a nice sunset from the deck

Yeah, I realize that “Fishing with Steve” is a pretty damn long story. Sorry about that. I was just energized to start my blog with a good story. I just kept writing and writing. Most of my posts wont be that long. Like this one for instance!

It was chilly on this Saturday night. It had been up in the 100′s only a week ago and tonight it was barely 65 with a pretty strong wind. On the ride back I wondered how the drastic temperature change effected golf course pond bass compared to Delta Bass. Don’t know….yet. I parked the car in a spot under a light so Sarah could see that I was back and headed to the water. The water closest to the parking lot is more of a canal that leads to a bigger body of water. It’s probably 25 feet wide or so. I fished it around the bend, to the main lake, and around into the main water feed canal. Not a blow up. I made one last perfect cast into the strongest current section and Sarah called. I stopped reeling and answered (you don’t reel all the way in with a pregnant wife). She was ready to go. I tried to retrieve my buzzbait and get out of there, but it was hung up. I walked over to the hang up and couldn’t get loose. Had to break it off. Well, there goes that idea for in the morning.

I finally got to sleep at about 1:30. Got up at 5:45. I was going fishing with my FedEx guy, Steve. Steve seemed like a pretty good guy. Married with older kids. He is always talking about wanting to go fishing when he delivers us packages. Last time he was over, we planned a trip for this weekend. I didn’t know what Steve did or didn’t know about fishing. When I asked him the night before what baits he wanted to throw, he just replied, “I don’t care, you’re the bass guy”. So I made the game plan. Buzzbaits in the morning, switch to flukes midmorning, throw spinnerbaits if thats not working. Pretty simple and easy to use baits. I rigged everything up before picking up Sarah and I was ready to go. My boat is in the shop. We were going to use Steve’s boat today. We were gonna meet at the Discovery Bay Marina at 6am.

It took me 10 minutes to get up and out the door. At 5:55 Steve was at my house! He said the marina didn’t open until 8am and that we’d have to go to the Oakley ramp. We got to the ramp, after getting coffee, and got the boat wet. Steve built a nice little bass boat out of a Gregor aluminum boat. Nice, removable sets, storage under them, carpeted, the wires were hidden well, the whole bit. The motor was a 1970′s model in awesome condition. His trolling motor was mounted on the transom, however. No foot pedal. My only qualm.

That motor started up on the first pull! I explained the plan to Steve and rigged him up as we got to our spot…….that we had to find. At this point Steve tells me he fishes for catfish and trout and not really bass. Hmmmm. This is gonna be a long day. The next question I had to ask was, “do you know how to cast this baitcaster of yours?”. “I always get backlash”, he says…….. In other words, “no”. Cancel my finely tuned game plan. Ha, ha! So basically, it’s gonna be a “back to basics” day. I’m gonna have to teach him to fish for bass. So, let’s get out the senkos!

It took Steve a little time to process all the information I was throwing at him in such a short amount of time. The guy is a bait soaker. To understand how to actively search for fish rather than sit back and let them come to you takes a while. No, it takes a lifetime. Let alone and hour. So there was quite a learning curve. From throwing the senko 30 feet on shore, to multiple hang ups in the trees (or squirrel fishing as my Grandpa calls it). Steve worked on what I was telling him and he did a great job of not giving up after a pretty long dry spell. That’s how you learn. DONT GIVE UP!!!

Steve and I had a good day fish-wise. He got to working the senko pretty well by the time noon rolled around. He got a nice 2.05 lber and a picture to take back to his wife. He was proud of catching that fish. Always a good thing to have a hand in if possible. We ended the morning with 12 bass. Nothing big at all. A 2.10 lber was the big fish.

On the drive home, I started to add up how many fishing trips like this I’ve been on over the last 10 years. The more I thought about it, the more I realized these trips are the standard, not the exception. Which is fine. Being a guide can be fun. I enjoy teaching people how to bass fish. I’ve taught alot of people alot about bass fishing. So I decided to start this blog. Maybe the next person I take out will read this and learn something before we go out there. It could very well mean an extra fish or two in the boat that day.