Prefishing really paid off for this one. On my 4th try, I finally found some fish on a point near the Marina. For the tournie, Binh headed for the dam & I kicked out to the point. I dragged a C-rig lizard & tossed a spinnerbait without success for a while. Then, some shad started boiling & I threw a crankbait & got bit on my 1st cast (I lost the small keeper that hit). Had another hit on my next cast, which I also missed, but it looked like the crankbait bite was on. Through the evening, I caught 14 bass & missed 5 more. Of the 14, 6 were keepers (I was able to cull a smallmouth), & of the 5 I missed, probably 3 were keepers, with one I'd estimate at 2.5 lbs or so. Binh caught 2 keepers @ the dam on the Ika, & while journeying back, picked up 3 more, this time on cranks (it helped having the walkie-talkie to stay in touch). Knowing we both had our limits really helped me to relax & enjoy the fun fishing. Binh did catch a long, skinny smallmouth that weighed only 1 lb. It had a split lower lip - maybe that was making it difficult for it to feed. We ended up culling 3 fish & managed a little better than a 2 lb average for the 7 we weighed-in, with Binh catching both of our larger fish.

In any case, it was a lot more fun than my debacle last year @ Yorty Creek. Between us, we had on around 40 fish for the night. Lot of dinks, but enough quality fish to make things interesting. I have to give a lot of credit to Binh for being so successful fishing water he had never seen before, & for switching over f/ soft plastics to cranks when that bite got going.

Couple interesting things - the bite was strong until the fog rolled in around midnight & obscured the moon. And, the largemouth seemed to move in after dark, while prior to sunset, the smallmouth were all over the point (some real dink smallmouth, too).

It turned out to be Todd & William's night, but I was very pleased. That's the best fishing I've experienced at Sonoma in about 4 years. I will no longer scoff @ Todd's claims that night fishing at Sonoma can actually be good.