Fishing Memories of 2011

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Permalink Reply by Joel Alinen on December 12, 2011 at 8:52pm

Fishing the jamboree and banks with PJ for the first time...ran all the way down south and ran out of gas on the way back...still was able to get parnicky to weigh in our fish and I think we both ended up finishing at a respectable place...had a great time and looking forward to doing it again next year

Permalink Reply by Aaron Christel on December 12, 2011 at 9:06pm

I got my first tourny win this year. It was the club opener on Lake Samamish. In the past fe yars, it had only taken 5 to 7 pounds to win. I had 3 quality fish in the boat for about 8 lbs, and was feeling pretty good. On my last cast of the day, I picked up another 3 pounder. I was really excited andwas feeling super confident. When I got to the scales, I was the last one to weigh in. Brian Vance was in front of me with a bag of 5 fish, and one looked pretty good. He ended up with about 10.5. I put my 4 on the scale and ended up with 10.7. What a great feeling!

Also,finishing 4th in the Berkley with Mark Mrzena was awesome too. To finish 4th with 4 fish against such great competition feels like a real accomplishment. We lost one durring the morning that would have won the tourny. Ouch.

Good topic Ron. I look forward to reading the stories.

Permalink Reply by Travy Miller on December 12, 2011 at 9:07pm

getting into bass fishing and learning alot! as well as getting lots of new gear :D

Permalink Reply by Jon Werner on December 12, 2011 at 9:09pm

A funny memory.....   Early last February I was fishing American with a friend.  The first few hours we had nothing.  No bite, freezing weather but then I had a bite.  Three hours of pent up anticipation yielded a great hookset and I hauled in nice three something.  Next cast, same result.  Next cast, same result.  My friend, casting within 6 or so feet of me comes a little unglued.  "Dude - We're using the same size jig head, same jig, same color/ size chigger craw.  What the hell are you doing???"  I replied, " Well..... are the eyes of your craw facing up or down..........."

 

Permalink Reply by Aaron Christel on December 12, 2011 at 9:38pm

Lol, thats funny!

Jon Werner said:

A funny memory.....   Early last February I was fishing American with a friend.  The first few hours we had nothing.  No bite, freezing weather but then I had a bite.  Three hours of pent up anticipation yielded a great hookset and I hauled in nice three something.  Next cast, same result.  Next cast, same result.  My friend, casting within 6 or so feet of me comes a little unglued.  "Dude - We're using the same size jig head, same jig, same color/ size chigger craw.  What the hell are you doing???"  I replied, " Well..... are the eyes of your craw facing up or down..........."

 

Permalink Reply by Shawn McDaniel on December 12, 2011 at 9:41pm

After a long weekend of fishin,beer drinkin and campfire craziness over at the Potholes back in september my friend and i decided to put the boat in for a couple hours on Moses before we made the trip back. Right as we got there the weather changed quick and it started to rain pretty good.We said screw it and got on the water.Got to the first spot and after 3rd cast hooked up with a toad.It was an incredible fight which seemed to take forever ...after 3 jumps and lots of circles around the boat we got her in the net! With no scale in the boat we headed back to ramp to get camera,as luck would have it there was a guy in the lot decideing if he wanted to battle the elements and he just so happened to have a scale.Turned out to be a 6.1lb smallie and a PB for me.I would have to say that lake has some of the strongest fish i have ever hooked in to. Kick in the butt weekend with good friends and a awsome fish! Those times when second guess yourself on goin out can sometimes turn out to be the best!

 

Permalink Reply by David Parnicky on December 13, 2011 at 12:16am

I have a lot of memorable fishing trips from 2011 between getting to fish with new people, funny stories, nice fish caught, etc.  I have condensed them down to 5 trips and have decided to spare you all and only list 3.  That is my plan as of now, no gaurantees though that I will be able to follow through on that before this post is over!

1)  WBA club tournament with PJ fishing out of the back of my boat.  This was by far the most fun fishing trip I had last year!  The fishing was just like Whatcom 3 or 4 years ago only BETTER!  Hot weather, eye candy everywhere, hot fishing, fun times hanging with the club at night, sleeping under the stars at a Marina on my boat deck, and fishing with PJ during the day.  Fun times all weekend long!  On top of how much fun this trip was and how great the fishing was, it was the most self gratifying in that I took a risk and made one of the best (club) tournament decisions I have ever made.  I caught a 12 lb limit in 40 mins. on flukes off a shallow weedline and then the bite shut off and we couldn't catch anything.  It was hot, not a cloud in the sky, tons of bait in the water, and not a ripple on the water.  Something didn't feel right and I felt it made more sense to back off the spot and search for suspended fish out deep instead of running a bunch of spots doing the same thing that wasn't working. I backed us out into the middle of the lake off the spot we were fishing into 50 feet of water, slung my fluke out as far as I could cast it and hooked a 3 lb smallmouth that seriously had over 20 giant (all over 3 lbs) smallmouth chase to the boat.  PJ and I proceeded to wail on a few schools of suspended smallmouth around this point all day long on flukes and TW swimmers.  I ended up with 17.5 lbs with a 4.97 lb. kicker and PJ had 16.5 lbs.  Not bad for two limits out of the same boat!  It was absolutely insane! We hooked fish on more casts than we didn't that day and the bite never slowed down once we figured out what they were doing.  I am not sure how many we caught but we literally saw hundreds of monster bass chasing the ones we were reeling in.  I can't give you an exact number but I wouldn't be surprised if there were three to five hundred fish around the area if not more!  Dave Sexton and Ron Langley came by at one point during the day and were getting sick of watching us reel in fish after fish so we tossed them some flukes, got them out in the deep water and they joined the party as well. It would have been fun to have 5 boats in the area because some SERIOUS fish could have been caught that day! It was an unreal day that I will never forget!   

2)  I took a co worker and his 8 year old son fishing on Lake Whatcom one day in early June.   He didn't think his son would last longer than an hour or two as he wasn't that interested in fishing. After they each caught around 10 smallmouth and each had a 3.5 lber his son didn't want to leave!  The highlight of the day was his son asking halfway through the day when they were going to get a boat.  It was pretty cool getting to help them have a fun day on the lake together!

3)  Getting schooled by one of my friends who is just starting to get into fishing.  He was fishing out of the back of my boat during a Borderline tournament on Lake Samish.  It was early spring, the fishing was super tough, I was super sick, the water was in the upper 40's and we had been fishing all day without landing a fish.  My friend asked about the TW swimmer.  I told him it was way too cold and that he probably wouldn't get anything to eat it.  He decides to try it anyways, slings it out there, and lands a smallmouth that weighs almost 4 lbs. on the very first cast with it!  I told him to not ever listen to any fishing advice that I try to give him ever again!  It's always cool to see beginning anglers make their own decisions and catch a nice fish in doing so!

*Honerable Mention*  My biggest smallmouth of the year, a 5lb. 11 ouncer out of Lake Washington in early April on one of the most consistent smallmouth lures there is, the boring green pumpkin tube!

Permalink Reply by Mark Maderos on December 13, 2011 at 6:20am

Best memories this year are helping a couple of dad's from work to get there kids into fishing.  Like David said, both of these kids half way thru the day were asking there dads when they could get boats.  The best one was having a kid who has never caught a fish in his life hook into a 4lb smallie and watching his face in amazement as to how hard that fish fought.

  Second favorite memory was taking my family to the chelan for a club tourney.  My son and daughter have fished a few times with me, but never have gotten the fishing bug.  Well tourney's changed all that.  I had a couple of TBF / BASS state team jerserys I brought along to make team "maderos" in the boat. My son wore that jersey so proudly each day while he was a "professional" fisherman.  They fished just as hard as I did both days, weighed fish each day and now that's all my son wants to do next spring is tourney fish.  Can't wait to oblige him, much to Mom's dismay.

 

Mark

Permalink Reply by Mike Floyd on December 13, 2011 at 7:56am

Got my biggest out of Merwin to date (48.5" x 23.5") as well as a number of other nice fish and also got my biggest out of Mayfield to date, a beautiful 45 incher on a swimbait.

Permalink Reply by P.J. Koshi on December 13, 2011 at 8:34am

I have a couple.

1)  Fishing Banks Lake for the first time with Joel in the Jamboree and running out of gas at Steamboat but still finishing okay and having a great weekend!

2)  I took my girlfriend Melinda to Potholes in September and I ended up borrowing Mike Browne's Jet boat to go fishing for a couple hours before dark.  Se we are out there and we are fishing off the dam and she hooks a 3lb Largie, a 2lb Largie and then a 4+ Smallie.  All in a matter of like 30min, all on her own, all on Smurf Snot colored bolts, and all were landed!!! This was pretty cool to watch!  

3)  Fishing lake Chelan for the first time as Dave's backseater for a club tournament we had.  He told the story, we just wailed on them.  By far my best fish catching and big fish day this year!

4)  Winning my first tournament the Wafish open a couple days ago fishing with Ron.  Not only was if fun watching Ron catch fish, but I was able to catch one too and put him in position to catch our big one!  That Cutt was probably the biggest I may ever see in my life.  You da man Ron!

5)  I went on a mission to fish a new lake for largies this year and I found myself on Ohop lake.  I went with Tyler I. in his Tracker and we just fished around the whole lake.  I heard it was an off muddy color water, so I had this crazy lookin jig I tied for dirty water that I decided to try.  I ended up getting on a pattern of fish holding on undeveloped areas of shore with shallow submerged wood.  I was pitching my crazy jig and ended up catching 5 fish one of them being my biggest all year a respectable 5.2lbs.

Permalink Reply by Chris Ferry on December 13, 2011 at 9:32am

My top memories of 2011

1) Driving 7000 miles round trip to Tennessee for TBF National Championship and spending a month there fishing. My Girlfriends support while I was there. All the support I got form everyone when my truck was broken into. Cant say thanks enough to all of you here.

2) I only fished 5 bass events this year due to the fact that Nick Berto, Dan Wheeler, Bryan Vance, Thayne Hatch a combination were with me every weekend starting in July on the 21' Northriver on the saltwater. We clubbed over 100 salmon this year not counting pinks and limits of 7" + crab every trip. Berto is a hell of a deck hand and Dan makes a hell of a mojito at 5:30am and Vance keeps us well fed. Good times with good friends. So excited for this upcoming year

3) Seeing my son and daughter showing the want to get back into fishing this year was exciting for me with them having so many other activites with school and friends.  

Permalink Reply by Josh Potter on December 13, 2011 at 11:09am

I had more fun this year than any other. I got to fish with a lot of great people and enjoyed the entire season.

 

1- Found a great new partner. This was my 4th season fishing NW Bass and I have had a different partner every season. I am a difficult person to get along with! I found the perfect guy and I am really excited to start the new season with the same guy I ended the last one with.

 

2- Pre-fishing Lake Washington and camping in the parking lot of the Newport Shores Marina with a bon fire on the pavement every night. In retrospect it probably wasn't a great idea but it was fun and one of the local residents even offered to bring us some better wood for the next night. I thought for sure she was going to call the cops when she walked up on us. Who says everybody in the city is stuffy?

 

3- Battling the river in July in bar far the roughest conditions I have ever been in. We took a wave over the back deck and swamped the big motor. We had 2 pairs of sunglasses and one pair of googles ripped off of our faces from water hitting us. It was epic and I was very relieved when it was over.

 

4- We got our first NW Bass check (very small) and had an opportunity to really compete at 3 of the 5 events.

 

5- Rescued and held a baby skunk in the parking lot of Columbia Point Marina.

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