to win
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would like to relate a battery issue i had experi- enced recently while fishing a local anglers Choice Pro/am on the California delta. i had pre fished for a day and a half prior to the event without knowing my batteries were not being charged. early Saturday morning, before the Pro/am tournament, i no- tice that the electrical cord had been unplugged from the outlet. i was completely stressed as i opened my bat- tery compartment and plugged the charger in to check the battery levels. The trolling motor batteries showed near complete discharge; so here i am the first day of the Pro/am and i have no trolling motor batteries. How am i going to fish with a 40-mph wind forecasted? i connected jumper cables in parallel to the start battery, as my big motor was running, positive to positive, negative to negative to trolling battery #1. i rotated between troll battery one, two and three all morning while, fishing different areas. i was able to fish in 10-mph winds for most of the
charging
teCH tIps
Photos by Jody Only
by bRIaN caRpeNteR
power up your batteries
morning until the wind came up to 30 or 40-mph at 11;00 a.m. Fortunately, i was able to catch a semi-decent bag using black and blue chatter baits before 11:00 a.m. and i was completely out of power at noon. My pattern was relatively easy. i was targeting stained water with current on ambush points next to deeper water. i would look for rocky points with weeds and fish 50-yards on either side of the points and tule islands with current on the sides next to deep water. The clarity played a big role in positioning the fish shallow enough to be caught on reaction baits. The black and blue chatter bait is perfect for these presentations. The cold morning pretty much eliminated the topwater bite in the areas i was focusing on. later in the day i used a black and blue jig to probe off the sides of the points and deeper water. one very important aspect of this pattern is to throw the chatter bait in heavier current and the jig in less current. The more current present, the shallower the fish will be. The fish will position themselves shallow in stained fast water for one reason, “to eat”. The slower current areas next to the ambush points will hold fish that can be caught with a slower presentation. at noon, i was forced to tie up to a dock and run my big motor at 1500 rpms to charge the dead batteries, so
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