Editor's Log
Electronic Greetings from Yamamoto Central!
Decmeber 10, 2008
Why NOT A Topwater?
Popular wisdom dictates when and where it’s thought to be most advantageous (and sane) to throw a topwater . . . I disagree.
I’m of the firm belief that whenever we limit ourselves to any pre-determined regimen of tactics or techniques that we also limit our opportunities for what just might be a bonanza, not to mention a load of fun. I’ve shared this before, and I only wish I were the original author:
If you always do
What you always did,
Then you’ll always get
What you always got.
Listen up - quit being such an old fuddy duddy. There’s no need to live in fear of failure or ridicule, shake off the cobwebs of conformity and break with tradition one time. Who knows what may lie just ahead on the lightly traveled discovery road to non-conformity?
Cold Weather – November Storm
Man it was a cold Saturday morning. When we launched it was 27 degrees but it dropped to a bone-chilling 22 shortly before blast-off for the team tournament. My partner and I were bundled to the max, complete with full-coverage helmets as we steeled ourselves for the upcoming ride. We did our best to maintain a normal level of smack talk with the other teams, but watching as the tournament director and staff slipped and slid their way along the icy docks did little to brighten the dismal sense of foreboding we all shared.
But on the bright side, at that temp there was a lot more than a normal amount of oxygen available and a dandy corresponding increase in horsepower. The old Silver Bullet was pawing the ground, err…water, I suppose. So not wanting to look a gift horsepower in the mouth we used it all, doing what we could to quicken the 58-mile ride uplake to our first stop.
Two weeks earlier, and prior to the big front blowing its way in on Lake Powell, the weather had been seasonably pleasant, or better, with afternoon temps in the high to mid sixties. That Saturday by weigh-in time we didn’t even get within 30 degrees of that. Two weeks earlier the bass had also been eating topwaters, or more like gobbling them.
Because I’d been striper guiding non-stop in the fore bay area at the dam for two weeks my partner and I hadn’t pre-fished and didn’t have anything else. So we decided to make the illogical play that all mental patients would clearly make – we shot the dice and made the long run for 22-degree topwater fish.
Honestly, I don’t think either of us knew what to expect that morning, but it’s safe to say that what we expected was no part of what actually transpired. Within a quarter-hour of arriving at our chosen spot we were weighing fish, culling two and three-pounders, true monsters for that day and time on Powell. Before the sun was even up we were slow-idling out of the area with intentions to return later, before making the run back toward the dam and the marina weigh-in site.
Those were the first and only bass we caught that day. In fact, we never got another bite all day, a day spent slow-rolling spinnerbaits and pitching jigs in mid-to-deep structure, real prime territory. Back at weigh-in we were stunned to find that the best anyone had managed were two to three good keepers.
Of course they expected us to tell them all about what we’d caught the winning string on, and we did, or rather my partner did. It was all about a furious quarter-hour’s action on a brutally cold morning. Oh, and the bait? Of course, the bait of choice was clear: a full-sized Zara Spook worked in ten-feet of water over submerged brush. My partner, who in his entire life ( all eleven years of it) had never told a credible lie, was astounded when no one believed him.