We pulled into a promising looking cove about half way up the McCloud and quickly noticed a wide area of surface activity along the wind protected shoreline. I made a number of casts with my favorite Zara Spook and was surprised there were no takers.

After a dozen casts or so with a Pop-R, John rigged up a small rip bait and was hammered on his first cast. The fish pulled hard, as all spotted bass do and we were surprised at the size of the fish when it finally came along side the boat. It was a 14-3/4 incher and scaled out at just under 1-1/2 pounds. "I can't believe the size of this fish," said McGhee. "I would have sworn it was at least a two or three pounder by the way it fought."

I rigged up a small Lucky craft rip bait and we had a blast hooking close to 20 fish over the next two hours. The funny thing was most of the fish we saw chasing bait on the surface were large rainbows in the 2 to 5 pound class, but all of the fish we caught were spotted bass. We actually tried a variety of lures, but couldn't entice the big rainbows into striking.

Our next stop was a tree lined creek channel in the Pit River Arm. Bait was plentiful as we idled into the cove checking the graph for signs of bait or fish. As soon as the channel hit 65 feet, the bait thinned out and several large arches and streaks filled the lower half of the screen on my Lowrance X-85. I pulled out a 3/4 ounce Kastmaster and sent it down. After a few quick hops, my line suddenly went slack as a fish hammered the Kastmaster. Unfortunately, this wasn't the quality we were looking for as the fish was barely bigger than the lure itself. We worked several creek channels over the next couple hours jigging Kastmasters and Crippled Herring spoons and managed to catch quite a few fish, but only a handful were keepers just over the 13 inch mark.

As mid day approached, we made a run back out to the main body and threw rip baits and topwater baits on long shallow sloping points. Once again, fish were fairly easy to come by, but quality was not, several keepers in the 13 to 14 inch class, but nothing even resembling a 2 pounder.

The following day, we decided to fish the dam area and then work our way up into the Sacramento River Arm. Earlier reports from successful anglers over the last few weeks indicated surface baits were the way to go when looking for a quality bite, so we made a commitment to stick to topwater baits and rip baits for at least a few hours. The spook bite produced a few small keepers and John caught a fair number of fish on a Yo-Zuri rip bait, but quality fish were eluding us.

Our next attempt at locating a big bite came in the form of drop-shotting plastic worms and dragging jigs along steep canyon walls. Once again, finding fish wasn't a problem, but most were undersized and a 14 incher was a whopper. We found most of the walls had a large amount of bait and fish holding 30 to 50 feet deep and the fish were partial to a blue ghost Magic Worm and brown Weapon jig with a brown Yamamoto grub trailer. One last run back to the Pit River produced good numbers of spoon fish in 40 to 65 feet of water and even a few fish as deep as 85 feet.

While the two days were somewhat frustrating as far as locating quality fish, we had a blast putting around 40 fish in the boat each day and catching them on just about every imaginable technique. If you're looking for a fun fall fishing adventure with plenty of action, Lake Shasta is tough to beat. I can only imagine how much fun it would have been to fish live minnows in some of those coves that were loaded with big rainbows. Oh well, maybe after the tournament.