We did do our homework this time around and took the time to prefish both the past Sunday along with Wednesday as well. Thankfully, we eliminated a lot of water along with finding some fish that seemed as if they would hold for our tournament. There was only one major game plan, fish the shallow east side flats for the bigger largemouth bass!
Somehow once again, we ended up in the first flight. Not ideal considering the day was going to get pretty warm in the afternoon and we knew more fish would come up to make their beds in the shallows. No matter, we would be able to get to our water before the rest of the crowd and hopefully pull off a couple fish first thing in the morning on swimbaits.
I ended up pointing out the wrong spot to start but it was a great looking area so fished it anyway. It wasn’t too long into the fishing when Steve sets hook on his swimbait and promptly breaks off the fish. Dang! I throw in immediately after with my Trash Fish swimbait and also get railed but no hook up. Grrrr! I quickly tied on a fluke and get it in the same vicinity and half way to the boat a nice swirl. Oops! The fish has my bait! I reel up the slack, horse the fish to the boat and swing it inside, yes, our first of the day! Nothing else happened in this pocket of brush and trees.
We make the move to our original spot and it took a while to get our next fish. Steve is looking up front and spots a small male locked onto a bed. My Trash Fish comes out again and we only take 5 minutes to get #2 in the boat. Another bed fish 20+ minutes after #2 but #4 comes right after with Steve throwing his swimbait and #5 not long after. A small limit and we still have lots of time!
Our first cull fish of the day takes a long while to get in the boat as we had to patiently figure out what type of presentation to make to it but in the end pays off with a nice fish close to 3 lbs and turned out to be our 2nd biggest fish of the day. We end up getting 3 more fish from that same area (all on beds) but none cull our other fish.
Our largest fish of the day comes blind castings a Trash Fish once again right next to a brush. I get railed by the solid fish and immediately it goes straight into the brush! After a short tug of war, the fish pops out and Steve gets the fish in the net. 4.80 lbs which is by far my largest fish on Berryessa! Sweet!
Even though we have a solid limit of Berryessa fish we were figuring it would not be enough to cash a check on this beautiful day. 14.90 lbs was what we had and was pleasantly surprised to find out we cashed a check with an 11th place finish out of 71 boats! Awesome! Some much needed points and a little money to cover our entry.
On to the Delta!
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