JR said to me about 2 months ago when he walked in the shop.

My dad was nice enough to bring up our bass boat from Lake Naciemento, it had never touched the Delta and JR and I had only fished it a few times with friends.

I bought a delta map and scooped out the region and our basic game plan was to fish the tules around Disappointment Slough with top water.

We stayed the night near Ladds Marina and woke up around 4:30 am to prep the boat. We rigged up some Sage Large Mouth Bass Rods with straight 20 lb. Fluorocarbon and Umpqua Swimming Baitfish (shad) and frog patterns. We watched as trucks pulling boats drove by and the excitement and anticipation grew.

When getting in to Ladd's you could tell this was the real deal. It felt like I was going to see Jimmy Houston or Bill Dance walk by at any moment. I felt a moment of nervousness looking around and see serious bass boats with 225 hp. motors, but took a deep breath and just decided to have fun.

With the live wells checked and boat launched we sat surrounded by all the other boats at the 5 mph. marker and stood while the national anthem played. What a memorable experience. With each boat number called the adrenaline grew, finally number 16 was called and we were off.

Flat water, light fog, and the sound of motors whaling away, how cool..... JR and I just looked at each other and laughed, we were in a real deal bass tournament!

Working our way into Disappointment Slough we pounded the tules. Throwing into every nook and crannies, we did our best to entice out anyone who was lurking below.

Finally, an explosion and I heard JR say "Big Fish!", I looked and saw the fish jumped and prayed, "Don't come off, don't come off!" I did everything in my power to keep JR (& myself) calm. I just kept saying to him, just pretend it's a little rainbow on the Yuba.

JR played the fish like a champ and we netted it. We couldn't believe what had happened, it was JR's biggest bass, we yelled and hugged from all the excitement. The back of the fish stuck out of the water in the live well by about half an inch. We estimated the weight at around 6 - 8 lbs (it came in at 7 lbs. 13 ounces). It was only 6:20 am!

The other fish caught came in around 12 - 14 inches. With another one by JR of about 3 lbs. JR had the hot stick of the day for sure!

We had our limit, with one fish just at 12 inches. After measuring it again before coming in, we just didn't feel confident about it. We decided to release to avoid any penalty so we ended up with 4 fish in our bag.

All the fish that day came on top water! One of the keys was to keep some dry shake at the ready to quickly dry off the bugs. If you didn't hear the "blurp" and see that bubble trail, they weren't interested.

Coming in was another experience altogether. Questions like, "How did we stack up?" "Is that fish really as big as we think?" all ran through our heads. Expecting to win anything was not really in our heads, we really assumed there would be some big bags in the 20 lb. plus range.

As we loaded the boat back on the trailer we heard people talking about bag limits and good fishing, but still really didn't know what to expect. When it came our time to way in we heard that the biggest fish so far had been in the 5 lb. range. We asked for 2 bags and JR unloaded the fish. His came in at 7 lbs. 13 ounces, we were stoked. Then in just a few moments we heard, 11 lb. bass. What a fish!

I really couldn't believe we even placed. There was some serious and seasoned anglers out there. Overall, the experience was amazing and I think a tradition has started.

Keith

next >

< previous