Well, I've been fishing ok since the first of the year, but just can't seem
to get that big bite and execute on all the bites I get.

The Antique Kitten underwent a propulsion transplant operation last year,
and the new mill has been having some disagreements with her electronics.
Its in the shop and Mercury is busy eating up another month of my warranty
while they play silly games instead of fixing it and letting me use my boat.
Good thing I still have The Tin Can with her 20 year old Force that
everybody told me wouldn't last when I put it on 7 years ago. LOL.

Probably just as well we were in The Tin Can. The water was pretty low.
The only real disadvantage is she's slow, and our first spot was a bit of a
run. With judicious use of a push pole and the trolling motor we managed to
skim into our first spot and caught a nice limit of small keepers pretty
quick by chunking and winding. On a hunch I tossed a large white spinner
bait up and dragged it over a shallow tree stump. When I started working
the shallow flat I told myself the water was to low and it was too early yet
to find them up there, but as I dragged it over a branch it got whacked by
our big fish of the day. A solid 4+. We dinked around a bit more, but our
crank / spinner bait bite was done.

A modest run (a long run in The Tin Can) to a back water channel we had
checked the night before and we started again. We planned to flip some
reeds in one direction, but one of those hunches hit me again and I went the
other way for a little bit pitching and dead dropping a senko. It put a 3+
in the boat just off a bottleneck. We were getting crowded by another
boater (friendly like) coming out from that direction so we headed back for
our original plan. We flipped reeds, cane (fragmata), grassbeds, and spent
some time cranking the edges of the grass. The senko was the only thing
that put anything in the boat, but we couldn't cull any of our dinks.

Out to the main river and a little flipping in one of the lakes and I got
whacked by a solid 3 plus. It wrapped on a tulie clump and I turned the
boat towards it, but I also tried to muscle it around the tulies. It came
around and jumped as my partner dove for it with the net. PATOOIE! Not
quite. It would easily have culled one of our smaller fish. Probably for a
2 pound gain. We saturation flipped the area, and seemed to get a couple
bumps, but we weren't able to connect. (We call it slicing and dicing.)

We finished up the day with a 11.29 pounds and 4.2? big fish for 5th place
and 3rd place big fish. They paid 4 places and 2 places big fish. LOL.
4th place had 11.30 and third had 12 & change. Execution got me. We had
our chance to get a check, but I just couldn't put the critical bite in the
boat.

Still it was an awesome day on the water. Except for our first run, and
about an hour in the middle of the day when it rained a bit we didn't even
have to wear our jackets.

Bob La Londe
www.YumaBassMan.com

Director
www.YumaProAm.com