I’ll start with our latest and greatest, the Motherlode Region WRL Delta event with Danny Peluso running the show.
After talking with team D&T, I decided I really wanted to fish this event. Not only because they were fishing but we had just come off a 10th place money finish the previous weekend and easily could have been a bit higher. This was also the Motherlode event which means not nearly as many Delta rats fishing!
Gee wasn’t planning on fishing this but with my lack of finding another partner, decided in the last minute to fish with me. Good choice!
We decided from the beginning (1 day before the tournament) we would run the same pattern we did the previous weekend and hope there would be some topwater fish as well. Gee would fish reaction baits and I would follow with the senko.
70 boats ended up showing so we knew we had to get at least into the top 10 to cash a check. We were thinking 15-17 lbs should cash with a 20+ lb sack winning.
The morning started off a little frustrating with a number of fish slamming our lures but not hooking up! Gee had 4-5 blowups on the frog and I had a number of good hits with the senko but nothing was sticking. One of the fish that hit both Gee’s frog and my senko (came up while I was retrieving it in!) looked to be at least 4 lbs which would have made for a terrific start.
Finally after a couple more blowups, Gee brought in a keeper on the frog. Unfortunately the way the fish was hooked created some bleeding in the fish so we decided it would be better to release than chance having to weigh in a dead fish. We were crossing our fingers we could get some more!
Thankfully, Gee finally got a nice blowup and brought in a 3+ fish to the boat. WooHoo! That started a mini rally for us and my senko started landing some keepers as well and by 8 AM again, we had our limit. The only issue was for our first limit, it only looked to be about 8-9 lbs.
The day was different, the weather had heated up during the week a bit more and the bite ended up being more consistent for us. We (mostly Gee) ended up catching fish on the chatterbait, wakebait, senko and eventually the flip punch bite. We got over 20 keepers to the boat but most were right in the 13-14” range. Steve ended up getting one close to 5 (4.94) lbs while punching and I added one around 3 lbs.
Although we did better and caught more fish, it didn’t feel that great while going to the scales. The thing we had going was lots of people were complaining about the bite! As I went to weigh in (we were one of the last flights) I was told only 17 lbs was leading??!!?? 16.48 turned out to be our final weight and to our surprise at the awards ceremony, 4th place was our take!
Team D&T also made up a bit for the previous weekend and came in with a 12.10 lb limit and was less than ½ lb off cashing a check. Crazy!
Signing off for now - Moto
