While Rob was up playing at Shasta, My buddy Pete & I decided to pick up the slack at Margarita. Monday was just too nice to be sitting at work, so we took the afternoon off and went fishin'! We had the boat in the water and began fishing around 2:30pm and started near the marina with nothing. We were also looking for striper boils, but it seems they weren't enjoying the sunshine like we were. After about an hour, we decided to travel to the cliffs near White Oak, but again things were rather quiet. I was jiggin' and Pete was using a chartreuse rattletrap. One thing we did notice on the way over were several LARGE fallen trees waiting to be new structure on the shallow banks west of the White oak launch ramp. These will be excellent havens for the upcoming year, and will also be snag city for those of us who like to sacrifice our lures to the fish gods! Anyhow, we continued around the rocky point to no avail. As we approached Vaca Flats, things changed a little. By now, it's about 4:15 and beginning to get dark. Pete was still trying to rattle one in and I switched to a trout colored swim bait (Pete called it the bloody mackeral due to the red stripe on it's belly). We worked the shore and lo and behold, I got hit. Thought it was structure under the water, but after retracing my steps with a second cast to the same spot, the structure wasn't there. 3 casts later, I'm hit again but this time I got him! Pound and a half. Hey, I was happy. Nice day, not at work, then catching this pup was just icing on the cake. After catching him we had about 10 minutes left, so we worked the shore into Salspiuedas Bay a little, found the island (steep sucker!), then headed in. When we arrived at the ramp we overheard a gent to had caught a total of 6 bass, one on a chartreuse plug and the rest on spinnerbaits "in the weeds". Water was 55 degrees, but that doesn't seem to be affecting things too much....yet. All in all, a good day.

Micster,<BR>Thanks for picking up the slack. Glad to hear you got one on the swimbait!<BR>Those trees to the side of the white oak ramp do look nice, hopefully we'll get some rain to put some water over 'em.<P>-Rob