Numbnut - 2nd runner up - long

[MikeD]

I'll toss my story of the 2nd runner up to the numb nut, along with a bit about my weekend.

But first - who was the numb nut west of Long Tule Point who tried to get on plane with the trolling motor still down on Saturday afternoon around 4:45? I waved over to you while going by trying to figure out what the appropriate wave would be to indicated "Trolling Motor Still Down" but had no idea what it was so I just pointed to you - you seemed to figure it out with all that water being sprayed over the top.

Hipster/Mark and I got out for a great prefish day on Friday. We'd exchanged emails prior to Thursday when I was looking for a ride. He sent me his number and said to give him a call Thursday nite and that we'd chat about plans for getting out on Friday. Took off from Brentwood about 9:30pm on Thursday. I call Mark as I'm jumping on Hwy 4 in Antioch and leave him a message. After a wild ride up the slot car track -- errr hwy 29 -- out of Calistoga and that ride up the hill is something else, but it was a blast flying up it in the V8 Lexus 2 seater. Then suddenly I'm in the middle of freaking nowhere and seriously questioning my google map directions. Hmmm - ok, there's Middletown, go left... ok, where the eff am I. Thru Whispering Pines, Cobb - I'm firmly convinced that I'm lost in the middle of nowhere at 11:30 at night. But I follow the directions and finally after a lot of stress I make it to the casino. I check in at 12:45a or so but am in mad need of a cerveza so I head over to the bar for a quick nightcap and hit it at about 1am. I didn't set an alarm since I wake up every morning around 6am - but the psycho alarm clock goes off at 4:30am and wakes me from a dead sleep - and it won't shut off, every 10 minutes this thing goes off. So I unplug it from the wall and drop back to sleep thinking that I'll wake up at my usual time of 6-6:30 I wake up around 9am panicked and he's called 2x wondering where I am - never heard the phone ring. I call Mark to apologize for missing him and he kindly offers to motor up from the narrows to pick me up - what a man. I'm stoked to get a 2nd chance and meet him on the dock. Nice guy and a nice boat - and yes Mark, that boat rides nice!

Its about 11:45 or so and we're fishing in the southern area of the lake and I'm just enjoying the scenery and wildlife and having a great time doing my usual "lets try all kinds of strange crap and see if I can get anything to bite before I go back to the usual stuff" prefish strategy that for whatever reason I seem to do. I've got rods all over the back deck and my crap spread everywhere. But Mark is just whipping my butt with a wild tube pattern that I would have never come up with. He's whacking fish left and right. I finally pop a few fish off of a senko and am surprised at how big of a fight these little 2lb'ers are putting up. They hit like freight trains and dig hard for the bottom, more than one 2 pounder has Mark circling the boat with his drag screeching in protest. We're thinking "good fish! gotta be a 5 or a 6" only to pull up a 2lb clone. amazingly strong fish - gotta admit that they seem stronger than those tough delta fish - Cooch said he still thinks the river fish are stronger, so that's something to look fwd to.

We head to the southern part of the cove we are in and Mark is throwing a prop bait into the shaded area and a medium sized perch jumps on it, Mark: "ahh, just a small per.... look at that big one following!! she's going to hit this!! eat it! eat it! " and sure as hell if this monster doesn't fly up out of the depths and eat the perch on the prop bait - and it's on. I've never seen this before so I'm really enjoying the show. The big fish realizes that she is hooked too and makes a run for it, Mark is happily panicked trying to work this fish and is now praying out loud to the fish gods for the line to hold up and the fish to get in the boat. He finally brings her up and I think she's lined up for the net... and I whiff - now I'm mortified that I missed with the net. I haven't missed for a while and the last time I whiffed on the net I didn't get a 2nd chance before that fish jumped off so now I've begun to pray out loud for a 2nd chance at this one. He swings the big girl around and she is lined up much better this time and she goes head first into the net on the 2nd try and onto the boat. holy mother of god this is a big fish, it doesn't fit well into the net, 1/2 of it is hanging out. my batteries on my berkely scale are old and the display jumps around between 10.7 - 11.1 - 10.2 - 9.7, crap, I knew I should have changed the batteries before leaving. Mark's scale has her a hair under 10 but this fish is freaking huge - I've got no problem calling her a 10. We throw her in the well to let her recover but she won't fit in straight, when we lift her out again to readjust her the mouth is almost as big as the opening of the livewell.

Meanwhile this ski boat with some young kids has pulled up in front of us oblivious to what we are doing while they jump into the water with the loud music playing. Usually I'm not a fan of this sort of thing but its Eminem and that works for me. But on the boat is this little rocket bodied girl in a tight fitting white bikini who is rump shaking like a sista' to the music and its all I can do not to watch since I know how old I am... But lordy lordy I can't help myself. "Hey Mark, check it out, she's dancing for you to celebrate you catching that toad." We both wipe the drool off while thinking how good it is to be the king. It won't be the last time during the weekend that we are faced with these kind of visuals. I try to stand to the side of the boat to take some pictures while he is trying to get her out of the live well and on to the scale in order to help gauge the size. we shoot a few pictures and let her go, hopefully my camera skills were good enough so that he can post the pictures here.

We pop a few more fish and its time to head back in for check in. I see old club partner Dick Brimmer and we chat for a while, I meet Gator and sTony and sign in. Chat with Mac and Larry Nakamura, and Richard "Marty" Martinez and Charles Burleigh, Jason Conser and Jax and a ton of others. The Friday night dinner was a blast. Its possible that a larger than usual amount of beer was consumed during the course of the day. Mark and I decide to fish together in the morning session and he heads off to grab a burrito from the little store - in hindsight not a good decision.

We meet in the morning - I'm a little fuzzy between the ears and Mark's backside is a bit blown out from the burrito. We head back to the south lake area. He proceeds have a 7 come unbuttoned as the fish flew out of the water headskaking and spits the hook early on but comes back strong with another couple of good fish. We fish in the same cove from Friday but there are a ton more people on the docks now and bikini's are appearing everywhere. One long dock is loaded with what turns out to be young Scandinavian youth who are staying at some sort of group house. Of course we flip the docks looking for fish... My eyes, my eyes... Quickly the session is over and we head in, Mark weighs over 12 for the morning session to take the early lead. I begin my run of steady 5lb sacks for the weekend.

We eat lunch and I look at my watch, its 12:15 and I've got plenty of time before the 1pm session. I've just gotten braces installed a few months ago and with all that bread if I don't brush my teeth I'm going to have crap in my teeth for days. So I head to the room for a second to scrub the choppers up. ahhhhh air conditioning. I decide to toss my stinky butt into the shower since I've sweated out all those beers from the night before. I'm out of the shower, dressed and heading for the door when I hear the knock and its Mark - "Dude you missed the draw and all the boats are gone!" I'm thinking that he's messing with me but after a second I realize that he's serious. We head out the door to the ramp and sure enough everybody is gone. Its 12:30, I'm thinking WTF I've got tons of time before the 1pm session starts. Peter is at the dock and hops on his cell trying to get me a ride. I'm well beyond seriously embarrassed at this point. I'm wondering if something like this will get me into the running for numb nut, ahhh, I don't think so, innocent mistake... right... We realize that Mark can't fit 3 on his boat and Peter very graciously offers to let me fish with Mark again for the afternoon while he fishes alone in his boat. I'm ready to crawl under a rock by this point. Thanks to both of them for getting me out in the afternoon. I finally find a spider grub bite going and get to watch Mark toss another toad early on with yet another jump and headshake move that these fish seem to have patented. I feel for the guy, he's still on these fish and pulling out some great size. In hindsight I think that afternoon fish that came unbuttoned cost Mark a shot at the top, it went at least 6 and would have put him right there with Cooch. We fished hard the rest of the day but the bite seemed to have turned off where we were. Besides that burrito was still tearing him up and he's ready to toss but continues to fish. We took a beating coming back in with the others from the south lake area. I weighted in my 2nd ~5lb bag - I'm nothing if not consistent.

I ate like a pig at the Saturday night feed, that tri-tip was outstanding, great meal. The raffle was off the hook, was truly amazing to see all the great stuff being given away - trolling motors, fish finders, batteries, about 6 different rods, No Sweat Mist, *huge* bags of plastics. In the end over $3k was raised. The younger kids were involved and had a great time handing stuff out too. A real nice event to finish the evening up with.

I slept the sleep of the dead on Saturday night and headed out with Gator on Sunday morning. Got another butt kicking early on watching Gator toss that Shell Cracker - he was putting on a clinic whacking them good on that thing. Was great to watch him pull them in. He had a quick limit (before 6am I think...) and then I changed out the spinner bait and got busy on a hula popper. I haven't fished top water in some time and was reminded just how fun it was, caught 3 - the third while I was running my mouth about something to Gator and my popper was just sitting still there on the water for about a minute while I was busy flapping my gums. He just blasted the popper out of nowhere, one minute still and glassy water - the next this huge blowup. That'll teach me not to be on the ball with a bait on the water. I culled my first fish for my 5lbs. Then its off to flip and frog in a couple of spots, had fun with that too. Gator shows me how to walk the frog (thanks!) No frog fish but Gator and Dan M were going at "Frog Wars" in the boat next to us. Gator at one point cuts off Dans frog from his line when Dans frog suddenly appears in our boat. Dan has a break off on a nice frog fish behind us on 65lb braid. I learn that Clear Lake is an interesting place, and that in areas where it looks like you are fishing on a lake then you fish lake patterns, in delta looking areas you fish delta patterns. I'll know better next year. There are some good young sticks coming up thru the ranks to start watching out for, be sure to help/support/encourage them. It was great to see them out there this weekend.

Waaay to many people to thank - first and foremost the Western Bass staff - Gator, Tony and Korny for all the work involved in putting this on and getting it done over the weekend. I swear that Korny is a voice double for Bob Varsha who does announcing on SpeedVision. The only suggestion that I could possibly make is to figure out a way to get WB screen names onto the buttons so help put a name to a screen name to a face. Many many thanks to the Hipster for putting up with me for almost 2 straight days - a great guy, very generous and gracious and fun to be around, a good stick too - thanks a bunch Mark, you helped make this a great event for me! Hope you've recovered from that evil burrito. Thanks to Peter for offing to help me out when my mid Saturday snafu hit, he worked his cell hard trying to get me a ride and was very generous to offer to let me ride with Mark so that I didn't get left on the dock in the end. I got to work the weigh in on Sunday morning putting fish on the scale - was nice to be able to help out somehow. The 2008 event is already on my calendar so I'll look forward to being a seasoned Rally veteran next year now that I have this newbie shine off of me.

[Hipster]

Mike Mike Mike D!!!

What a freaking great time I had with you !!!! glad to come pick you up late!! HE HE

Mike and I got aong like old freinds after about twenty minutes,nutcases are the best

Thanks for netting them toads I caught with my numbnut net HAR

Peter thanks for all your help, and fishing with you on Sunday was a blast sorry the 4+ spit you quicker than you could set on her

Yes I had a tube pattern that could have won but the fish won in the end!!

NO WAIT WE ALL WON, WE SPENT TIME TOGETHER AS CASES AT THE RALLY!!!!!!

[mac (Doyle McEwen)]

Mark it was great to finally meet the legend..Even though you looked nothing like I thought you would..I really liked your experience of the three fish on one lure..Good thing we weren't going for numbers caught, you would have had it hands down..Hope to see you again, before the next Rally..

mac