So straps and I decided to go to the percs after much debate as to where we should go….yote’ to far, calero too many boats…yadayada. Anyways, I finally managed to catch a fish after 2 hours and me thinking we shoulda went some else. Then all of a sudden I hear the sounds of a lure hittin some rods and then o’fuck! I turn around thinking he hooked his rod into the water, but then see his crankbait lodged into his toon. I figured it would be okay and hopefully just puncture the outer shell, but nope. That shit was in there. One complete hook was all the way in his toon. I cut the line, tried to convince straps that he’d be okay if he left the crank in there and continue to fish. Not that I would even be able to fish cause I was laughing to hard…I have always wondered if someone has actually hooked their pontoon, straps did it! Funny as hell! We ended up rowing back and ending our trip, although we did fish a little longer and straps fished from shore. Straps, next time catch a fish, not a bright yellow pontoon…haha

the skunk buster

the trip buster

Well…I’ve been back for awhile now, but my cpu was messed up for a quick second. Not to mention I’ve been doing quite a bit of fishing.

Here’s a post about my recent trip to AK.
I just got back from what could be my last trip up to AK cause my parents are moving to Texas. I went up there to help them fix up their house so they can sell it but I squeezed in five days of fishing. 3 days for Kings on the little susitna and deshka rivers and 2 days for reds on the russian river. I got skunked on the king trips. On my last trip for kings I hooked 4 and lost all of them, one at the boat >:( My new found bass skills must have gotten the best of me cause I totally forgot how to fight salmon ;D Hopefully I’ll get my king redemption this year when I learn how to drift the American/Feather rivers. On the Russian River I hooked over 50 fish both days…so fun! I saw a bear too, luckily it was on the other side of the river. I brought back all my fish frozen wrapped in garbage bags and newspaper in my main luggage because I didn’t have enough fish to warrant it’s own cooler ;D I was a little worried but it stayed frozen.

I’m gonna miss the summer vacations up there filled with salmon and the site of all the alaskan toys, especially all the aluminum river runners. Here’s some pics…

Coming back from the Deshka around midnight.

Here’s combat fishing at its finest on the russian river. Even with all the people its one of my favorite places cause the fish are everywhere!

This is the view of Big Lake from my parents dock at around midnight. Mt. Mckinley is on the very right. The sunset only gets better the later it gets. I ended up sitting out on the dock at 3am drinking beer and smoking stogies many of nights this trip cause I don’t know when I’ll ever make it back up to AK.

The weird thing is, the whole time I was fishing for monster kings I was thinking about and wanting to go fishing for little green bass ;D

Our initial plan was to head to Rat’s grandma’s house boat for Memorial Day but it was being occupied. So Matt called up some of his friends that have a house on Lake Camanche. They are usually there every weekend but they were cruising on a Harley ride out to Yosemite so they let us have the house to ourselves. Not a bad trade for missing out on the House Boat this year.

Camanche can be tough. I’ve had mixed luck there. So have the other dudes. Matt has been there quite a bit becasue he installed the linoleum in the house we were staying in. He has crashed up there, installed linoleum and then fished quite a few times. His luck has kind of been the same. We were determined to hit Amador for night fishing and try to avoid the crowds that would be about during the day.

When we arrived, we could see the mayhem ensuing on the lake from the house. It’s not directly on the Lake but there is a good view from there. We were asking around for direction to Amador and we were very surprised to find out that it was only a ten minute drive away from where we were at. It was a pleasant surprise for Tomcat, Matt, and I. In true Turd form, we began drinking. I was wrecked from the previous night which consisted of a Ramp Jam/BBQ/Kegger. Nice. I love the summer. OH SHIT! I forgot this part of the story. SO GNARLY! On our way there, I was pulling Matt’s boat with my truck and we get to the hill off 680 near Mission road. I’m cruising a steady 65 and we had already had some fish tailing problem with the trailer, nothing too gnarly but cause for concern. Well, we hit the top of the hill and roll over a medium sized bump, it pitches the trailer into a fish tail frenzy! I’m breaking and the fish tailing gets gnarlier, the truck is screeching, the the trailer is going in and out of multiple lanes, it was sketchy. So i punch it, Matt is trippen, I’m trippen, Tomcat is buggin, and Code Man does not know what the hell is going on, he’s a dog. I was counter steering the fish tail and pumping the gas at the right time and after about a quarter mile of fighting the trailer trying to flip us we finally straighten out. It was so sketchy man. We could have been seriously injured and we were going down hill so who knows how many times we would have rolled. I’m so glad we got out of that unscaved and honestly, it was a real shitty start to an amazing weekend.

So any ways, our first night of Amador. We were surprised with it’s size. It’s pretty damn small. But it looked good. Lot of coves and points, rock walls, tullies, weed mats, and a shit load of fisherman. Not bad. Best part about it is that we were launching at 7:30 pm. Kind of expensive though. 41 bucks for launch and three fisherman.

It took us awhile to get on a fish. Maybe a half hour or so. First fish was from Rat(not a surprise, ,the dude has been killing it lately). And the second fish was a perch. I don’t know what kind of perch but it looked like a great snack for a 5 plus pound bass. My buzz was kicking in real hard at this time plus, I was dead tired from the night before. I managed a few fish on the 10 inch junebug worm, no size but it’s great catching a fish on a 10 inch worm at night. It reminded me so much of Clear Lake. Ahhh, Clear Lake. I passed out on the boat at around 11:30. I just couldn’t hang anymore. Matty was catching fish and he continued to catch fish all night. He roped in a few 4 pounders and a good amount of threes and two. He was using Crank Baits, jigs, and a Magnum Lizard. I actually even woke up to him catching a 4 pounder on my crankin’ rod. He would bring it from deep to shallow off of a point and tap the top of the weeds and then boom, a fish would be there. Got to love it when you find a pattern. Poor Tomcat, he was enduring the good ole’ skunk the whole time and this wouldn’t be the only time Rat was the only one catching fish on the boat this weekend.
So the first night at Amador ended at 2:30am and I only got to enjoy half of it. Thank God for bass boats, huge decks that are great to sleep on.

We get back to Camanche and realize that we don’t have the key to get in the damn gate. Yeah, it’s 3:00 am and they don’t open until 5:00am. What could we do? Well, we drove to Jackson hoping that there was something to eat and we were rewarded with a Denny’s. Mmmmmm….Well we had to stay up until 5:00and wait it out.

I woke up the next day at 11:30 and the other dudes were still sleeping. I decided to hit the beach to et some eye candy from the Memorial Day masses. Nothing too special, but at least I got my fill. Drove right down to the lake and threw the ball for Cody. It was Mayhem on the water. Boats everywhere. Although, this was the day I wish we could have had party time on the lake. I like bikinis.

The other dudes didn’t arise until around 2:30. I woke them up actually because I need some homies down at the beach. I was looking pretty creepy standing there by myself looking at these girls on a boat. A few brews and some much needed swim time, we were ready to go back to Amador. I had to play Uncle Mario becasue the other dudes were running low on funds. Another 41 bucks and we were back in the water at around 6:00. I felt a lot better this day. We hit some points and scraped a few fish. I was getting some dinks on the good ole’, shakey head until we decided to move to a pretty huge flat. It looked great. Weed mats that pointed out with 60 feet of water near by and a point that went out forever into deeper water. I managed to get my first topwater fish of the year on a buzz bait, and I was also getting fish on cranks, jigs, and 10 inch worms. I love those bites. Not just one thing will get them but multiple things. Tomcatty was catching fish and was catching a Lunker buzz too. it was great. I haven’t seen Tomcat buzzin in quite awhile and it was a pleasant sight. We could here this huge party going on near the lake and boy, we were so tempted to crash it. But who knows if the Valley folks would have liked some one as brown as me drinking off of their keg. Just kidding.

It was a good Sunday night on Amador, a 12 pack deep, some fish on assorted shit and after a few puffs of the greens, I was ready to call it a night.

We slept in pretty late the next day. Although we were not going to be getting on the roads with the rest of the Memorial Day weekend warriors. We decided to spend our last day on Camanche. Hopefully we’d catch some fish and get to see a few more bikinis. The bite was on right away, well for Matt it was. He caught some nice sized largies and spots at our fist spot. I just couldn’t get bit, and neither could Tomcat. We hit a few other spots and Matty continued to land fish as we were scratching our heads wondering what the hell we were doing wrong. No matter how bad we wanted a fish and how hard we tried, they would not bite mine or Tomcats baits.

Like I said, Matty is on fire. He reported catching an 8 last week the next after we got back from Camanche and a 5 today. Thanks to the Irons family for letting us crash your Camanche haven and thanks to Matt and Tomcat for joining me and Codeman for this trip. I’m glad we made it back safely and please everyone, be careful. Make sure your trailer is rigged properly and remember, no fish is worth your safety.(maybe an 18 pounder for a pinky finger.)

I start the story off with this photo because this was how my weekend was. Rough. So it take sus Five hours to get there because of traffic. Then it starts with me realizing that left my damn crate that had my Fins, Life Vest, Anchor, Rod Holders, tackle bags, and bungees. We go to WAL-MART hoping that they’ll have all the shit I need. When we come back with all that I need except for fins, I find out my live well gets sat on by some drunk dude. Then as I’m putting my shit together, I realize my oar locks are in my damn tackle bags back in San Jose. Mario calls it out,”Lets go back and get em.” We grab some Clif bars and a couple of AMP 24 ozers. As we’re gasing up, Mario says,”Call Matt, he’ll bring your shit.” He was right. Matt brought my shit all the way from San Jose. THE FUCKING MAN!! But…this won’t be the last time he saves us this trip.
Day 1
My plan is to hit the rock wall. Quite a ways from the launch site. But my damn live well sucks and the wind comes up before I can get any further so I’m stuck at this tullie point where it seems like there’s nothing but dinks there. I tried to adjust my live well so that there’d be less drag in the water but it sucked just as bad as the last time I used it. One pump with my oars and I go about 12 inches and then stop. Sweet. Thankfully my only goal was to get a damn limit and it happened. I got most of my fish of a rock pile that wasn’t touched all day. Thank god. I missed a big fish too because when i set into it, my rod popped out of my hands because I still can’t grip my rod because my thumb is still fucked. The spot is producing fish although the wind is getting gnarly and the fish in my drag bag are getting worked from the waves and starting to go belly up! I moved my way into the keys and out of the wind because I knew if I stayed where I was at any longer the little dudes would all die. Headed to the keys and saw Uncle Matt and Jerbs. Jerbs was looking a little under the weather too. (He arose hungover and puked before we even launched. Nice.) Then guess what, Jerbs falls a sleep on his pontoon. FALLS ASLEEP during a tourney. AWESOME. Fucking Turd! Any ways, it takes me about an hour and a half to make it back to the weigh in location and the amount of water I covered t get there was only about 500 feet. WTF.

Mario comes in with a 16 pound bag. He made it to the rock wall but barely made it back! I scrounged up 12.73 and Jerbs came in with 11, he was asleep most of the tourney. There were some big bags though, one guy was culling 4 pounders and wopped up a 27.75 pound bag backed with a 8 point something big fish.

So Now I’m Deterined to score a livewell. We headed to WAL-MART and I got all the shit. A tub, an aerator, some dude hooked up some Rejuvenate and I had the kick boat set. Crate on the side, rod holders, man it was hooked up an ready……then all hell broke loose.

Day 2

So we have to launch off of Island Drive for day two. Mario and I talk about it and we know we can get a good bag at the rock wall. The wind has been howling all night(and all weekend) and it let up during launch. I was thinking we were going to have a nice day. Well we decide to trek to the rock wall. My new set up is cruisin’ No problem at all crossing the lake, I’m thinking today is going to be the shit. Now as I get to the point we have to go around to get to the rock wall, the dreaded wind starts to come up. I miss a couple of frog fish at the point and I know they will be biting there but I have to get to the rock wall. Mario is already there and right then I think,”Now if I go that way and the wind comes up, it’ll be tough to get back. But there’s some quality fish there. But if I stay here and the wind comes up, it’ll be smooth sailing back to the keys. I can’t ditch Mario. Turdz got to stick together.” Well that was a bad decision.(But then if I wasn’t there, Mario would have been super screwed) By the time I get to the rock wall, we’re fighting 2-3 footers and the wind is kicking. My anchor won’t grab but I’m catching fish, unbutton a three pounder 2nd cast and land one on the fourth cast. I’m thinking awesome, I’m going to get at least a fifteen pound bag, at least! Then the wind starts howling. Like the fishing gods were like, “Fuck you, you ain’t getting shit Mario.” 2-3 footers turn into 3-4 footers and the wind is KICKING!! I know I need to bail back to the point and as I try to row back, two pumps with my oars and then SNAP! My fucking oar lock breaks. I scream to Mario,”MY FUCKING OAR LOCK BROKE, I’M FUCKED!!” But he can’t hear me from all of the wind and waves crashing on the rocks. I try to stay calm because these 3-4 foot waves are crashing against the rocks 50 feet from me and all I can do is kick. As soon as I stop kicking, the wind and waves push me closer to the rocks. I got to think fast. I look left, rocks, I look right and I see Mario grabbing for his drop shot rod that just fell into the water. But there is a beach about 200 yards right of the rock wall. Luckily I kick myself over there and I pass by Mario who is struggling to stay anchored. I wanted to tell him that he should come with me because there was no way in hell he was going to make it back. No way in hell.

Well, I make it to the beach and let the wind drift me in. Then the smell arises, every dead fish and dead bird in Clear Lake washes up against this beach. Then I see dead fish all around me. It was a dead fish swamp I had to go through to beach onto even more dead fish. As I beach, dead fish water splashes all over me, my gear, and into my lunchbag. Can it get any worse. Yes. I look up at Mario and he’s rocking these four footers, I’m thinking I hope he decides to head back. Well, I’m done, I know my only option is to get rescued. Fucking rescued on Clear Lake in my kick boat. Awesome.

I head to the top of a hill and call Matt. Luckily, he picks up. He had just gotten off of the phone with his dad and was looking out at the water thinking if those guys went out there, they’re fucked. Well he was right. “Matt, I’m stuck at the rock wall, I had to beach, we’re fucked……..”, then my phone dies. No more batteries. I look into the sky and scream “WHAT THE FUCK!??!” and throw up a middle finger.

Well time to trek to one of those houses over there. It was like walking into a scary movie man. Rotted signs, dead trees and a barn that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in years. Now when I get to a part where I can see where Mario WAS…he’s gone. I see a boat taking off and I’m thinking that he has to be in that boat because he’s no where to be seen. Then from where mario is pointing in this photo, I see his fish cat 9 smashing up against the rocks and I see no Mario! I run full speed back to the rocks, dying from smoking like a train all weekend. When I get closer, I’m thinking nothing but bad things. “MAS! MAS!” I kept yelling and then I see him. Oh shit, he’s okay but his pontoon is getting rocked. We get all of his shit out of hell and can’t help but look at each other and laugh. What can you do?

Now we trek to a house that’s about 3/4 of a mile away. A lady is home at one of the houses and calls the fire dept because we are in the cuts and that was are only option. Matt wasn’t picking up his phone and we had no else to call. Meanwhile all of our shit is along some wind blown dead fish bank. So we get a fireman to drive their utility truck from Clear Lake Oaks and they say they’ll be there in 20 minutes. At that moment, I think, what if Matty finds us. Well, while we are waiting near our shit on some dirt road, who comes rolling up behing us. Fucking UNCLE MATT!! SAVES US AGAIN!! How he found us, I don’t know but he did. Well, we’re DQ’ed for the assistance. At least we we’re okay and none of the Turdz got hurt(Sorry Turd haters, maybe another day). Our morale was beat to shit but a beer and a toke easily fixed that.

So Jerbs had a similar experience but got back safely and scored small bag. A lot of people were coming in short due to fatigue from the wretched wind.

Well, Clear Lake beat us up. Beat us the fuck up. I’m so thankful Matt hooked us up. He’s the fucking Man and deserves a big mama Toad for that one. He is a true homey and how many can say they have a homey that’ll drive to Clear Lake at 12 midnight to bring shit that you forgot in San Jose.

Thanks Mitch and the other Bass-N-Tubes dudes. You guys got a good thing going. All the people are cool, except…well…I’m going to keep my mouth shut.

So next time:
~Don’t forget my shit.
~Bring extra oar locks
~Don’t eat weed brownies at 10 when you have to wake up at 4
~Don’t let people cut in front of you at coffee shops
~Don’t Drag a lobster net around during a kickboat tournament
~A fish is not worth your risking your safety

Fuck you Clear Lake. I’ll be back soon.

Five days straight of Clear Lake. There was bass everywhere. I’ve never seen so many bass. My first night and best night fishing ever. Fish stacked on top of fish!! 60 plus hours of fishing.The best bass fishing trip I’ve ever been on. A lake that has impressed me more than anything I’ve ever seen. I think I’m in love! Eveyrone caught something on everything. Does that make sense? Jigs, sweet beavers, frogs, shakey heads, senkos, lizards, 10″ worms, brush hogs, swimbaits, spinner baits, rip baits, buzz baits….it goes on….you can fish tullies, docks, rocks, sloughs, bays, keys, trees! We had great weather and saw the tempurature of the lake increase 6 degrees in one day. It was real windy only one day while we were there and the moon was always bright and high. I’m real proud of the boats, the Turdz, and for mother nature for creating heaven on earth. Need tackle? There are shops all around, they even sell brush hogs in gas stations! Everyone caught good fish. There was a FLW tour going on the whole time we were there but that didn’t stop the fish from biting anything we threw.

These photos were gone for a long time. I finally found them. Here are mine.

Here are Tomcat’s (there are a lot of these!)

I finally broke a streak that had been pissin me off. I guess it comes with fishing big baits. I went to lexington for the first which accounted for one of the skunks. That place is pretty cool. I didn’t fish muc as I went there for a “rowing and picnic trip” with the chick. I taught her how to use a baitcaster and as usual she picked it up in no time. I was surprised she didn’t stick a toad on her first cast using a “real bass rig”…haha
pic from the “rowing and picnic trip”

This fish broke my three trip skunk trip. This was the only fish landed. I lost one other BIG one at the boat. I should probably get a net when throwing these big baits!
8.1

I’m down for a few more skunks….as long as I get that magic 15+ fish

haha…rat thought he had a monster on and I was all stoked cause I was gettin’ a homie on what I thought would be a nice fish. One flash of orange and all of our hopes were quickly diminished. Rat got it to the boat real quick with his sweet new calcutta reel. But at the boat I wasn’t gonna grab that thing and rat sure didn’t want to either. A few tugs of the hudd, off the ugly creature went. What a start to a long skunky day! I was pissed cause I didn’t get a pic of rat and his beautiful carp too.

Water temp: dunno maybe aroubnd 62
Water Clarity: Stained(2ft-3ft visibility)
Weather: Cold Morning, Clear Blue Skies, WARM!!

The turn out was great. 40 tubers! There were some dudes that even showed up from as far south as Paso Robles!(Thanks for bringing the livewell Bryan) I was hoping we’d end up last but unfortunately it didn’t happen. Jerbs got second with the big fish and I placed 4th. Best part about it is, Jerbs got second to a 20 pound bag with one fish weighing 13.54 pounds! Total payout for him was $540.00! Congrats Jerbs on your first tourney. Way to rep the Crew.

It was a long 8 hours on the water and the fishing was tough. Every one I talked to said they were having a slow day. It looked as if everyone was drop shotting, trying to get some fish in the bags. I didn’t get bit until the last 2 hours of the tourney. I was stressing real hard that I was going to show up empty handed. Mario Mas would have been there with us too, he lost a monster on a Huddie that came unbuttoned after it was on the hook for only a few seconds. I think that was his only bite all day. Same for me too, one bite, 8.8lbs. It was followed up by another fish on the next cast that was probably a 6 or 7 pounder that came unbuttoned right at the pontoon. That fish would have put me in second! Guess it’d be a good idea to put trap hooks on swimbaits while fishing in a tourney.

Denise form Coyote Bait and Tackle did sponsor the event which was cool and she did also provide a very generous raffle at the end of the event. I came away with some sweet 3:16 frogs and Jerbs got a BBZ floater. Mario Mas scored some Bassaholics gear which will soon be replaced by some BassTurd gear which I am currently working on now.

So check the Results here(they spelled my name wrong) and feel free to stop by the Bass-n-Tubes website to check for future Opens.

Now go buy some tackle!

I love huddlestons! I finally broke down and bought a proper swimbait rod. Its the okuma guide select H 7’11″. After that I had to buy a hudd. I have been using one rod and the same swimbait for the last few trips since I dumped the ss jerbs. It has paid off. I now have lots of confidence in swimbaits. SO STOKED!!!
My self pic skills are kinda messed up now that I don’t have my tackle box to use as a stand. So i got crappy pictures of a few nice fish, but here are two fish where the pics came out.

7ish

13.12…tied with my old PB.. WEIRD!

O’yeah…swimbaits are tight!

I was fortunate enough to be in the right spot at the right time at the best trophy bass fishery in the bay area. I invited three friends, one of which was marone, none of them ended up coming. Boy did they miss out. The day started off slow at 8am as it did for me many of the consecutive skunk days here. I didn’t care how many times it took to get skunked here as long as I was rewarded with a 10+ in my first year of bass fishing…I was determined! I even bought a new scale that can handle the biggies and worked on my self photography set up where I put my camera on top of my tackle box on the back deck thingy in front of my motor. In the end I was rewarded more then I could’ve ever dreamed!

After drifting around for awhile the pontooner dude that was fishing the spot I wanted to fish in morning left so I anchored up in what I thought would be a good spot to fan cast a particular area. This is the only place on this lake that I have caught fish, hence the fishsniffer blurring. Anyways…In less then 10 minutes I got one in the boat at 3#5oz. So stoked cuz I finally broke my skunk streak. I then caught a 6#2oz a few casts later. To make a long story short I stayed anchored in the same spot, throwing the same exact blue and black jig all day long catching big fish after big fish. Every time I said I was gonna leave and go to a new spot after this cast I caught a fish so eventually I just told myself that I was staying in the same spot all day long. I lost track of the amount of fish caught and focused on the bag at the end of the day. Prior to this day I have never caught five keeper fish in one day. After catching five fish I decided I need a little safety meeting and decided to chill. While chillin I hooked a biggie, my jig was just sitting in the water! Unfortunately, I had a crappy hookset cause I was basically laying down in the middle of the ss jerbs. From then on there was no more chillin. I was determined to catch a 10+. I lost another 10+ in the middle of a few fish between 5-8lbs. I finally lost my favorite blue and black jig when it somehow just flew off into the depths w/ only 30 mins of fishing left. I was about to leave and then decided I’d tie a new brown one on and make a few more casts…What a genius idea! This last fish was an absolute BEAST! She weighed in a whopping 13#12oz. I was shaking so bad I couldn’t even get my camera stuff set up. eventually I got her photographed, measured with my canoe seat(which was almost the entire width of the seat) and released. Somehow in the mayhem I ended up with a bloody nose, which was a little pay back from the fish I assume. She got her licks in but I got the photo and memory to last a lifetime. Thanks to all the Bassturdz who have helped me with bass fishing in the past which has led to me landing the fish of a lifetime.

Results:
Best five fish(in pounds.ounces)- 7.2,7.11,8.2,8.14,13.12
Yup thats right…4 new PBs in one day. HOLY SHIT!

alrighty…now for the photos so you don’t think I’m blowin smoke, not that I don’t like too
I took ALOT of photos this day so I think/hope that I picked the correct ones and matched them with the correct weights.
7.2

7.11

8.2

8.11 A nearby friend in a float tube came over to take pic and I’m glad he did cause I messed up this photo on my own set up.
Thanks Rigo!

And the biggie…13.12
I couldn’t get the glare off the scale and got tired of taking pics of a scale so I got 13.blank2. I swear there was a one there…hahaha


photo:rigo

WHOA!!!! Sorry for the long post but this was the best day of fishing EVER!
Tight linez and new PBs to all Bassturdz this spring!