"Hey, I can't fish on Saturday. Can you fish on Friday instead?"
"Look who you're asking here," I responded.
"Don't you ever work? Don't you have a job?"
"Yeah, sure. Where we going?"
"Wanna fish San V?"
"San Diego?...Let me dust off my Dodgers hat."
I wish choosing a place to eat dinner with the GF was as easy as figuring out where to fish on the weekends.
*
We were the 2nd ones in line that chilly Friday morning, the guys in front of us being 2 of our bass club members who were undoubtedly pre-fishing the tournament we have scheduled there soon. While my buddy dock talked the early morning away with them, undoubtedly giving them bunk information or ensuring they'd go on a wild goose chase once they launch, I used this time to create and respond to work emails. The key to working from home, or the back of a Nitro in this case, is to be engaged enough to be a blip on the work radar and peoples' Inboxes, but not so much that people begin engaging you. You try too hard and the next thing you know, you're in the back of a cove somewhere having a Zoom call, trying to get the geese to STFU while you're madly toggling the MUTE button.
We launched nearly at dusk along with about a half a dozen other early birds who apparently also don't work on Fridays. We've only ventured on San Vicente a handful of times, as it is a good 2.5 hours away from East LA, so we're far from locals. Although we've fished it 3 times in the past 6 weeks, including the Angler's Tournament Owner's Appreciation tournament in December, we didn't do too shabby for our first real tournament that day, considering the fact the trolling motor decided to take a crap at 9 am. Fishing the rest of the day without it felt like fishing with one hand tied behind your back and being at the mercy of the wind. Having forward facing sonar without a functional trolling motor is what I think Hell is like.
San Vicente Blast Off
In any case, the bite today was much like the bite during the tournament: it was there, but there was no discernible pattern or common denominator. It seems that out of the 10 or so keepers we caught, 9 of them were caught all on different baits in different depths, in different areas, during different hours of the day. We'd catch a fish, and would remain on the spot to try to isolate a pattern, to no avail. 30 minutes later, we'd be fishing a different area, with a different bait, in a different depth, and then we'd get another fish. We'd try to isolate THAT pattern and it would go no where. Yet we managed to scratch out a limit and some.
C'est La Vie.
Our best 5 weighed about eleven and a half pounds. Jigs, dropshot, Ikas, etc. Points, coves, deep, shallow....I'm beginning to sounds like a Western Outdoors News Lake Report.
Got 'em!
Hook, line, stay on the grind!
