When Duty Calls, Sometimes You Gotta Let It Ring.

Looks beautiful, but man is it freezing!

This last month I fished a tournament at Piru Lake during extremely tough conditions. Lake water was down 50 feet, air temperatures dipped into the 30's and the water looked like chocolate milk. Cold water from the bottom of Pyramid Lake was being pumped into Piru, further confusing the fish. Yet I still made the enigmatic decision to leave a group of beautiful women at a bar the night before, to go fishing. Dummy.  

Fishing with my back to the wall.

When duty calls sometimes you don't answer, or if you do just say you are sick. I should have just let the phone ring off the hook that November evening and done a bunch of shots with the hot women. Seems ridiculous to me now, but staying at the bar is a slippery slope that I have fallen down a few times in the past, so I did what I thought was right.

Who knows what would have happened if I stayed at the bar with the girls, I could have ended up face down in the gutter, but I think it was worth the risk considering the day turned out being a complete bust. The seductive nature of the south bay didn't get me this time, but that's not to say it won't get me the next.

I don't think I am going to answer my phone for awhile so go ahead and leave a message after the beep.

Skyman out.  

Blinded by the Bass.

I don't consider myself a "Superstitious" angler, so when my partner told me we would be fishing "Stevie Wonder" style I thought to myself, "We can work it out." If Mr. Wonder can catch over twenty Grammy's playing an instrument he can't even see, I'm sure we can fool a few bass. "Fishing blind" is a term anglers use when their boats sonar system is out. Which may or may not be a big deal depending on the time of year and your style of fishing. In winter when bass migrate to deeper haunts it can be a very helpful tool to find humps and clusters of concentrated large-mouths.

Think of a boats sonar system as a bat flying through a dark cave on the hunt for flying insects. Also referred to as "echolocation" a bat uses the echo of sound waves to determine the shapes of surrounding objects like bugs. A bass boat uses "bassolocation" to help determine where the fish are.

A beautiful crisp winters day at Piru.

We began our day in an area where my partner had success a month ago in shallow water. With the water temperature dropping considerably in the last few weeks (In the lower fifties), my "fishy" sense told me that deeper was the way to go. Not being able to take the blindfold off our boat, we would have to use our deep jigs and drop shots to navigate the lakes bottom like a blind man uses his cane to get down a busy sidewalk. Sure we might bump into an occasional stranger or bush but we'll get where we need to be eventually.

The only problem with this scenario is in a tournament time is an issue. Not only are we up against momma bass we are also battling with father time.  We caught our first fish around 9 am near the dam in deeper water on a six inch purple worm rigged on a drop shot. Our second fish coming an hour later also on a drop shot but a different color, prism craw. The last keeper fish of the day was caught around 2 pm in a totally different area then the first two fish. Our three fish limit came in at 7.16 pounds good enough for fifth place out of eleven teams. The winner had a five fish limit weighing 11.58 pounds, their big fish came in at 3.75 lbs and was caught on a jig, something we should have committed more time to.

In summary it was a really tough day on lake Piru. With temperatures as cold as polar bear farts I'm surprised we caught fish at all. On the bright side, not every song Stevie Wonder wrote won a Grammy. Our day was a lot like one of those songs, a good listen but I'm not going to sing it at my daughters wedding.

"Isn't she lovely?"

Sky man out.