Pro angler Mark Hoffeditz from Elk Grove teamed up with his amateur partner, Ken Sauret of Paso Robles, for the winning limit of five fish weighing 11.94 pounds. "Hoffeditz told everyone they fished white spinnerbaits shallow, slow-rolling them in the incoming water from the recent rains in the West Branch area," said Kornhauser. "They also used Duz-Its tube baits as the fish moved deep during the afternoon. The key was starting shallow and moving deeper with the fish as the day progressed."

Local favorite, Dave Rush of Palermo, brought in the second big limit of the day at 10.90 pounds. To top it off, he was fishing by himself due to the shortage of amateur anglers. "Rush told everyone he was also on the early morning spinnerbait bite in the river arms and that his afternoon bait was a Robo Worm."

Rounding out the top three was former Fish Sniffer staffer, Albert Berends from Folsom, and his amateur partner, Steve Biechman, with a five fish limit weighing 10.46 pounds. "We had a great day out on Oroville Saturday," said Berends. "We culled through at least five limits of fish on a combination of spinnerbaits, gitzits, Senkos and jigs."

According to Berends, the key to success was targeting running creeks on the main body. "We caught a quick limit of fish on chartreuse/ white Yamamoto spinnerbaits first thing in the morning," he explained. "As the fish moved to deeper water, we caught our big numbers on Yamamoto gitzits and Senkos, but our quality fish came on Persuader rattlin' jigs in black/ blue or brown/ chartreuse."

Judging from the tournament results, it appears the spotted bass are responding well to the rapidly rising water levels at lake Oroville and anglers are reaping the benefits.

Even lakes that are typically considered largemouth impoundments have been fishing surprisingly well due to the recent warm weather. I decided to take advantage of the situation with a trip to Kelsey Bass Ranch on Thursday, January 9.

I arrived at the ranch with my good friend, Paul Cunningham, around 10:00 am. It had been raining periodically throughout the morning, but the winds were calm and the air temp was already nearing 60 degrees.

Our day got off to a rough start with the first three hours only producing 2 fish in the 2-1/2 pound class. We had nearly circled the entire lake throwing reaction baits and Senkos in 2 to 8 feet of water when Paul made a long cast with a jig out into open water. He suddenly set the hook, but came up with air. "Man I Just got hammered out in the middle of the lake," he said.

I quickly spun the boat around and cast out a Yamamoto hula grub to the same spot. The bait hit bottom, I shook it a couple times and wham! A fish suddenly took off with my jig and I set the hook on a beautiful 3-1/2 pound largemouth.

The next two casts produced the same results and I knew we had them figured out. We spent the next four hours working offshore weed beds in 8 to 12 feet of water and boated a total of 32 fish by day's end. Other than a few dinks, all of the fish ran 2-1/4 to 3-3/4 pounds. No monsters to brag about, but no one was complaining after catching that many fish in the middle of winter.