After spending the last 4 days at Clear Lake for the WON Bass Pro/Am I have to say that there are just too many stories to tell. I'll try to write it down day by day and we'll see how it goes.<P>Day 1 - Pre-fish<BR>I pre-fished with Felix Camacho on Thursday and Friday. Felix had been there since Monday and said that the weather was good on Tuesday and great on Wednesday with a lot of sight fish to be seen and some decent fishing for them. We launched early in the am and started in Cache Creek. We worked down the bank doing different things and I stuck a nice 3 and a half on a tourney frog. That was cool =). We worked the area pretty hard but only came up with a small fish that I hooked on a worm. So after a bit we went out to some other areas on the main lake to throw some swimbaits. I was throwing a 6 inch fish trap and Felix was throwing a 5.5. 10 minutes later I stick a 3 and slap it on the deck. Cool! Half hour or so later Felix gets slammed at the boat and brings a 5 to the boat before it shook off right at the boat. Very cool! Time for something different. We went to the keys and flipped and threw frogs. No luck in there and the wind was starting to howl even in there so at 5 we bailed. The main lake was hairy, high winds and 3 and 4 foot rollers. We only speared one wave but it was a doozy and it busted a huge chunk out of Felixs' windshield which hit him in the face and cut his eye. So beat up and bloody we made our way back to Red Bud. Pretty nuts out there in those conditions if you have never experienced it. <P>Day 2 - Pre-fish<BR>Friday was less windy so we made the run up to Rodman slough to flip. Working that area Felix had 2 bites and I had 1. We shook both of them off, but were happy at how easily the bites came. We spent the next couple hours looking for sight fish and saw some but not a ton. We did see one fish that looked about 9 pounds and another around 7 or 8. Some fish were on beds but others were hanging around up shallow and were skittish. Spent the afternoon throwing swimbaits again and we both had a bite but no hookups. <P>Day 3 - Tournament time<BR>For day 1 I drew Idaho angler Russ Barger. We went looking for sight fish first thing but couldn't find them because the water was stained from the wind. Russ caught a dink on a grub but that was it. Ran to some dock areas and fished that hard but still no real action. I threw the swimbait around but they weren't biting anything. Moved again to some thick tully areas and flipped in there. I made a pitch way back over some 6-8 foot tall tullies and shook a delta money reaper and finally got bit. Set hard on the fish but I think I tore the hook out on the hookset as the fish was on for a second but ripped off in the heavy cover. Worked the outside edges next and I'm throwing the old 7" AC minnow just for kicks. Sure enough an 8 comes cruising out of the tullies and chases the bait for 30 feet before sinking out of sight. What a rush, but still no fish. Finally at the end of the day I just started flipping a watermelon/red brush hog and finally caught our only keeper of the day a 2 and a half. Well I was disappointed but what can you do? Some huge bags were brought in and Byron Velvick was in the lead with a bag close to 30 pounds. Talking to Felix who also had a tough day, he reported losing and estimated 11 or 12 pound fish at the boat on the swimbait. I guess that's tournament fishing for you.<P>Day 4 - Sunday the 2nd tournament day<P>Sunday I drew Albert Berends of Folsom, CA. We fished tully banks in the morning throwing blades and tourney frogs. The areas we fished looked relatively unfished but we didn't have any action for the first few hours. I threw the 7" trout again but no interest this time. After a while we ran to Lakeport to look for bed fish. The area had been highly pressured but we found a few small males still haning around. One seemed interested so Albert worked it with a gitzit and the castaic bluegill. After getting it pretty pissed it finally ate my gitzit, a small 2 pounder. Next stop was some tully points where Albert knew some big fish were haning out. Sure enough they were there and we saw 3 or 4 fish over 10lbs! crusing the flat. It was pretty incredible how large these fish were. Unfortuneately they were spooky and not locked to beds. We worked them for about an hour before giving up. I did have a small male hit my trout but it didn't get hooked. The fish probably would not have kept anyway it was so small. Finally we just decided to go have fun and go fishin since we weren't in contention and didn't have much going. We went to some good frog water and just started froggin. Albert caught a 3 pounder right away and we felt better. He followed that with one about 2 and a half. I had 2 blowups but they both missed the frog and I didn't even set. Weather was conducive to a frog bite but it just didn't go wide open. We weighed in 7 something for the 3 fish. <P>So that was my story but there were many more. Central coat guy Jared Litner set the new record for largest fish ever weighed in in a WON Bass pro/am with a 14.85lb behemoth. He worked the fish for 2 and a half hours before it ate. This guy is one hell of a bass fisherman.<P>Jim Reese won the tournament with a bag just shy of 60lbs. I don't know really what he was doing. Some people said swimbaits some said worming but I did hear several stories from people who watched him pull into areas and catch fish like it was nothing including some 4's which he was tossing back at 10am because his limit was already that huge. Let me assure you, the guys who did well in this tournament are some VERY good fisherman.<P>On a sad note, Conroy Oakley, maker of CO worms passed away from a heart attack while fishing on Sunday. I think the whole bass fishing community was very saddened by his loss.<P>And that's the word from Clear Lake.

i was wondering where these tully points were on the lake where you saw all those fish over 10 pounds??? specifically please

Har!
Well luckily for me I don't know Clear lake very well having only fished it those 4 days during and before the tournament by boat so even if I wanted to I couldn't tell you exactly where we saw those 10's. We were over by what people I guess call State Park when we saw the really big fish, but to be honest it's in pretty bad taste to go giving away a Pro's water, especially on the internet for all to read. That's just part of the deal in a Pro/Am. These guys fish lots of tournaments and they have their spots on these big lakes and if you give them away, it could hurt them next week or next month or next year, so that's the long answer but the truth.

-Rob