Fished Carneros yesterday and did pretty good. Between the four of us (Zach, Brian #2, Daniel and I) we had about 10 legal fish, and a mess of shorts. I met Zach there today, and we started working the same shoreline of tullies with senkos and roboworm worms and reepers in aaron's magic. Zach got a couple and I got one legal on the reeper. My waders have huge leaks in both feet, and after awhile the duct tape was beginning to cut off circulation to my right foot, so I got out of the water and took it off, and tried to put on some more, looser, but I ended up not having enough, and it leaked a bunch, so I fished from shore for awhile. After about half an hour I got two little bass on a little grub, then I hooked what I thought was a bigger bass. I got it to shore and it looked like a crappie. I'd never caught one before. I went to lip it, and it had TEETH. Do crappies have teeth??? I couldn't even lip it, they were so sharp. From the crappies I've seen, this one seemed to be slightly "blunter" or more bass shaped, and seemed to have a darker, pattern with larger black blotches. The mouth was fairly large, but not as large as a bass. Any ideas? I'm calling it a mutated Carneros crappie. There were a couple Mexican guys fishing next to me on the shore, who looked like they were straight out of the fields. They were obviously fishing for food for their families, as they were sitting on buckets, so I decided to give the mutant crappie to them. I figure if they want to kill something, it's better than a bass. I felt kind of guilty, because it was the first "crappie" I'd seen in Carneros, but I figure even if I'd let it go, there probably isn't enough of them to have a sustainable fishery. Plus, they're eating the bass fry!!! I felt justified knowing that those guys would go home with food though.
-Brian