Saturday October 21st perfect weather greeted the California Bass Contenders at the show down at San Vicente for the eighth stop on the season, as twenty four Basscontenders met up to go to battle. Also showing up to share the lake was over twenty boats for the SD City Team Series fishing their first of a two day Tournament of Champions. Those SD anglers were a bit surprised to see the boys from LA inline before them getting their gear ready for battle. You could hear them talking shit from a distance, but they never said a thing to us in front of our face. I think they were a little bit scared of the Motley ‘DACA’ Crue surrounding the Triton 187 from Boyle Heights lol? It was all good as everybody was polite and respectful and the good times were rolling! Nobody got San Diego’ed on this amazing fall day!
Once again as everybody filed in line in the dark before dusk the good times started like it always does. I really don’t know what happens in other bass clubs, but the camaraderie in this club seems to be at an all-time high. We seem to just be having a fun time at every event drawing an average of 12-14 boats at every tournament. With a couple of new guys filling in for a couple of other guys checking out, this club continues to flourish with anglers from many skill levels who are all just good people. On this fine day new prospective Basscontender Jule Feather made his CBC debut fishing with Kenny Isago. Jule was a lot of fun and had a great time at the weigh-in telling stories about the day. We look forward to fishing with Jule at the next event at Diamond Valley reservoir. Also fishing in his final qualifying event was another cool guy, Chad Crews who fished with Mark Pavlinac. Both Mark and Chad could be heard from a distance laughing and cracking and jokes after landing their limit within the first hour of the day. We saw them with the net laughing and hugging a few times before the sun even came out. Things on the blue champion were a bit more somber out of the gate, I guess I would’ve been happy too if my partner Joe Nava and I had our limit as early as they did.
This event was a Team Tournament format where both anglers worked together to bring in one combined limit of black bass. In this format of event each angler is awarded their respective points for placing and the Big Boat award also goes to the team in first place. No strangers to the leader board was the dynamic father and son duo of Conrad Apodaca Jr and his Dad Conrad Apodaca Sr. Both Conrad’s sat pretty much in one area all day culling up their limit to 12.92lbs. They had very good fishing in the deep water with a variety of baits, but most came on doing what they both do best, shaking the big 10-12” worms. If there is a Texas bite to be had nobody does it better than either Apodaca. Rounding out second place was the team of Mark Pavlinac and Chad Crews. Chad goes up for membership vote at the November meeting after completing his necessary events. Mark and Chad were primarily fishing small double fluke baits rigs that were actually landing two fish at a time, that’s what all the laughing and hugging was about as they came in with 10.32lbs. Last team in the money rounding out the top three, in two consecutive tournaments, was the duo of Gabby Hayes and longtime Basscontender Alex Arias. Gabby Hayes who has been recently making a charge up the leaderboard and Alex landed a limit of 9.41lbs San Vicente largemouth fishing primarily in the Kimbal arm. Bringing in the top honor for Big Fish was one of our original founding members Ted Romero with a beautiful 4.29lb lobina largemouth he landed on a plastic shad imitation in busting boils. Pictured below is a photo of Ted’s grandson Kai Olmos who is an up and comer Bass Contender, Kai is 6yrs old. Ted and Kai prefished together last week in preparation for today’s tournament. The fact that all of our active original founding members were in today’s tournament was icing on the cake. Gabby Hayes, Ted Romero, Conrad Apodaca and Joe Nava all showed up to compete, as they all did last month at Castaic, and out of twenty four anglers all four placed in the top four spots or big fish of the leaderboard. Goes to show you newer young whipper snappers, the ‘Old grey mules still knows how to get it done!
THE TACKLE BOX:
1st place: Shaking big 10-12” worms/Neko rig deep water.
2nd place: Double fluke rig small match the hatch.
3rd place: Gabby worm splitshot and drop shot plastics.
Air temp: 52 flat calm, 82 at weigh-in slight breeze.
Water temp: 70 degrees 73 main lake 74 coves.
Water: Extremely clear 12-16’ visibility.
Place/Name/Fish/Total
1) Conrad Apodaca Jr/Conrad Apodaca Sr 5/12.92
2) Mark Pavlinac/Chad Crews 5/10.32
3) Gabby Hayes/Alex Arias 5/9.41
4) Big Ed Cazares/Joe Nava 5/9.32
5) Kenny Isago/Jule Feather 5/8.76
6) David Mendez/Abran Contreras 5/7.70
7) Derrick Yoshinaga/Mark Chadeayne 3/5.86
8) Ted Romero/Jorge DeLaCruz 2/5.69
9) Alfred Vasquez/Tom Creasey 3/4.38
10) Nelson Barrios/Mark Quaternik 2/2.30
11) Gil Bowman/Gary Crouse 2/1.67
12) Kevin Duncan/Johnny Abyad 1/0.97
Big Boat: Conrad Apodaca Jr/Conrad Apodaca Sr 12.92lbs
Big Fish: Ted Romero 4.29lbs
Honorable mention: Kenny Isago 3.82lbs
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See you on the water: Big Ed!