Edmond Zilaff’s chunky Lake Natoma (near Sacramento, CA) spotted bass was a personal best for the young angler — the plastic worm-slurping fatty is his largest ever by at least a few pounds. After a quick pic, E.Z. released the fish.
As an entry to the July Hawg of the Month Contest, you’ll get a chance to vote for Edmond at the end of the month. Winner gets some Pautzke’s headgear and a shot at the grand prize, a fishing trip for two with Bill Swanny Swann of Swanny’s Fishing. To enter, send us an email with details of your catch.
A new Lake Shasta record for spotts!
Our old friend Scott Green is one of the top bass anglers in all of California. If you ever see his name in a tournament you’re fishing at places like Clear Lake, Berryessa or Shasta, start thinking about second place! To prove my point, check out these massive spotted bass from Lake Shasta he just caught, including a new lake record 8.85 pounder, which is a pound and change off the World Record!
Nice work, dude!
by JD on December 9, 2010
Well, only 99 more of these babies to go today!
Damn, it’s happening again! Here I sit at the ol’ keyboard..trying to bust out a magazine feature and a newspaper column…and my brain is trying to sabotage the whole thing. Instead of generating some fantastically interesting and useful prose, it’s wandering off and recalling epic fishing trips past. And, man, when you get off track like that and start going down memory lane, it’s over!
Today’s little trek down the Street of Dreams starts deep in the Alaskan bush, where K-Dawg and I are on a self-guided float trip. The weather and scenery were awesome…and the fishing, well…how does 100 rainbows and dollies from 3-7 pounds per day on 5-weight fly rods sound? We’ve both agreed that that was probably the best fishing either of us had ever experienced. Then there were all those trips to BC… [click to continue…]
by JD on January 29, 2010
Now that the cold weather months have arrived, it’s time to give up bass fishing right? Well…not so fast!
While it is true that bass will get more lethargic as the water temperatures drop, you can still have some seriously good days of fishing in the winter…if you keep some basic principles in mind.
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by JD on December 6, 2009
Northern California’s Lake Berryessa is a well-known producer of king and kokanee salmon, three varieties of bass, catfish, crappie and rainbow trout throughout the year…but something special happens here in the fall and early winter: You can catch pretty much all species in the same day, in the same areas on the same gear. Sounds like fun, eh? [click to continue…]
by JD on February 12, 2009
West Coast bass wizard Gary Dobyns has completely re-designed his entire Dobyns Rods lineup for 2009 and has a whole mess of technique-specific sticks to cover just about any bass fishing situation you’ll encounter. The Dobyns Rods’ new 702 SF spinning stick is a nice, lightweight and modestly priced entry aimed at finesse plastics aficionados. But how does it fish?
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by JD on February 7, 2009
Our man, Big Fred Contaoi is currently flying under the radar, gearing up for his third run at the Wal Mart FLW Tour which kicks off Feb. 12.
Big boy will be knocking heads with some of the best bassers on the planet at Lake Guntersville in Huntsville, AL, where the current forecasts are calling for cold conditions and bass that are in a pre-spawn/winter type of mode. The lake is one of the better largemouth producers in the region and it sometimes takes a 25-pound sacks here every day to win. Of course, in the cold all bets are off and the smaller populations of smallies and spotts may come into play.
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by JD on December 14, 2008
To mix things up, Ransom and I headed to Lake Berryessa Friday, where the bait was thick and the species diversity was..well…diverse! We only had a few hours in the afternoon, but got into creek channel that was filthy with shad balls and predatory fish. Check this ball o’ bait out! 
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