Tom's Fishing Blog

Friday, January 04, 2013

Fishing has been excellent this winter. Better than expected really. Guide trips and my tournament went well. We have beend catching them mostly deep and suspended over deep water. Using my Lowrance Electronics and following the shad have been the most important factors to success. Here are some pictures-

Monday, December 03, 2012

I have been fishing tournaments since 1986. I have won a bunch of times, have a trophy room full of plaques and pictures of very memorable days on the water. There are only a handful of days that have been "magical". Days that I will never forget....last Saturday December 1st was one of those days.

We had been practicing El Cap for weeks and catching them pretty good. Our pattern was a mix of chasing the schooling "breakin" fish, fishing crankbaits and plastics on shallow rocks, and fishing very specific isolated structure in 30-40ft of water. The Bass have been at all depths. The shallow fish seemed to be one here one there. But the deep fish were bunched up and if you caught one you could catch many more. My partner Matt Luna and I knew we were gonna get em but we also knew we would need some big bites to win. 

36 boats showed up to do battle for the National Bass West Team event at El Capitan Lake. We were the 7th boat out and got our spot we wanted. I broke the first fish off at it felt like a good one. It was a slow start and we only caught 2 there. I knew if we did not load the boat quick we would be on the move the rest of the day. We chased the breakers for a while but they were being really picky. We picked up a crankbait fish shallow so now we have 3. We ran around hitting a handful of spots and had about a 13lb limit at 10:30am.

Then the magic happend. From 11am - 1:00pm we caught an amazing number of fish and they were all big. We culled everything in the livewell and put two 4lbers, a 5lb, a 6lb and a 7lb fish in the boat. We were catching 3lb ers and just tossing them back. All these bass came on 2 different baits fished on the bottom from 30-42ft of water. It was not just us....the whole lake was on fire. It took 20lbs for a check and over 18lbs to make the top 10. The winners had 31lbs! For a December tournament these weights were incredible. I was super stoked to see my kids on the dock at weigh in and share this with them. Here are some pic's-

Happy Holidays!

Tom 

Monday, December 03, 2012

This is one of my favorite times of the year. The Bass are on the shad, schooling shallow and deep. Some days can be a challenge but once you find the most productive areas you can catch fish for weeks. I use my electronics alot during this time of year. Here are a few highlights-

this is a school of bass feeding on shad...                               scrounger swimbait fished on the bottom...

crankbait fish...                                                                              Rapala Ice Jig...

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Hey Everyone, If you have not been fishing in November you missed it. One of my favorite times of the year.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

2nd place and 7k with my buddy Dennis at The National Bass West Havasu Team Classic. Thanks everyone for all the calls and messages of support. Special thanks to Bass King Clothing,Reactor Watches, Boat Bling, Phenix Bait Company, Frank Toyota,East County Bait and Tackle, San Diego Fish Online, and Anglers Marine Lakeside for supporting me. Good news when I got home learning my new Triton powered by Mercury Marine will be rigged this week! Back on the water very soon :)