by JODY ONLY
rnia DelTa
that we love it?
We learned everything that we could to improve our relationship with the Delta. We could recite by memory the appropriate answer to most any Delta question. It was all in our head.
We kicked off season three with a renewed belief in our awesomeness. We could find our fish with ease. We could be on them in pre fish. We could have 20 lbs the day before. Two days before a tournament we could have a 19 frog fish day from one side of the Delta to another, followed by 19 days with no frog fish. However, we found the Delta was still bitter in season three and laughed at our attempts to mend our relationship. On most tournament days we didn’t even go to weigh-in.
It wasn’t because we couldn’t catch fish; we caught plenty of fish on non tournament days, quality fish on non tournament days, schools of four lbr’s the day before and eight and nine lbr’s the day after.
If we could weigh-in our pre and post fish days, another round of rockstar status would’ve been achieved. But, just as it had in season two, on tournament day the Delta said no.
The Delta is vast, expansive, beautiful place to fish. It encompasses acres and acres and is riddled with the perfect looking spot to cast, the little target just behind the tule where the big bass sit and wait to ambush their next meal, the laydowns, the mats, the “secret” sunken islands, the cuts in Mildred, the points near Sand Mound, the hard-bottomed, gravel-laced dead end sloughs in the East Delta, the “hard-to- reach” ponds in the South Delta, the flats in the West Delta.
You have to love how positively everything can look like the perfect place to put your bait, and then again, you have to hate how positively everything can look like the perfect place to put your bait.
An angler can study the Delta, learn the tides,
Issue 1 April 2011
search for secret honey-holes; they can do everything to increase their knowledge, skill and thereby their chance to rule the waterway. While the fishery may allow an angler to be crowned King of the Delta, for a day, a tournament or even a season, in reality, the river is always in control.
The rollercoastering rapport an angler has with the Delta is a fickle relationship. The cliché is known and often said, “The Delta giveth and the Delta taketh away”; but regardless of the fact that we love it; we hate it, the one thing that always holds true is that we keep coming back to it.
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