Having charted the numbers in recent years, there has been a clear trend relative to risk-rewards in pro level tournament fishing. Quite obviously, the risk has not matched up well with potential rewards and we saw that yet again with the Everstart Tournament at the Delta a few days back.

The winner? He did okay. (more…)

Oh the horror! Our own Kevin Stewart, disqualified for fishing in an off-limits area in Thursday’s FLW Tour event. What’s wrong with that guy? Surely this will cast a pall over every Westerner who wants to try professional bass fishing!

Or will it? Do I have time to list every professional angler who has violated a tournament rule and had all or at least part of his catch disqualified? (more…)

SPRING is where you find it…

You look at the calendar and sure enough, May still falls in “the springtime” everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. But relative to annual behavior of black bass, there are specific things going on in a given environment, and using 30/31-day increments is not the best way to gauge a plan of attack.

Locally in the bottom half of the state, the bulk of the spawning activity is over. Yet that’s not universally true as you move farther north. It takes longer for those waters to warm–based upon the amount of sunlight available. I think we understand this, but it’s possible to get ahead of ourselves. (more…)

FREE SOFTWARE updates add new capabilities to your HDS Gen 2.

One of the great fears of shelling out cash for new electronic gear is that the equipment is barely bolted on before the manufacturer is touting an even newer version. When I got my HDS Gen 2 a year ago in April, that certainly crossed my mind.

But today (May 13), I can say that I won’t be putting the same money into my U.S. Open prep for 2013, because Lowrance is offering free software updates to the HDS Gen2 as well as the newer Touch [screen] version.

These updates are available as an online download, (more…)

You might like hunting for Bigfoot or Celebrity Ghosts, but something discovered just recently in Florida is sure to cause concerns in bass fishing. The irony, of course, the biologists in Florida were not hunting for a new species of bass, but sure enough, when the DNA results came back, what they found that looked like a spotted bass–wasn’t.

And now watch. We’ll get to deal with it. (more…)

NOT THAT green of water to me, but they’re going to kill algae, May 9.

Since an ounce of prevention is probably worth several of gallons of gasoline, I thought I’d pass along what I learned today (Tuesday) about the water treatment schedule at Lake Skinner.

As is customary at the Riverside County reservoir, blue-stoning (treating with copper sulphate to kill algae) takes place several times a year in the warmer months.

It’s kind of a good news/bad news situation. The bad news is, when they stone the lake–they shut the reservoir down to boating. The good news is, (more…)

In a furious attempt to better rank the top fishermen across the country (and hopefully put me and the California Top 40 List out of business) the Professional Anglers Association (PAA) and BassRankings.com have joined forces to rate individual bass fishermen. Funny, I didn’t read about this on Bassfan.com and their “World Rankings.”

But so you know, BassRankings.com is a site devoted to keeping statistics (more…)

A PERFECT MORNING will stay perfect with a couple of quick tips…

If you’re like me, on every quiet, glassy morning you can hardly wait to make that first cast. Maybe you’re drawn to the perfect gaps between the stick-ups or that dimpling bait along a gravel bank.

You know these are primo spots that have produced on countless other mornings. If your bait can just hit the water, you know good things are about to happen.

So what can possibly go wrong?

I wish I wasn’t the foil here, but let me tell you about three things you definitely want to avoid. (more…)

LARGEMOUTH like these taken by Mike Goodwin a few years back at Lake Havasu are now common in everyone’s bag.

Recognition that both Clear Lake and the Delta are among the 10 best tournament lakes in the U.S. should make Californians proud. (Of course, we don’t hold tournaments here between June 15 and Sept. 15–so I wonder, do the voters for the Bassmaster list know this?)

Yet, would anybody but an employee at Phil’s Propellers, even remotely believe that Lake Shasta (33rd) is one 12-inch spotted bass better than Lake Havasu–voted the 46th best and two notches behind Lake Powell?

Havasu is so productive for both smallmouth and largemouth that bass clubs regularly leave the comfort of their local home waters (more…)

THE DESERT is calling me back…

Weekends are quiet on the web–the fishermen are getting ready to go, are already on their way or are on the water. But I got a phone call from a “sponsor” a couple of nights back who made the comment: “Get some more practice time this year.”

Though I didn’t plan out my calendar this year like I did in 2012, that little nudge told me, if I’m going to get in another U.S. Open, I better not wait beyond this summer. We never know how many chances we’ll get.

But beyond the consequences of having had too many birthdays, I guess you could say I want in, just in case (more…)