Well, I did it, I fished my first pro/am. Drove up on Friday night and towed Brian #2's boat to Lopez since his van broke on Thurs. and he has a club tournament on Sat. Dropped his ass off at Lopez and drove the rest of the way up to Naci. Hung out with the Bass N Tubes crew and while they were out fishing on Sat. I slept. Then I slept some more, and when I woke up I got all my stuff together for the tournament on Sunday. Got everything organized, loaded up and ready to go. Saturday night it started to rain. The storm came in really fast and it dumped pretty good. It also blew like a mother in the afternoon, in front of the storm. Sat night rob called with the news of a couple dinks he caught from San Pablo, so along with some egotistical gloating ;-) he gave me the weather report for sunday. I was pretty much figuring the storm was going to move through over night and clear up by late sunday morning and then we'd be left with bluebird skies in the afternoon and no fish. Rob's report pretty much confirmed it. The BNT guys didn't do anything on reaction baits, and most fish were caught on spider grubs, so I rigged my rods with a spider grub, split shotted tiny brush hog, and a rip bait (just in case my pro wanted to try for it anyway). I tried to go into this tournament as best I could as far as having a gameplan and trying to imagine what to expect. I'm pretty happy with the way that worked out. I pretty much followed my gameplan, and knew what I was up against, and it worked out pretty well for me.

Come Sunday morning it was still raining and cold. Dressed in 4 layers of clothing I made my way to the check in. I guess the bad weather doesn't attract a crowd as only 6 boats showed up. After partner pairing we blasted off as number 4. This was my pro's first time fishing Nacimiento, but he seemed like a good stick so I wasn't too worried. We headed right across from the marina into those coves over there. John got one dink on a Norman DD22 and I got two keepers on the spider grub right off the bat. We worked this area some more and then worked our way down the wall. It was cold and windy and rainy, and it sucked. There was like 40mph wind at the launch ramp.

At around 10 we headed up the narrows. John got one keeper up there splitshotting. I told him I knew of this one wall that I'd fished when I was there with Rob and John Lake, so we headed over there and worked the wall up and back for nothing until we were just about to leave. I actually put my splitshot away and was waiting for John to wind in so we could go, but he was still fishing for a bit, so I picked up my jig rod and threw out. John missed one, then got one so I tossed off that side of the boat and stuck another keeper. We found a school of fish at this spot, right in the corner of the wall and the log boom up by the dam. We anchored the boat and stayed here for about an hour and a half until weigh in. John was crossing their eyes with the splitshot, but I couldn't get it to work for me. For the first time in history, the spots were able to resist the split shotted baby brush hog with bass feast. I don't know what the deal was. I did manage to catch a dink on a splitshotted pad tue (from tackle island, don't ask...). I should mention the weather now. The rain stopped at around 9 and it was tolerable for about 2 or 3 hours, and then around 12 or 1 the wind picked up and started blowing the storm out. We didn't get the bluebird skies, which was good. There were some straggler clouds moving through which kept some pattern in the sky. The wind was blowing all the shad into this one corner, we could see em on the graph. Long story short, John ended up culling one fish, I got my 4th on dropshot and a short on dropshot and farmed my 5th on dropshot before we had to leave. :-( So, kind of bummed to not get that 5th fish, especially since I had a shot at it, but as it turns out it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. I ended up 8th out of 11 with like 4-7 for 4 fish. John was 7th with 5-8 or something, so unless my fifth fish was over a pound it wouldn't have moved me up. And believe me, it's tough to find a spot over a pound in this lake...

Good times, next month is Casitas. That should be fun. That's the home lake for all these guys, so we should get some fish. Winning weight for Naci was 8 something with a 2-5 kicker spot. One thing I didn't like was that they changed the format this year so that it's mano a mano instead of pro vs. pro and am vs. am. That kind of sucks for money and points, but it's probably better for me as far as learning how to tournament fish and stuff.
-Brian