The first annual BD/CCA Bay Bass Classic was held yesterday, Saturday May 11th in Mission bay.
Registration was $20 and we got that and more back with the goodie bag they handed out to everyone.
Ahi/ promar gave out some small coils of 20lb floro with a bag to display in the pics to enter thier side pot. I put on the leader and stuck the bag in the top of my tackle bag and totally forgot about it when I took fish pics. Big goof on my part.
There was a side pot for halibut so I spent the first 3 hours targeting sandy grass flats in hopes of a good flattie and maybe catch a spottie while I’m at it.
Ended up with two halibut, one 17” and one a little shorter I didn’t enter and a handful of bass from 9-11.5” . Topped it off with a small cuda and hog lizard fish. Lol.
There was an outrigger canoe race going on and I got stuck in their traffic trying to cross a channel to go pee…. Talk about the most inconvenient timing being stuck 10ft off the shore of a packed dog beach and 10ft from 50 womens paddle teams when I’m about to piss myself. Luckily I was able to hold it and wasn’t arrested for indecent exposure.
About 11:30 I checked the stats and even with my smaller fish I was in 30th place out of 140-150 anglers. Decided to go hit some docks and structure and try to atleast make a showing.
Found a row of docks with 3 submerged boat lifts and threw an under spin with 3” big hammer in them and pulled out a 17” bass on first cast. Wrestling it out of there was fun. Had to retie a new leader because it got really chaffed up and then cast into the second and pulled out a 14” spottie! Entered them and checked my stats and I was in 16th with 45 mins to go. Had to retie and put in a new swim bait then nailed a 13.5” on the 3rd cast. This brought me up to 6th place. I spent a little time pounding some posts around the area and had a short bite but nothing stuck. With 15mins left I went looking for another promising spot but the wind was now blowing my boat around like a balloon. Figured that was it and headed back. A couple last minute updates to the entries put me in 9th place with a 70” total and biggest overall spottie at 17”.
Award time was interesting. They gave the overall spottie award to the guy with the 3rd biggest fish at 16.5” when there was a 16.75 and 17” ahead of him. I asked the event coordinators if we had been disqualified and they looked shocked and said it was a mistake. They gave me a rod for the largest spottie but didn’t do an announcement or anything. BD has been made aware, the guy that won was aware and so was half the crowd when they announced it. We’ll see what they end up publishing because BD is really good about event recaps.
Besides that I had a good time. Saw some old faces, including Len and almost had a dog join me which was funny. It swam out 100ft or so and looked pretty intent on getting to my boat.
