Water temp: 47-60
Clarity: 1-3 ft
Conditions: partially cloudy
Lake level: rising daily
I had a blast last week on Folsom lake while fishing the Future Pro Tour Championship with Nick Lynch. We had been looking forward to this event the entire year! The decision to move it to Folsom lake after the Oroville dam issue had little to no effect on me. I know neither lake very well but was excited either way! Official practice opened the Monday prior to the event. I was not able to get out on the water until Tuesday. I started out a little late around 8am. I started throwing reaction main lake to shake out some of the excitement. 20 minutes in with no bite I had a gut feeling based on conditions to slow down. I picked up a darter head and went to work. 3rd cast in about 18ft of water I cracked the first fish of the day and it was a good one! So, I pressed on the rest of the day with the darter head. I never got a lot of bites or even two in one spot but the ones I did were big large mouth.
Day two of practice I figured I’d just expand on that pattern. It didn’t work out! After only getting two bites the entire day on main lake I knew I was missing something. So, on the last day of practice we had to be of the water by noon. We made the decision to run north, I’ve personally never even been to that part of the lake. Once we got up there we realized there was an abrupt water temp and clarity change. That change in clarity would prove to be where most of the top ten did it. It got really clear and the temp dropped. We picked a do nothing point and got to work. Immediately I hit 2 big largemouth back to back. Then Nick grabbed a 2 lb spot. We jumped around a bit a liked what we were seeing. It was the most bites in the shortest time span we’d seen. That’s where we would start on day one.
Day one of the championship went off without a hitch! Had 7 bites land 6 and ended the day with 16.02 putting us in the lead. Day two we were last boat out and a few of our spots were taken. We still did good considering but not enough to hold on to the lead. With only 11 lbs we fell short and to 3rd place on day two. All our fish were still coming on the dart head in 18-20 ft of water in the north fork.
Day three we knew we would have to hit everywhere we caught a fish and even some new spots. The fish had been beaten up and seen everything. We stuck to our guns and pulled out another 11lbs on day 3. It wasn’t enough to push us up but was enough to hold on to third. Anglers Press put on a great event and I look forward to next years’ championship!
Thank You,
Josh Parris
