Garcia 2-4-2007

We had 16.2lbs and lost out on big fish by 1 ounce Our big fish was 5.4lbs.

Our fish where all caught on lipless crankbaits and 1 on a spinnerbait. When they day started out it was fairly cold and windy & very dark like it was going to rain. It felt like dusk fishing. So our normal lipless cranks in gold and chrome where not getting a sniff. I felt like oh boy this is going to be a bad day. My friend Brian tried a white jig with a twin tail grub and basically swam it like a slow rolling spinnerbait. This picked up our first 2 fish albeit small 14". At the time I was so glad we had those. I literally wondered if they would get any company. We had a nip here and a nip there on baits. Around 9am I tried a spinnerbait and caught a decent sized 2lb bass. But nothing again on a spinnerbait. I moved us around to different flats but basically the same thing.

I mentioned to my friend that since it is so dark let's try painted or darker traps. So knowing the success I and we have had on red traps before he tried a brand new color called Royal Red in a Xcaliber lipless. This is an awesome bait and I will surely get some with the whooping he put on me with it today. Anyway, I tied on a Sugar Shad by Luhr Jehnsen that is red and we began using that bait. Around 10am we caught 4 more bass with me catching 3. These where bigger bass and where literally hammering this bait where the other baits they where just bumping or not even touching. We figured ok game on now haha. Brian hooked up with a biggun that gets off and we felt oh man that could have cost us. But Brian caught a nice 2-3lber right at the edge of my boat momnts before that loss. It hit just as he was going to lift the lure out for another cast. He did a great job fighting the green fish and I netted it.

Nothing else went on in this section so I moved us back to one of the other sectons we where in earlier. Right away Brian hooks up a nice 3.6lb bass. then the best part of the whole day in my opinion was around 12 noon we had made several drifts and picked up a small fish or two when Brian casts his Xcaliber trap over my line. I had switched back to a spinnerbait as nothing was going on with my Sugar Shad bait. Anyway, I am reeling in his line now and I am having a hard time as it is taught and is just running up his line and not coming in toward me. He says I think I have a fish. I joke and say no you don't as I was thinking you got me you dummy Well, no sooner did I say that when I saw a huge boil right in front of the boat. He did have a fish on. Now he never set the hook at all or even made an attempt to do so. My spinnerbait was tangled in the tip of his rod now as the fish was pulling straight down and running under the boat getting buried in the grass then jumping a couple feet right in front of us. This fish is big too and I am thinking oh great the best fish of the day hits his lure right after he casts over my line and now we are tangled and neither of us can do a darn thing Arrgghh! haha. I tell him grab the line he says no it is braid it will cut me. So I hand him the net and I was going to grab the line when he raised his left hand high with the rod pointing straight up trying to coax the bass into his net. It barely reached and we netted this improbably fish.

Never in all my years have I seen such a thing. Every other time I had a good fish on if I made one simple mistake the fish was gone. This time around I guess God wanted us to have this fish. I think it is payback because Brian lost another big fish an hour or two earlier.

Anyway his fish weighed 5.4lbs and made the difference. He beat me good as I only contributed 1 fish to the party that actually made the top 5. I caught 7 bass and he caught like 10 or 11 or so?

We had a blast and the small adjustments or patterns within patterns made the difference for us.