Folsom Fling, Oct 7, Report and results

Thank you Linda, It was great having you there and the pics are great

Thanks Jim and Dan for a fun event!  I am looking forward to the Amador "Fall Guys" tourney on Nov 4th. 

Looks like everyone had a great time. Wish I could have been there. Looks like I am going to miss the next one since its on the Crab opener. Great work Jim and Dan!

Crab shmab.   

It was stood day, for hanging out and paddling, not fishing. I was one of the lucky ones to get a fish. I paddled somewhere around 9 miles for one little fish.  Almost none stop for 5 hours. Fast trolling for Kings is tiring dragging a four pound weight. Thanks Jim for putting this together. Waiting of the next one now. I'm a contender for the top!

Jim, Thanks for a GREAT day.  I think you should be permanently in charge of ordering the weather and you got them to throw in that sunrise for free.  Only took one pic. so I attached it here.  See ya'll soon.  Shelley  

First of all I want to thank Jim for putting on this event. 

Second, a big thumbs up to the Headwaters guys for sponsoring and more importantly participating in this event.  You guys are representing yourselves very well in the kayak fishing community.  Pretty smart sponsoring ATD as I can't go fishing anywhere without seeing that camo red Jackson kayak. 

Third, congrats to the winners and trash pickers.  Nice to meet some new faces and look forward to fishing with you some more.

The tournament was smooth from start to finish which is very important to me.  I am not a big group fisherman but when events are smooth and uncomplicated, I am more than happy to participate.  Looking forward to Amador.

In regards to my day, I had a plan.  After a handful of  tournaments under my belt I have learned that you do not need to target a limit of trophy fish to win/place.  In fact, most have ended with just enough fish to cover the top three positions.  Since these are one shot events and most people have never fished the area and some never the species, plus the usual fishing is fishing not catching, it is rarely an off the hook bite.  With this in mind and the five fish of any species rule in place, I knew that with this knowledge I had a very good shot.  Actually an extremely good shot.  I figured most of the people were going to go after the two hardest species to catch in Folsom, Salmon and trout.  Reports have been good on the lake, but I also knew the only people who are fishing for them are a handful of hardcore regulars and guides who focus on that species.  Knowing that they had a slim chance of catching anything I just had to compete against half of the contenders.  Those guys were going to be bass hunting.  The thing with Bass is that Folsom is really tough and at the moment the water levels are really low so it eliminated pretty much of all of the standard bassing techniques.  The Bass were hiding out amongst what little structure there was available very deep.  If people had not done deep water drop shotting or jigging, they were out of contention throwing anything that didn't get down below twenty feet.  That left probably two people that I would have to beat.  No problem. 

The plan:  Screw going for the glory fish.  Scratch out a limit of panfish using redworms and small baits.  Five six inch panfish would outscore a trophy anything else.  Once that was accomplished then target bigger and better.

Problem: The bottom 50% of Folsom is a vast mud flat with a deep channel that runs down the middle of it.  The water is so low that even the normal rock formations are twenty feet above the water line.  Besides the gradual decline, it is barren and flat.  My biggest mistake was not pre-fishing and had I known how cool that paddle was for first prize, I would have.  I couldn't find a place to fish.  It was all just flat bottom.  Out of the seven hours, I paddled for five and a half without even a line in the water.  The water was so clear that even at the shoreline rocks you could look down and see that there was nothing there.  Finally on the paddle back to the launch I started running into rock piles that were in the +15 foot mark.  I drop shotted the ones that I could find and ended up with a few bites and landed a undersized 10.5" spotted bass.  The best spot to be was basically five minutes from the launch.  Crap.  Oh well, more knowledge added to the database.  Next time.  Amador plan, find a cove, one pole night crawler, other pole powerbait.  Winning!

I had fun.

Great event and I look forward to it next year. Thanks Headwaters for bringing out the Cudas, very nice boats.

Had a lot of fun, fishing was slow but
Company was great. Thank you Jim and headwaters for making it happen.
My plan was to bass fish so left the trolling stuff behind. Began to regret it when the bass didn't want to play and I was 1 1/2 miles from launch. So plan B goes in effect, get some trash worked out great. Even dove up a full bottle of red wine.

Joe

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More tomorrow....

How big (total) were the images you were trying to upload?

-Allen

Thanks for the report and puttin this together.I can't wait to destroy ATD at amador !!! Just kiddin still scrapping penny's for the entry plus gas.So say 40. Plus another 20 to the lake ?

Good times!!!
Thank you for putting together, Jim & thank you for sponsoring, Headwaters!
Those Cudas are looking good!
Congrats to winners (pro & pro)!

Can't wait for the Amador & Port!

Naoaki


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for the kind words and reports
Now I'm working on the next 2

I really hope we can get some fresh blood on the leader boards, these same 2 guys over and over are killing me    lol

Steve,

Your approach to the tournament was spot on.  There were only 3 people that I observed targeting bass in water over 10ft deep. 

My plan:
I didn't pre-fish either. (How could I target reservoir chinook, when chinook are runnig in the American).  Since the primary forage in Folsom is pond smelt, my plan was to locate dense schools of smelt near the dam, and troll pond smelt imitation spoons through the schools.  However, my plan went went down in flames after about 15 minutes of trolling when my downrigger ball got hung up trolling at 60ft over 100ft  .  I have no idea what I snagged, but it resulted in a lost downrigger ball and shuttlehawk.  Since it was still early I decided to head to a bottle necked cove hoping that bait schools were still migrating from their night spots in the back of coves to deeper water.  Sure enough as I neared a bottle necked cove I started marking bait balls.  I started to drift minnows (minnows are always plan B) near the bottom zig zagging around the choke point.  Within 15 min I had my only fish of the day, an unimpressive small mouth.  I then made the mistake of leaving fish to find fish (and Rob), and trolled deep diving pond smelt imitation crank baits in 15-30FOW.  After an hour of trolling the Folsom desert I returned to where I had caught the smallie, but the schools of bait had moved on to deeper water.

WTG Adam!!! Well deserved victory.