We decided to head up to New Hogan's on Saturday, March 31st and fish for a couple of days. The weather was fantastic during the day, with only a slight chill overnight. We were enjoying a "Fool Moon" at night which brought out the "Fool" in a few of us! There was four of us and two boats with way too many poles between us! After arriving Saturday afternoon from Livermore, Ca. ( and one fool towed his boat from Texas), we got our gear together and hit the water for a couple of hours. My friend Eric Mehlhaff recently moved to Texas , and had just drove all that way so we called it a day fairly early.

The next morning I found myself (Johnny Bravo) , up before Ryan, Joe, & Eric. As I quietly planned my April Fool's pranks for the day, I decide I would start with Eric since he had little sleep from all the driving. I hassled Eric right into his boat and we took off for the Bear Creek area to work some jigs and senkos. All was peaceful, warm and calm ,as I was telling Eric what was color was going to work for us. No sooner than I had just declared the wrong color; Eric's got a fish on. This usually is followed by, "Oh, It's a nice one Johnny". And it was! He had himself a whopper of a black bass and he wanted the net he thought he had brought. As I assured him that there was no net and that he was truly an" April Fool "!! Eric landed the fish as he usually does. Needless to say we were fired up and ready to get this thing weighed, measured and back in to the water after everybody at the lake saw "our" prize!!

We managed to track down a ranger , and the campground host in hopes of getting our hands on an official scale. Unfortunately , it seems that when the old marina burned up, so did all of the resources to document our possible lake record black bass. We weighed "her" and measured for length & girth . We came up with 27 " long, and 17" around her belly (which was empty of eggs). Weighed twice on two different scales and got 13 lbs. Apparently, it's been quite a while since anybody hooked into and landed a black bass of this size at New Hogans. We took great care to return "our" catch back to it's nesting spot!! Upon returning to the release area I tossed a crankbait that dove deep and bagged a few smaller blacks and a largemouth. Eric also caught two more 6 lb bass and a 2.5 lb crappie.

NO FOOLIN'!! We fooled a few fish and found some hot spots on New Hogans for the big bass!! We inquired with the army corps of engineers over the phone to see if and how lake records were to be recorded. They were very helpful on the phone, but offered no current solution on how to record the catching of big fish at New Hogans.

So, here's a few great photos!! You be the judge!!!

Happy Hunting !!
John "netboy" Bancalari
Livermore, Ca.