Unfortunately, things tapered off and we only managed a couple fish over the next hour. We decided to head for Wragg Canyon where Jordan had taken some quality fish on a previous trip. The water temperature was a couple degrees cooler than the first cove we started out in visibility was only about a foot in the very back of the creek channel. Jody stuck with the spinnerbait and I switched over to a chartreuse crankbait. We managed to catch a few small largemouth and a 12 inch smallmouth, but these weren't the fish we were looking for and made a move out to the main body.

It was now 10:00 am and the entire lake was still covered in a thick layer of fog with a stiff south wind blowing about 10 to 12 miles per hour. The mouth of the Narrows was rolling pretty good with two footers coming straight out of the south end. Ideal conditions for catching fish on reaction baits along the east shore. A solid hour into running the shoreline with rip baits and spinnerbaits hadn't produced any fish until we rounded our way into a small protected cove with a few standing trees in 6 feet of water. As the boat passed only a few feet from one of the trees, I noticed a flash of color on a large black spot near the base of the tree. "I think that black spot is a nest and there might be a fish on it," I said to Jody.

I quickly grabbed a spinning rod rigged up with a drop shot worm and tossed it onto the spot. Before I could even engage the reel handle, a fish suddenly shot out from under the tree and ran straight under the boat. The next thing I noticed was my line was following right behind the fish and I reeled like crazy to catch up with it. When the hook set home, a brilliant gold 2 pound smallmouth came skyrocketing out of the water putting on an aerial display I won't soon forget.

After releasing the fish, we noticed another large black spot about 30 feet down the bank and I cast my 4 inch red craw Magic Worm five feet past the target and slowly pulled it onto the nest. It was a repeat of the last fish as a quality smallmouth darted off and my line was trailing right behind it. After another impressive battle, I landed another beautiful smallmouth and we had finally stumbled onto a pattern.

Those were the only two fish in that cove and the rest of the shoreline was too rough to see the bottom. Jody noticed the west side of the main body was sheltered from the wind by Big Island and hoped there might be better visibility in the calmer water.

He was right! The first cove we stopped in had only a small ripple on the water and we immediately saw several large black areas similar to those we had taken the smallmouth off of on the east shore. Jody cast to the first spot and immediately hooked into another smallmouth. As he was landing the fish, I jumped on the trolling motor and cast to another spot a short distance down the bank in about 5 feet of water. A few seconds later we were both battling fish and we were now into our second double hook-up of the day.

One of the highlights of the day came next as we worked a small rocky point near the Mouth of Putah Creek. I was working my bait in about 7 feet of water along the edge of the point when a fish started swimming off with it. I set the hook and was surprised when the fish headed straight for deep water and didn't jump. It made several strong runs, peeling line off my Shimano spinning reel as it surged for deep water. "This thing is fighting like a spotted bass," I said to Jody. "It is a spotted bass," he replied as the big fish finally came into view in the clear water. It was a beautiful fish, over 18 inches long and weighing 2 pounds, 10 ounces.

Our pattern held solid over the next several hours as we wormed protected coves with chunk rock along the west shore. We ended up catching and releasing a total of 43 fish by days end and five of them were over the 2 pound mark. Not exactly trophies, but quality fish by Berryessa standards. It was one of those days where everything just seems to fall into place. We had the entire west side of the lake to ourselves and the action was non-stop until we called it a day at 3:00 pm.