My hopes were realized as we made our way towards the back of the channel and noticed bait fish being pushed against the bank. I fired out a shad colored Splash-It and Cunningham threw a Luckycraft Sammy into the feeding frenzy. Within a split second several fish were battling over my small topwater plug until a big spotted bass engulfed the bait and headed for deep water. The hard fighting spot measured just shy of 18 inches and hit the scales at 2-1/2 pounds. Not bad for our first fish of the day!

For nearly two hours, we sat in the back of the cove and hammered one fish after another slowly twitching our topwater baits wherever schools of shad could be seen rippling the surface. Most were spotted bass in the 1-1/4 to 2 pound class and we also landed a pair of 2 pound largemouth.

Things finally slowed down once the sun hit the water and we decided to head to Wragg Canyon to try some sightfishing. It was another case of intuition paying off when we started out on one of my favorite coves and instantly spotted a giant female holding 5 to 10 feet outside a nest with a 1-1/2 pound male on the guard.

The fish was long and extremely wide and easily would have topped double digit territory. She was holding tight to the area, but managed to ignore everything we threw her way. You name it and we tried it: Brush Hogs, tube baits, jigs, Castaic bluegills and several other offerings. We were about to give up on her after about and hour when several carp moved into the area and she went nuts trying to push them away from the nest.

Paul quickly tied on an Osprey carp swimbait and pitched it out in front of her. To our amazement, she swam straight to the bait and in an instant it was completely inside her huge mouth. Just as he was loading up to swing, she spit the bait out and swam off into the sunset. Too bad we couldn't have put her in the boat, but just seeing a fish that size in action was worth the price of admission.

Our next move was out to the west shore of the main body. The wind had died by now and the entire lake was greasy calm with 5 to 10 feet of visibility.

We started running bank in the backs of marinas and managed to spot several more big fish in, but none of them showed any interest in what we had to offer. Meanwhile, we found a steady bite drop-shotting Robo worms and twitching topwater baits in and around the docks.

Our highlight of the day came in the back of Putah Creek Marina when a huge school of largemouth and spotted bass erupted on ball of shad in less than a foot of water. We could see 3 and 4 pounders cartwheeling out of the water and the only problem was the smaller fish were hammering our baits before the big ones could get to them.

We ended the day with a total of 38 fish. Nothing over 2-1/2 pounds, but what a blast it was catching most of them on top.