Both Pete and I were excited about fishing this one. Although Pete wasn’t able to prefish, I had been able to get out 4 days and had caught fish all 4 days. I hadn’t had huge bags but they had been solid bags and I counted on being able to do it again come tourney day. I wasn’t sure how the funky weather would affect our bite but at least it would be the same for everyone.

I had found 4 spots of fish in my prefishing and our plan was to bounce around to those spots and get our fish. Come tourney day, none of those 4 spots put out a single fish for us. Instead we found 2 spots of fish in our old spots from 2 years ago. We fortunately went first to one of our old reliable spots just to see if anyone was home. They were. I banged a 15 incher right away (a tagged fish to) and followed it up about 2 cats later with another 15.5 incher. The second fish was coming to boat so nice that I really didn’t have time to call for the net and just figured I would bounce it. Well it came out of the water fine but as it did I realized that it was only barely hooked and as it came over the rail, it was already off the hook, fortunately it landed in the boat. That ended up being our big fish (at a whopping 1.92 Lbs.). I had a minor heart attack on that one. I got one more short before moving on, figuring we would let that spot recharge a bit and we would be back to it. Hit one of my new spots for nada and headed back to our first spot for another 15 incher and another short. We were stoked to have 3 solid fish in the tank in the first hour. All of those fish came on the Revenge spinner bait on 15 lb. P-Line.

For the next 3 or 4 hours I think we went without a bite, even when we went back to our first spot a third time. Bounced to all of my new spots and threw everything we had at them. Cold wind came up, it started to rain and looked like it was gonna get real nasty for a while there, I even put on rain pants (for those that know me, you know I thought it was gonna get bad if I put on pants). All of a sudden our solid start wasn’t looking so solid. We needed to get on another bite in a bad way.

Then the rain stopped and the wind died. I told Pete that I felt a swimbait bite coming on. He suggested that we go check out another one of our old spots up Lido way. That ended up being a good call. We pulled up on the spot and both got short bit. So we slowed down and started working that spot. Over the next hour or so we put 2 more fish in the tank to make our five and then caught about 3 more legals that didn’t cull and about 4 or 5 shorts. Almost all of those fish came on the 4 inch Big Hammers in Silver Phantom and a couple on the Sexy Smelt. That was my first time fishing the Silver Phantom and I was very happy with it. I can’t wait to fish it in the surf for Halibut and perch.

We ended up with about 15 fish with about 8 legal fish, but we never culled. That was good enough for 8.55 lbs. and 8th place overall. Our best finish ever in a series event. Funny, this is the start of our third year fishing SWBA. The first year we just kept our heads down and tried to make it through each event with some fish, (skunked in Long Beach doh!), last year we had shook off the first year jitters and started to figure things out. Our goal last year was to make the finale and coming in 15th overall we just squeaked in. This year our goal was to get into the money. We did it in the first event. Now I guess the only thing left is to win one!

See ya in Dana.

Bryan

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