First off, if you've figured out how to consistently catch 5-9 lbers in the reservoirs, you're waaaaaay ahead of me, and anyone else I know. Rob and I would kill for that class fish in tournaments. Don't think I haven't noticed all this Rising Son talk. I'm still wondering if that only works on the delta and CL, but anyway...

While I fully agree with your assessment of our lakes today, the strategies you've described are themselves a product of much more difficult fishing. The difference between now and 5-10 years ago is that back then the very best way to catch high numbers of double digit bass was to fish lots of different lakes with various techniques. In other words the way you're fishing now. You didn't have to choose between two paths.

I miss the variety that type of fishing used to provide, but tournament fishing has added some diversity and plenty of challenge for me in the meantime. Fishing the mother lode region gives a very strong incentive to keep fine tuning my swimbait presentation. I've never really understood the recent obsession in the industry with hard swimbaits and haven't caught much with them (other than wakebaits of course). Maybe this winter I'll try to figure that one out.

I also very much believe lake conditions have some part to play in the weird fishing. Last winter the swimbait fishing started out not half bad, then the DFG stocked 100000000 pounds of trout, and strangely enough the bass didn't seem hungry anymore. It didn't help that the lakes didn't have any water, so all those trout were concentrated. It was like the mother lode lakes turned into bay area lakes. If we get some rain and a few fewer trout, things could pick up again. Also, it'd be nice if they opened coyote up to boats again so I could crack some big february flip fish. Last year sucked in that department :(

Also, Jake: 17 hudd fish in one day? Holy ****. Aside from a few wild nights of 25+ slammer fish, none larger than 2 pounds, I'm not sure I've ever caught more than 10 swimbait fish in one day.