Clinton November 18th 2006 Report

[illinivandy]

Rob, Dinty, former club President Doug Macchia, and myself fished Clinton Lake today. Doug and Dinty fished together out of Doug's boat and Rob and I fished together out of the Ranger. We had a "mini" tournament where our best 5 fish 12" or larger were weighed by hand scale. I'll let Dinty and/or Doug post what their pattern was today, but Rob and I smoked 'em!!! Rob and I caught 5 fish for 11+ pounds. Doug and Dinty caught 5 fish for ~7-8 pounds (I don't remember exact numbers).

Rob caught our first "keeper" today of 12.25" and 0.8 pounds on the second cast of the day on a crankbait off of a riprap wall.

After a long, cold, fish-less time, which included many trips across Clinton lake, Rob caught a 2.6 pound bass on a jig on a rip-rap wall.



After another action-less stretch, Rob and I decided to move back to our first spot where Rob caught our first keeper. The first cast back at our first spot Rob's crankin' rod loaded up with a nice fish! After an awesome battle, we landed our third keeper of the day, a 3 pound SMALLIE!



We then worked down the same rip-rap wall again, and Rob caught our fourth keeper, a 1.3 pound largemouth.

At this point, with a hal hour left in the "tournament," Rob and I ran into Doug and Dinty. They had 4 fish as well. Rob and I figured we needed another good fish (or at least a 5th keeper in order to beat Doug and Dinty). After not catching any fish all day, Rob and I decided that I was "due" for a good fish. Not more than a minuet after saying that, my crankin' stick loaded up with a GOOD FISH! After a short battle, the big fish of the day, and our 5th keeper weighing in at 3.9 pounds was in the boat.



Rob and I celebrated knowing that we had a very good chance to beat Doug and Dinty.

We then fished a little while longer, came back in and trailerd the Ranger. After waiting for Doug and Dinty to get back (they had boat troubles), we compared weights and Rob and I had won by 3+ pounds!! Rob and I won the inagural "FIBC Young Guns, Veterans Challenge."

Dinty and Doug caught some nice crappies and a drum in addition to their bass.



I'll let them post their report.
For high resolution and "bonus" pics, check out my shared folder at:
netfiles.uiuc.edu/mvanland/shared/Clinton%20nov18%202006

Tight lines,
Vandy

[Tim Rhee]

nice job guys, those are some sweet fish... haha i enjoyed the bleeding drum

me and leo got the big old skunk fishin' some local ponds

but then again atleast we got to go to bass pro shops

[fishndinty]

It's easy to congratulate those guys. They fished hard for five bites today and caught NO short fish. Doug and I had the EXACT opposite happen! We caught a TON of bass today. I never like to lose, but catching fish the way we were made it a lot more palatable.

Doug started off our day by gunning the engine of his 200 HP motor, which prompty dislodged my hat and threw it behind the boat. Doug instinctively stopped to go back, to which I told him, "No! It's a tournament! Let's get to our spot!" With the boat still slowing, Doug put the engine back in gear and promptly "spun a hub" in his prop, limiting us to idle speed for the day. We trailered the boat and tried to fix it to no avail, losing an hour's fishing in the process, and got back in the water, determined to beat the young guns of the FIBC.

I began fishing a crankbait (hand-painted shad custom job) while Doug started throwing a small Rapala X-rap in ghost white. He soon hooked up with an 11 inch fattie crappie and some short bass. Going along the bridge riprap at the DeWitt Bridge, we came to a corner where we saw bait busting on shore. I tied on the larger X-rap in the SAME COLOR AS DOUG'S. We both started throwing and Doug was catching bass after bass, while I went fishless. Eventually I switched to a smaller jerkbait more like Doug's, but not quite as small....

Doug's bait was magic today. The fish were COMPLETELY keyed in on that size bait for some reason and ignored similarly colored baits of different sizes. Nothing else worked close to as good, even the same exact bait and color a size bigger.

Humorous notes: I caught a large crappie on the huge LC128 pointer minnow (like 5 inch+ long bait) from lucky craft..that fish was hungry or looking for a fight.

We caught 4 nice crappie today, with Doug catching 3 on his magic white baby X-rap.

Doug caught one of our keepers (he caught all 5 on the magic bait--I feel your pain, Wes) while Doug and I's lines were tangled! They separated easily but it was almost hairy

Doug lost a nice fish boatside that would have made the tournament closer.

We thought Doug's big drum was gonna be our big kicker. Instead we got kicked.

This was a great trip and I haven't had so much fun fishing in a long time. Doug can expand on our pattern info as we targeted some wood cover on specific lake structures that was also quite productive.

Meanwhile, I am off to Wal-Mart to buy some of those durned baby X-raps...we could have culled through 3 limits if we'd both had those to throw today.

Again, well done to Vandy and Bob, and check out our crappies:

Happy thankgiving, everyone!
-Dinty

[illinivandy]

There we go, my other pics are working now.

-Vandy