PRE-FISH
On Saturday the 10th of April I took some friends out to Folsom to get the first real good look at the lake. There was going to be an ABA tournament on Sunday that I planned to fish. We started out on the main body around the peninsula area the weather started out nice and the forecast was for sun with a slight breeze hey you got to give those weathermen some credit that report held up for at least an hour. I was hoping that with the warm weather we had been having that the swim bait bite would be turning on, I did have quit a few followers some big ones at that but none committed to eat. I decided that with nothing really going on out on the main body it was time to head up the river so I chose to go south just to see if the water was warmer and possibly find some bed fish. The first cove I pulled into I found a two pound spot locked on in about six feet of water played with him for a little while then moved on to find others. Never found another fish locked on a bed in the south in fact we only caught one fish up that arm all day and that was on a jig in about eight feet of water. At two o’clock one of the party members had to go so we took him to the dock then went up the north fork. At first there didn’t seem to be much difference, and then it started slowly we started to get bites then I found a small bush with three nice sized bass just locked on so after a few pic’s we kept looking for more beds successfully I will add. I was feeling pretty good about Sunday then hurricane Katrina’s little sister blew in and my partner and I agreed to be couch potatoes.

Here’s where Folsom got interesting the Thursday before my tournament I decided I better go see what happened to the lake after the storm. Good thing I learned that all the little dots on my GPS where pretty much useless as the lake had risen over five feet and the water temp dropped to 53 degrees the hundreds of carp that had been spawning were gone, so were the bass. It took me slowing down to a crawl to finally catch four fish. My confidence for the tournament was wavering.

TOURNAMENT DAY
The lake had risen another two feet but the water temp made its way back to 57 degrees and the carp were back spawning. Ok the day can start I feel better now. I was back to pre-fish status though you can’t have that many changes in such a short period of time and expect anything to stay the same the fish don’t get out of the water and leave. So now I just had to think about what they would be doing, they’re trying to spawn stupid! Oh yeah, with this thought resonating in my head I picked up the wake bait to see if I could locate any large fish and hope they might try to kill it to keep it away from there bedding area. Had a few followers and one that did all it could except get hooked. I started to notice that a lot of the small willow trees were now in the water most of which were in the middle of coves or near spawning areas so I took an LBS tackle jig and started to drag it around the edge of those trees in about twenty minutes I had put together a nice limit around eight pounds. This was not going to win this tourney but I had plenty of time to go look for upgrades and a kicker or two. I ran to a cove that had some bed fish in it last Saturday there were two nice largies a three and two and a half, got those culled and felt good. Just had one rat to cull and I would be in the money. So I didn’t get a check but I worked my butt off for the win just couldn’t get the kicker I needed. I finished in 32nd place the same place as last year that’s two tournaments in a row that are the same finishes as last year I made the classic easy last year so maybe it will go well this year but I need to cash checks. Next tournament my pocket book gets fatter.