Newport Bay Bass Shootout Report
by Drew Clark

As Ed Whited and I were loading up the kayaks on his truck at 4:30am we joked about making sure to bring extra tie-down straps for the new kayak. We didn't know who would be bringing it home but we needed to feign some confidence going into water we'd never fished before.

It was a mellow gathering in the morning, lots of chatter between anglers, sharing baits and ideas and the San Diego crew begging for tips on where to find some fish. I'd studied some aerial photos of the boundaries and was thinking that fish would be in one of two places. Grass beds that I could not locate or the docks. Docks had my favor because of the small tide swing in the morning with a large sweep in the afternoon. I figured they'd be holding tight to structure and waiting for the better current to feed on.

My plans were vague and this was i ndicated by my veritable quiver of rods. I have 6 rod holders on the eXtreme if you count the two forward of me that are really more for trolling than rod storage, but I'd brought 5 rods and a net. Hmm... In my anxiety-riddled preparation I'd tied on two different crank baits, a swimbait, a weedless crazy-looking combo of a skirted bullet weight and a twintail grub and a spinnerbait. My lack of confidence was not understated here.

We launched at 7:30 and this was the last time I'd see Paul or Ed for almost 4 hours. We obviously had very different plans of attack and none of them involved dilly-dallying around the launch site.

The summer warm water is bringing an end to the grass beds and as they are dying off for the season they have littered Newport Harbor with such piles of grass it gives landscapers nightmares. Every one of my first dozen casts came back fouled with grass. I was throwing spinnerbaits and crankbaits (Frenzy minnow and Deep Lil 'N' from Norman) in the triangle area between Coast Guard Beach and the bait barge but having little luck and less encouragement from the fish. I picked up one 12.00001" spotty on a Bleeding Mackeral pattern Big Hammer on a yellow head and that gave me the push to work the same area for another 45 minutes...for nada. I weighed the scrappy fish, 1.22# and paddled east.

The grass was easier to deal with in among the mooring cans and hundreds of tied off sailboats but the results were the same. One short bass in another half hour. Karen called me to check in at this point and said "How are we doing?". My answer was a curt "I have 4 hours to find four fish." She thought those odds sounded pretty good. I wasn't so sure.

I worked and worked those mooring cans for another 45 minutes and then decided to head towards the docks, the tide was done for now and still waters were NOT running deep this morning. The entire place is 12' deep, it's flatter than Mission Bay.

On my way over to the west side of the bay I came across the channel which, surprisingly, showed a change in depth that I was not prepared to find. The bottom dropped to 24' and rose back up to 12' at the next set of mooring cans. I metered lots of fish and dropped the big hammer back down and was instantly rewarded with a scrawny-but-legal sand bass. Dropped him in the tank and tried for repeat performances but to no avail.

Ed Whited was in between dock pilings and said that he'd metered some fish, too. He cast around and I went to weigh my little sand bass as I was next to the 2nd weigh station. .90#...weak.

Ed was back in his docks by the time I got back to that spot so I paddled against the wind a bit, set out the chute and drifted the area again. This section worked well with the wind as I was able to cast deep and retrieve over the ledge of the channel. The swimbait sailed out, settled to the bottom and worked its way back to me like a homing pigeon...if homing pigeons could get tangled in three-hundred strands of dead eel grass and still fly, that is. I worked on the depth control because the bait had caught my only two fish so far and that was my confidence bait for the morning. As I drifted by a 28' Bertram covered from bow to stern in bird poop the line went taught with a snap and I instinctively reared back in a Dan Hernandez worthy hookset complete with manly grunt. With true Hernandez style I cranked, pumped, cranked and heaved until I was out of breath and with a great flurry of aggressive net deployment I snatched from Mother Ocean an 11" white sea bass. Uh...way to go Dan. Way. To. Go.

10 minutes further in I did catch a spotty worthy of this tournament. And then two more within about 30 minutes. I weighed them in as I drifted by the weigh station and they came in at 2.1#, 2.15# and 2.5#. Bigger spotties than I'd ever caught in a single day. I was floored. Now I had my 5 fish and the total was respectable for Mission Bay but I figured that all the fish were this big and someone had 5 of those toads. So I went back to my areas and kept working the plastic...for two more hours without a fish.

My new favorite bait:

It's now 12:30 and I pick up another 2.05 fish on the Frenzy. Paul had told me that red and black were working for him and that he'd gotten a big fish on the crank. I'd been throwing it off and on all day without so much as a nibble but decided to try trolling around and this fish was the result. I went to weigh him in and while I waited on Will Bowen to weigh fish I caught another spotty on the Frenzy right behind the weigh dock, 1.32 - he bumped my smallest fish by .10#.

Paul was all confidence the rest of the afternoon but I wasn't so sure. A couple of guys at the barbecue weren't saying much so I figured they were sitting on their hands and I tried to do the same. But fate smiled on me this day and the new OK Drifter was mine. The last member of the Plastic Navy to win a tournament but it's oh-so sweet with a final weight of nearly 11#. It was exciting and fun to have the chance to fish Newport and I hope to do it again soon.

I learned a big lesson today - and that is to not only practice versatility but to be versatile in a rough situation. I was methodically working through every bait style I know how to fish in order to find a working solution. On Saturday that bait was the swimbait. I use Big Hammer baits out of personal preference, the beefier shoulders and square tail make these my favorites, but the secret was to keep moving, keep trying and then maximizing the areas holding fish.

I took the new Drifter out for a quick 1-hour fishing trip to Bahia Pt today, landed 2 legal spotties and a shorty halibut.

--Drew