Cris Vanclef and I fished the snagproof open the past couple days. I've never fished this particular derby before, not much of a frog fisherman. There were a lot of boats for the event. Somewhere around 200 between the pro and semi-pro team divisions.

Saw lots of familiar faces at the check in and took a little time to chat it up with old friends and acquaintances. Ok, we took a lot of time to BS because with a 9am check in and an 11am blastoff there was a lot of time to kill :)

We took off Saturday in one of the later flights and worked our way out to the eastern parts of the Delta. We stopped often, and drove the boat fast and hard through the yacht infested weekend Delta scene. Fishing was tough. We had swirls here and blow ups there but could not get the darn bass to eat the frog. A quality fish swirled twice on Cris' frog but never ate. Tiny bass grabbed the frog legs, but better fish rolled in the slop and slashed behind the bait without touching it.

Cris and I each had one fish that actually grabbed the frog. It may have been the same bass. Not a big one but a solid. We both missed. Or really and truly the fish probably just didn't have the hook. When a 10-11lb bass chased Cris' frog late in the day but didn't commit, it just felt like 'one of those days'. We blanked and never landed even an undersize fish all day.

Day 2 and everything feels like autopilot. Drive to the Delta, launch the boat, idle up to the melee of boats, blast off, drive hard. We tried all new water today. It was the only logical thing to do.

Right off I had a grab and felt the fish but lost it. Cris gets two blow ups and doesn't even set, they missed the bait totally. Feels a lot like the day before. Conditions are windy and cold. There were boats all around us.

At long last I connect on a bass and battle it out of some tree limbs. Solid fish 4.7lbs. We work down then turn around. Same spot but 100 feet up the bank I make a similar cast and get another one, high 3's. Cris has another blowup that doesn't touch the bait and then the bite turns to nothing again. Hours go by. 3 more missed blow ups.

We run back toward the ramp hitting spots along the way. I see a 3 pounder rush my frog from under a mat. It spooks. Cris fires up ahead and boosh, there's fish #3. Another solid, like 4 and a half pounder. We have our 3 fish limit. A few minutes later Cris gets an open water bite and sticks it. It looks like a solid but the hook pulls. All our fish that we did hook in this even were barely hooked.

Back at the check in boat there's confusion about the check in time. We lost 15 minutes on day 1 due to the wrong time being called out at blast off. Today we find out we have a bunch more time to fish after driving all the way back to Franks. This was tremendously frustrating because Franks was blown out windy. Next time they should print the weigh in times with the flight information.

We fished out the day for nothing but a final mysterious swirl under a thick mat and weighed 12.03lbs.

All things considered our day 2 bag was respectable. But with the zero on day 1 we couldn't make up the ground to get in to the money. 14.8lbs was enough for a check.

Frog fishing is a game of inches. We executed well in this tournament, much better than it may sound when reading above, but with tough condition and tons of pressure we just encountered a lot of bass that were not willing to actually eat the frog.

Overall an interesting learning experience and another example of how the Delta giveth and the Delta taketh away!