Fool-a-Fish





Sunday, April 27, 2008

A Few First's for the Bridges crew

Took the kids out fishing yesterday. I didn't bring along a camera, but wish I had now that the trip is over. Zachary caught his first bass from a bed. We found a little male guarding a bed in a foot of water and Zachary wanted to catch it. I tied on a white hair jig and flipped it on the bed for him. He would shake it as I coached him and after about the 6th cast the bass picked up the jig and blew it out of the bed before he could set the hook. The fish got really annoyed by the jig in the bed from there on and Zachary was really anxious about getting the fish because he could see the fish moving in on the bait and blowing it out of the bed. A few casts with the bass just nipping at it and finally it inhaled the bait. Zachary set the hook and played the fish like a pro and he was just as excited as anyone winning a tournament when we got it.

The other first of the trip was little Emily kissing all the fish we released. I don't know why, but she decided any fish caught need a kiss before being released. Guess she's watched to many of the Saturday morning fishing shows with me. Funny stuff, especially knowing how girly she can be. Before all the fishing picked up Emily was telling me she was ready to go home because she was sweating and fishing was yucky. She's such a little princess.





Sunday, April 13, 2008

Texas Classic Bass Club April Tournament on Lake LBJ


I fished the Texas Classic Bass Club April Tournament over the weekend Saturday on LBJ. There was perfect fishing weather a little cloud cover and 80 degree temps. Water temps at 70 degrees and water clarity was about 3 inches or less on the upper end. The lake is fishing very well lately. I fished with Steve Bethea from the club.

The Tournament:

I woke up to the sound of the alarm on Saturday morning, but I was ready to fish as soon as my eyes popped open. I had a feeling it was going to be a great day of fishing since the weather was going to be so nice and the Bass Champs tournament the weekend before had good fish brought to the scales.

Steve and I met at the ramp at 6:15 AM and We idled across the cove to the first spot I wanted to fish and set to work, but no body home. So we fished another spot in the marina, but nada there as well. Then we moved over to the far end of the dam to fish the riprap. We worked our way down the bank fishing. Steve caught our first large mouth that was about 13 inches long throwing a shaky head out in 10 feet of water. 10 minutes later I hooked into a small bass that was about the same size on a cotton candy wacky worm rigged up on a dropshot. There were several boats on the dam with us, but as we worked our way down the shore they all left, but one. Don Steussy & John Hackney who were putting on a show in front of us catching small bass every other cast. Lucky for us the other boats left because as we fish past Don and John and then about a 100 yards down I set the hook and boated our first keeper, 7.36 lbs. That fish fought really hard, ran all the way under the boat and out the other side while stripping drag off my reel. When it finally stopped, the fish then jumped out the water trying to throw the hook, but luck was on our side and we got her in the net after a hard fought battle. She didn't go quietly into the net. Good thing big girls like cotton candy. :-)

We fished around there for another hour and no other takers, so we headed up the lake to a few different places, trying to locate fish. That killed a few hours when I finally decided to go up river and hit some of the creeks that should have fish on beds. We found a creek with a few small males guarding beds and picked off a few here and there on senkos rigged Texas style. I managed to put a 14 inch fish in the boat after while and decided to hit another creek after fishing that one out. A short ways into the second creek I flipped into a clump of grass in a foot of water and hooked into a 6 lb fish. We were sitting in 3 ft of water, so it was like catching a red fish, she shot out of the grass and headed up the creek peeling drag off my reel until I was able to turn her. The fight was far from over though, once to the boat the fish jumped, ran under the boat, and I had to stow the trolling motor to keep her from wrapping up on it. We fish out the creek and boat several more short fish and Steve caught one short fish that should have been a keeper if it would have had all of it's tale fin. With just an hour left to fish we decided to head back to the dam, but on the way I decided to stop over in a cove that I knew fish spawned in the back of in years past. We fished our way in and caught a few short fish, but once we got to the back of the cove I flipped my senko to a stump and set the hook on a 4 lb bass. We had 13 minutes left to fish after I put the fish in the live well. We ran on down to the ramp and decided to call it a day with only four keepers, one fish shy of a limit.


Tournament in Review:

We think we caught about 15 bass or more over the day. Most of the fish were caught on senkos and a few on cotton candy trick worms. Steve and I caught four keepers going 18.36 lbs putting us in 1st place. I also took big bass honors with a 7.36 lb bass to anchor our win.





Special Thanks:


Thanks go out to my family for letting me take a Saturday to do some fishing.


Pics from weighin: