We started out around 7:30 pm and I decided to go straight to a topwater plug while Jody fished deeper water with a 6 inch worm on a drop shot. The launch ramp point was our first stop and Jody quickly put four fish in the boat in his first five casts. They were small fish, 10 to 13 inches and holding along the edge of the weedline in 15 to 20 feet of water. That was about all I could take and I quickly switched over to a similar rig. We caught a couple more fish on the following point, both of these were small keepers, so we headed across the lake to the spillway area to look for better fish.

The sun was now falling behind the skylines and Jody tied on his favorite Zara Spook and started making short casts targeting small openings in the weedlines. On his third cast, he hit our first decent fish of the trip, a surprisingly fat largemouth just under two pounds. On his following cast, a much larger fish in the 4 to 5 pound class smashed his spook and immediately buried Jody in the thick weedbed. I quickly grabbed my popper rod and over the next 45 minutes we enjoyed a wide open topwater bite on fish up to 3-1/2 pounds. In the last minutes of daylight, Jody had a huge fish crash over the top of his bait, probably in the 8 pound class, but it didn't connect.

It was at that point that our trip almost came to a sudden end. The boat drifted into a thick weed bed as we made a number of casts to the big fish. I had to kick the trolling motor on high to free the boat and it fried under the heavy load. As luck would have it, my good friend Paul Cunningham of Sacramento was fishing close by, so we threw my boat on the trailer and joined Cunningham on his Nitro for the rest of the evening.

It was now 10:00 pm and the bright moon was just breaking over the horizon. We started out fishing a variety of worms and jigs, but it was difficult because of the thick weed growth along the shore. Out of frustration, Jody rigged up a Senko on a 5/0 Owner hook and began pitching the bait to small openings between the weedline and the shore. On his second cast he hit a 3 pounder in two feet of water and proceeded to put three more fish in the boat over the next ten minutes.

That was all it took and all three of us were now pitching Senkos to the bank targeting 2 to 4 feet of water on the inside of the weedbeds. The bite was red hot for the next two hours. We landed close to 20 fish, several of them in the 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 pound class and I hit a larger fish weighing in at 6 pounds, 12 ounces.

The bite slowly tapered off between midnight and 2:30 a.m. when we decided to call it a night and head for home. All in all, this was one of the best Amador night trips I have experienced in the last three years. We lost count after 20, but probably landed in the neighborhood of 35 fish with several 3 pounders, a 6-12 and a missed topwater hit that Jody won't forget for quite some time.