We were greeted with a great morning up there and some very good laughs before we even started as we were all meeting in the parking lot, all 17 of us and our 7 boats. Seems there was a great buzz at the ISE that there was going to be a 60 boat tournament on Bullards this weekend. Ya gotta love the internet rumor mill! I had heard this Thursday at ISE, I also got several phone calls asking about it as well. As we're all standing there at the top of the ramp, a couple of rigs pull up asking about this big tournament and if they can git in. We laughed and said "SURE, but it's just a lil turkey shoot among friends!" They asked how much ta enter, we said, oh, it's free! Thye decided ta just go fishing on their own. Then another guy comes flying up, and it turns out ta be one of the marina operators, he's there cause he got word of this huge tournament today and brought his crew ta help us manage the parking and launch boats. Umm, sorry ya had ta git out of bed Meastro, I think we can manage with our 7 boats, 4 of which are already in the water. Needless ta say, we all got a big kick out of this and it started our morning off with a lot of belly laughing. I guess the best thing about the rumor mill of our big event, it did us a great service and kept away many of the weekend anglers who might have showed up otherwise! HAR! HAR! HAR!
A big thanks to Sean, sTony, SteveM, ChrisA, PatD, FredP, Justin, Rob, Ash, MikeT, Mac, Danny Miller, JamesH, Korny, Kap and whom ever I might have missed, that showed up, was great once again seeing and enjoyin' a lil fishin & home fixins with old friends! We all missed Obi and his sister, seems they slept in and didn't arrive to the blast off or weigh-in on time, hence, they have been awarded co-owners of this events NUMB NUTS!!!!!
The bite for us seemed to be a lot tougher than expected, especially since we planned to all be back at 1:00pm. It'd be interesting to hear from those who remained or went back out afterwards how that afternoon bite was. I got the pleasure ta fish with Mike Treamont and his buddy Rob, they were kind enough to take a 3rd person and his 7 various jig rods on the Mike's boat. We decided to just stay right there inside and around the houseboats to see if we could put some kind of pattern together with all the various bank contours and structure patterns that were present. Unfortunately we only caught a few small dinks, although, I did catch one 14.5" keeper on an old 1/4 oz Smally Darthead jig made for me many years ago by Korny. I couldn't help myself and rub it in a little on the dock at weigh-in showing Bob the jig I used. "Oh naturally Cooch, one of MY old jigs!" HAR! That 1lb 1oz fish, almost didn't make it to the well, as I was sure there were gonna be better fish caught by the time we were done. But I changed my mind just before tossing it telling myself, "Dood, if it's a tough day, yer gonna need that fish!" So reluctantly, I fizzed it and put it in the well.
After 3 hours in there we decided to move out to the main lake. As we're heading out we saw Sean, Mac & Zeek in a big red clay bank bay, as we shut down to idle over and check on em, we watched as Chris(Zeek) yanked up and reeled in that 4 lb 9oz fish that eventually turned out to be good enough for Big Nut fish of the day. We hooted with em, shared our experiences so far and moved off to a spot ahead that looke really good and was different from what we fished back by the damn. It was at this point I decided to stick with the big 3/4 oz Jig-n-Craw the rest of the day. No more Sneko, darter head, smal jig or Hula, I was gonna stick with the 3/4 ton pick up, that same frog hair jig I used years ago at Oroville in that Bassmasters event up there. This place is just a spitting image of Oroville, other than it really had no flats that we could see, just steep banks everywhere we went. I poked that 4 lb 3oz fish on my 3rd cast in this new spot, in about 35 feet, with the boat sitting in 70. We purty much stuck with that the rest of the day. We had several missed fish, a few more dinks, and Mike caught a keeper about about 13" that we recorded, but turned loose due to it was caught in about 60 foot and it's stomach was already bloating out it's throat. Unfortunately 1:00pm came upon us too quickly and we had ta head in. I was kinda surprised by the lack of fish caught, even more surprised to find out my weight for the two fish was good enough to take my 7th, COUNT EM Santora, 7th TOP NUT.
The BBQ and eats later was awesome as usual. As tradition has it, the Top Nut gits ta pick the next event. I'll keep ya all posted for the Spring NutCase and it's location. In the mean time, here's a few picks thanks to ZEEK!
- Chris Anderson - Big Nut
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- Cooch - Top Nut
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- Pat Dilling and his Jumbalaya
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- The guys waiting on Eats!
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- Sausitsas on the Barbie!
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Must not have been on fish!!! 
. We had less then ten boats out there and weighed in about as many fish. As low impact as ever.
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