Where to begin? Today I fished with the bass n tubes float tubing club <BR>< <a href="http://members.xoom.com/jeff_sxx/">http://members.xoom.com/jeff_sxx/</a> > <BR>up on the Delta at Middle river out of near Tracy. We launched at 5:45am from the rock barrier with about half of the 16 guys fishing upriver and half downriver. Since the tide was going out I decided to hoof it upriver about 1/4 mile before launching. I fished on the east bank up towards the bridge and alternated between a buzzbait, a spinnerbait, and a couple of different jigs. Caught one about 13" on the buzzer right away and had a couple small bites that missed it. First person I saw was (eventual winner) John Lake as I approached the bridge. The lousy bum already had 2 fish in the well including a 6-5 both of which he caught on the a buzzbait. I watched as he boated another fish past the bridge and decided to start working my way back up river on the other bank. Landed another fish about 14" on the buzzbait and then proceeded to suck for the next couple hours with no bites on anything I was throwing. The tide was pretty low when I switched back to the buzzer. Couple casts and slluuuuuurp a toad missed it by about 6". Crud. Then about 20 minutes later I connected on a decent fish about 3lb that came out of a pocket between the tulles and the weeds. There were some nice looking cheese beds forming up as the tide got really low so I threw a tourney frog on these but only had two weak ass bites. By then it's getting on towards weigh in and I go back to the buzzer working what small pockets of open water are left and cleaning the gunk off the bait about every other cast. I should mention here that I was throwing a Strike King Jr. buzzbait with a black skirt, which is I think what John was throwing also. This bait is pretty light and rides well over the weeds plus it doesn't have a clacker to get fouled up. I tried some other buzzbaits but they sank too fast into the weeds on the cast and picked up too much moss. Anyway I'm working the pockets in the cheese and I had a fish come up and make a bulge on the bait but not hit. Next cast it bit but missed the bait. I kept casting to the spot but it never came back. So about 30 minutes later I come back to the same spot and make a couple casts. This time it connected and I had my 4th fish another one about 13". I was surprized that the fish would bite so many times. Too bad that big bite I had earlier never came back for it! So that was it for me for the day. Tough fishing on everything but the buzzbait but even that was a fish every 100 casts (for me anyway). So back at the weigh in there were three limits weighed in. John Lake was 1st with 13 pounds something including his 6 and a half all on buzzbaits, 2nd went to Joe Castro with something like 8lb 7oz and third went to Tim Crane Jr. with 8lb 1oz or so. Most of the regular guys had from 2 to 4 fish. I had 7lb and some change and could have used another fish. Such is life. Also worth mentioning was Clint Ryle's 4-5 which he caught on a buzzbait early in the am. <BR>In hindsight today I should have followed the old adage of "let the fish tell you what to do". That is to say I should have been die hard with the buzzbait instead of wasting time flipping and throwing the tourney frogs. It totally reminded me of on friday when I took my buddy David out to Margarita. I knew the frog bite was not happening and after the first hour that the crank bite was dead too. So for the rest of the time I basically threw the swimbait on the outside edges and stuck at it. David hadn't been fishing the lake recently and when you look at the weeds, man do they look fishy! So he kept switching back to the frog to just see if there would be one up there. That was me today at the Delta looking at the laydowns and being too temped not to flip them and looking at the cheese beds and being too tempted not to throw a frog on 'em. Then you have John who knows the water and threw that buzzbait all the day long. And that as they say, was all the difference =)<BR>All told another fun tournament with some great fisherman and those ferile delta bass.<P>Now, a post script. After driving to the Delta twice now from San Luis I really have to smack No Cal drivers. This trip I saw three MAJOR wrecks including an explorer that must have flipped a couple of times and was resting on it's side, and a little CRX that looked like a monter truck had hit it. Then there were the two controlled burns that caused major traffic jams on the 101 through San Jose. Dumbasses on the other side of the freeway were rubbernecking causing a huge traffic jam both on the way there and on the way back. There was NOTHING wrong with the freeway, everything was fine and people were still being all dumb. Oh yeah and last trip I'm sitting on the 580 in traffic completely stopped for about 20 seconds and some guy manages to rear end me even though I hadn't moved an inch. Hellooooooo<BR>out