Ok the delta is definitely a tribute to the saying (I love and hate this place). Besides Clearlake I can’t think of another body of water that gives you the anticipation that any cast may be the fish of a life time. That being said you can have some real tough days out there just as easy. This tournament was one of the latter days for me.

PREFISH
Friday we started off a little later in the day but it was still early around 7:30. We went out of Russo’s started in Holland cut. The sun wasn’t all the way up so I started on the west side of the levee trying to get the last of the evening bite in the shade pockets it worked well with the first fish coming on a frog in open water over the secondary weed line. Fished up the bank around fifty yards with frogs and spooks but had no more bites. I switched over to the island and started fishing the small points with shade picking up a fish in the two to three pound range every third or fourth cast on frogs or spinnerbaits. As the sun got on the water I pulled out the punching rod and went to town chose the mats that had deep water access and made secondary points of the walls or the islands. Like it should this technique provided some real nice fish four pounds plus so I ran around a little and found that everywhere from potato to whites was producing nice punch fish. Going into Saturday I felt confident in a decent limit 14 to 15LBS not a winning weight but a check and good points.

TOURNAMENT
And then there was Saturday we blasted off and ran to Holland cut first started with buzzbaits targeting current washed points third cast I hooked up and lost a nice fish near three this was to set the tone for the day. I lost two more on buzzbaits and my son lost two on frog’s maybe the long lay off diminished my skills for hooking fish I don’t know but what ever it was it can’t happen again. I never found the fish that I had on Friday only had one punch fish but not for lack of trying I must have hit forty different mats in ten different sloughs I was doing something wrong but just couldn’t figure out what it was. I caught two frog fish and one punch fish my son caught the last keeper for the day on a diamond shad red but that was it for keepers. We did catch a lot of small fish on cranks on the rocks and weed lines but other than stripers nothing big. For the summary I won’t give up on what I was doing I still think it was the right tactic for the season but I need to refine it. I think I’ll be looking for more consistent areas before the next tourney.

~ BIG ED