I tried to prefish with Dave Belden last Saturday night, but we could not get his boat to start. Scott Pethtel had just finished a 12 hour prefish, and it was super cool of him to lend us a hand for 3 hours or so, but we never got the boat going, but we did pin point the problem, so it looked like Team KelpKritter had a shot at getting back on the water for the big day. That was really cool of you Scott….much respect!
I took a day off work and prefished north on Thursday with BassBuster Dave Shill, and with the warm weather, and warming water, we had an excellent day with Calicos on the chew to 5#’s, a bunch of 3′s and 4′s, and several mean little 2′s to keep it interesting. I even lost a really good fish that tooled me on 20# Mono! All of the stock spots seemed to be holding fish, so I was feeling pretty good going into the tournament on Saturday!

Saturday’s conditions were a lot different, but we made a B-line for an area that seemed to be holding bigger fish on Thursday. No one was on the spot and we went to work. On Ron’s 2nd or 3rd cast he hooked a decent fish and we quickly put a decent 3# Calico in the tank. Then nothing but a 3# Cab…..so we decided to pick apart the next mile or so of coastline fishing really shallow and a variety of baits, for not even a bite, so we decided to head back to where we started. We pulled into the boiler we started on and Ron promptly hooks a 1.5# Calico and we are feeling a little better. We continue to work it some more, very methodically with the confidence that a big fish would come off it and eventually I hook a good one on Cory’s new 5″ weedless bait. I can tell it’s not an average fish and call for the net. Stoked! We put a solid 5# Calico in the well! We fished it for another hour or so for only one more 3# Cab. So with time running out, less than 10#’s in the tank and the feeling that this boiler had given us everything she can, we decided to trek south a little after 11. We joined a whole bunch of teams at the SM wall. After fishing some used water that Decker/Viloria had just left for nothing, and feeling like “Donkeys” we were about to leave too, but we noticed another team, further down, picking up for a move, so we slid into their spot. We weren’t bit immediately, but Ron finished our limit with Sandies that went 2#’s and 4.5#’s….YES, A limit!!
I ended the day with a decent Sandbass that would cull out that 1.5 Calico from earlier in the day.
We were content to finish the day with our biggest bag of fish in an SWBA event, but totally blown away that it was enough to give us a 4th place finish that was less than 1.5 pounds from the win. We had the full on Cloud 9 feeling for the rest of the weekend!

Although we threw the whole box at them Saturday, all our fish came on 5″ MC’s and Warheads smothered in Hot Sauce!

One more cool story from our day:
When I netted Ron’s 4.5 Sandra, we noticed it had some fishing line hanging out of it’s mouth. The fish put up a great fight for a 4.5# fish that we thought was going to be over the 5# mark, so we figured it probably had just tooled some bait fisherman off the pier. At the weigh in, we pulled it out of our bag and James did a little surgery and out comes a 6″ Gulp Grub on an Owner Mombo Head, and I tell Ron, “That’s the kind of bait BassBuster Jim Kiech likes to throw.” When Jim and Dave arrived at the awards banquet, Ron held out the lure and asked Jim if he had lost something. Jim replied, “Yeah, where did you find that?” Ron answered with a grin, “In the gullet of a 4.5# Sandbass.” Turns out Jim did break off a good fish that morning, and we caught it later in the day……..CLASSIC!

SkiDave nicknamed us Team PitDoodle in his picks and had us in 9th place with a 15# limit. Well, thanks for the ego boost Dave, and I’m so glad we did not disappoint you! Team Anchored is flying high right now, and we will be enjoying it while it lasts.

See you all at the ‘Coastal Clash’ with a big target on our backs!