So it's been nearly a month since this years Bass N' Fly took place and much has been going down in the GSF world. Lots of topwater bass fishing has been caught, I moved to another state, came back, a pinch of trout fishing mixed in, and Daniel and I finally squeaked on the podium at this year's event. It was great to get the feeling that all of our Delta efforts had finally come to fruition. Our "competitive" bass fly fishing began in 2010 at the Restore the Delta tournament. The fishing for us was tough to say the least (only 1 fish in the well) and I believe the fly fishing winner that year only had a bag weight of 5lbs. On the flip side however, the top gear guy's bag was pushing 50lbs! Quite a stark contrast! Anyway, the next Restore the Delta tourney didn't fair any better and we were skunked. Luckily the raffles were kind to us so we didn't walk away empty handed. 2012 marked the year we did our first Bass N' Fly. I felt that our chances were good but unfortunately our 3 fish didn't get us up in the standings.
Flash forward to this year's tournament and we were primed and ready to get in on the action. Lots of pre-fishing and exploration gave us a good idea of where to start our day. We blasted off around 6:00am and got to our spot quickly. The following that ensued in the next 2 hours sealed our fate. Luckily what took place was good! We bagged 4 of our 5 fish limit at that first spot. Thankfully lightning struck as well and Daniel bagged a nice 4.5lb fish there as well! Our next spot produced our last fish and we nabbed about 4 or 5 more that were keeper size but ended up getting thrown back. That 5 fish bagged proved to weigh in at 10lbs 22oz and ended up nabbing us 5th place!
Here are the results:
Bass-N-Fly #5
Team Results 2013
1. Mike Baisdon/Russ Owens 13.71… 15.71 - 2 lb penalty (5)
2. Alex Sanchez/Carlo Proto 11.24 (5)
3. Tyler Ganyo/Joe Gigerz 10.71 (5)
4. Brian Pultz/Ryan Pultz 10.40 (3)
5. Daniel Byrne/Thomas Goodwin 10.22 (5)
6. Cathy Case/Loretta Strickland 10.12 (5)
7. Robert Johnson/Mike Wier 9.61 (5)
8. Ben Byng/Mike Carlson 9.56 (5)
9. Joseph Marini/Anthony Iaccarino 9.38 (5)
10. Andon Bailey/Steve Ohrwall 8.98 (5)
11. Greg Holland/Matt Greene 8.48 (5)
12. Paul Gamache/Gary Cox 8.16 (5)
13. Dustin Sergent/ Steve Piper 7.28 (5)
14. Rod Buchanan/Ron Vanderheiden 6.21 (5)
15. Ryan Merin/ David Merin 6.03 (5)
16. Stephen Fitzsimon/ Brent Dawson 5.91 (4)
17. Toby Uppinghouse/Ron Speroni 5.84 (5)
18. Joe Marini/Ritchie Thurston 4.22 (4)
19. Dominic Alexander/Mark Kirsten 2.82 (2)
20. Tim Lawrence/ Fred Ramirez 2.81 (1)
21. Chuck Sterni/Steve Potter 2.68 (2)
22. Robert Souza/
23. Bob Arwine/Larry Summerfield
24. Neal Pultz/Wyatt Pultz
25. Marty Adrian/ Joey Adrian
26. Jason Renfro/Rick Anderson
27. Dave Roper/David
Total Fish = 91
Total Weight = 164.37
Big Fish = 5.78 (Mike Baisdon)
Daniel and I talk frequently about what it takes to do well at this tournament. One particular variable always comes up as a topic. What is it? A big kicker fish. What is it? That one fish that is just bigger than your cookie cutter keepers. In the gear world, one would aim to have a bag of fish that are all big and not have any of these cookie cutter fish. In the fly world and our experiences in the fly tournaments, one or two of these kicker fish will put you up in the standings. Simply put, one more kicker fish easily would've bumped us up to 3rd place. This year's tournament really hammered this idea home. 15 teams had 5 fish limits. What separated all these teams was the presence of one or two kicker fish. Just a thought but one that seems to hold true in these tournaments.
Anyway, in local news, the topwater bite is starting to gear up into full swing. We've seen a lot of warmer weather these days and that should increase the big topwater blow-ups. The local farm ponds have been extra kind to us lately and have been producing some big bass. There's just nothing quite like a having a big bass explode on a deer hair diver!
Lastly in the bass related news, we're hoping to have the balsa wood tying video done here soon. This is a project that has been put on hiatus due to many other life obligations. We also wanted to deliver a kick ass video, so instead of just throwing out a mediocre version we decided to hold off and produce something better. We like to keep our videos fresh and not just the same thing over and over. What this means is hopefully we'll get some awesome bass explosions caught on film to pair with the tying segment. Stay tuned and hopefully that video will be out there soon!
Stay fly,
T
