Skeet’s Beat – Every Day Business

It was kind of business as usual around Camp Reese the past week.

The girls are in school, and I’m working on getting into shape for the season and making my preparations for the 2012 season. Right now I’m mainly just looking for lodging and doing some research, but I’ll start getting into tackle inventory and setting up my new Stratos Elite 210 / Mercury 250 Pro XS; but that part comes a little later in the winter.

I’ve been really working on getting into shape for the season, and mainly I’ve been riding my mountain bike on trails around here. But, I’ve had to take a little break from that the past couple of weeks. I had a little wreck on the trails and banged my knee up a little, and when I ride it gets a little puffy and uncomfortable, so I’ve only been able to ride a couple of times. I’ll probably have to go to the doctor and have it looked at.

I was supposed to have an in-store appearance for Berkley at a Grand Opening in Missouri last weekend, but when I checked in at the airport, they told me my flight was delayed. The bad part was that the delay would cause me to miss my connection flight. I tried to get another flight, but there was none to be had, and I was forced to cancel the trip.

So, I got home and got to go to the girl’s soccer games. Lea’s team dominated once again, and Courtney’s team got beat by a team with a bunch of boys on it, but she tried hard.

Outside of the family stuff, I’m getting ready for a few salmon fishing trips. Minoru, my sponsor from Lucky Craft is coming up, and I’ll take him for a couple days on the American River, and I’m going to go another time too.

Oh, I took my father-in-law with me for an afternoon / evening trip to Folsom Lake near my house. I was shocked by how much water was still in the reservoir, and when I saw the water flooding the willow bushes, I tied on topwater baits for us.

My father-in-law doesn’t have much experience with walking baits, so he had a hard time getting the bait to walk. He was just pulling it forward in a straight line trying to get it to do something. When it was about halfway back to the boat I saw a big shadow underneath it stalking it like a cat on a mouse. I tried to get him to twitch the bait so that the fish would react, but every time he moved it, it just slid forward. By then, the fish had seen the boat or us standing in the boat and swam away. The fish looked every bit of six pounds, and I sure wish we would have been able to see that one up close.

After trying topwater a little more, we picked up my Wright & McGill Co. Micro Honeycomb Dropshot rods and tied on some 4 ½’ Berkley Havoc Bottom Hoppers and caught some small fish with a few keepers mixed in. It was fun to get out and chase bass again; I’m starting to get the itch to go fishing.

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