The Take takes the Cake: Berryessa Bassin

Miles Driven: 173

Gas: $20
Launch Fee: $21 


There really aren't too many reasons I can think of that will get me out of bed at 4am unless its for fishing... This trip I prepared a lunch the night before and packed the car early so I could get that ever so needed 30 minutes of extra sleep. Everything went to plan for once: left the house at 4:15; picked up Casey at 4:30; met Jim with the jet boat at 5:30 in Sonoma. Things were shaping up in to looking like we were going to hit first light on Lake Berryessa - or so we thought.
  

Things don't always run so smoothly if you ever try to get first light when your 90 miles away from a lake you've never been to. Needless to say, we drove to the wrong body of water. Mistake? Maybe... Maybe not? Maybe we found our next blog post location? Either way we had missed first light and we needed to stick to our original plan so we broke out the map and back tracked our 45 minute detour. 

We pulled up to the boat launch at around 7:30 and started fishing by 8:00. Despite our little directional set back, we basically had the whole Northwest corner of the lake all to ourselves. We cruised the clear shallow water along the edges to spot some bass before we got our lines wet. It wasn't before long until we started spotting bass at all angles of the boat! 

There were bass everywhere ranging from 3 to 15 lb with the majority of them in the 5lb class! It was almost too good to be true, and unfortunately it was... Cast after cast, it was only rejection after rejection. It was almost like looking into a fish tank at the aquarium because all the big fish you dream about catching are right in front of you, but you can't hook them. The excitement of these uncatchable fish soon wore off as I began to blind cast towards shore. Just as hope almost ran out in the heat of the early afternoon, one of my subsurface strips came tight and I pulled out this beatiful hen. 

As time passed,  the Spotted Bass and Smallmouth Bass bite began to turn on. Consistantly we watched nervous water turn to a boil as threadfin shad broken the water's surface to flea the jaws of hungry predatory fish. The speed at which the bass would ambush and smack the baitfish on the surface would send vibratrions into the air that sent ringing in my ears. These hungry fish would practically run the shade out of the water and on to land. The aggressivness of the fish soon turned into some pretty heart stopping takes on the fly.

Spotted Bass Busting on Treadfin Shad

It seemed like the faster you stripped, the better chance you had at triggering a fish to follow and bite - very similar to saltwater fishing. Every time we saw a bass bust on bait, we could cast to it and were almost guaranteed a take. Gorging themselves on shad, each fish we hooked would throw up half digested shad parts as we fought them towards the boat.



Casey's Sex Dungeon Catches Bass Too!

 Bassing really isn't about the size in my opinion, but more about an aggressive take. Granted catching an 8 pound bass doesn't happen too often,  they always make a fishing trip look and sound more exciting - especially if you saw the take. Although there was a big fish on this trip, It was more fun fishing to 3-4 pound spotted bass and smallies busting on shade right on the surface.