A Topwater Rod in 45 Feet of Water
There we were, IronMan Mendez and I, sitting over forty five feet of water on a beautiful Perris morning. Dave was glued to his Forward Facing Sonar while I stood there staring at the...
Southern California Angler Blog
One Angry Voice, A Hundred Happy Ones
A float tube is proof that Americans are an optimistic bunch. We willingly strap ourselves into what amounts to an inflatable recliner, kick a mile from shore with just enough fishing tackle to keep...
The Downward Spiral: Why Los Alamitos is the Nine Inch Nails of SoCal Harbors
My float tube and I were somewhere beneath the shadow of a monolithic concrete highway span, kicking along the pillars after launching at the “other” Mother’s Beach, when my legs let me know they...
The Concrete Blueprint: Decoding The Vertical Spottie Game
I see a lot of guys posting float tube reports down in San Diego targeting natural bays and estuaries, fan-casting swimbaits, and slow-rolling moving baits across acres of eelgrass filled flats and channels. Even...
The June Gloom Protocol: Lost Gear, Pulled Hamstrings, and the Zen of Tubing the Marina
I pulled my hamstring the other day trying to nutmeg the dog with a fútbol move—a completely undignified injury, the details of which do not matter. The true weight of my stupidity didn’t hit...
Nobody Voluntarily Drives Anybody to LAX
The first time Lake Skinner punched me in the mouth, I was fishing a club tournament as a guest with Big Ed. Funny enough, I’d end up joining that same club years later, which...
The Pylons Always Win
I’ve started realizing that the more I fish for Spotted Bay Bass, the more they remind me of psychopathic little largemouth living in a saltwater urban housing development. “The Projects,” if you will. They...
“Good Job Out There”
There’s a very specific kind of confidence you don’t talk about much in tournament fishing. It’s not the “we figured them out” confidence. It’s the quieter one. The “yep… we’re not winning this” confidence....
Lake Nacimiento — The Shoreline Got Bigger
The cabin sat above a stretch of shoreline that felt familiar in a way I couldn’t quite explain. That same shoreline ate everything we threw at it back in the day—Texas rigs, drop shots,...
The Float Tube
The Swimbaiter kept firing a glide — looked like a DRT Klash — into a field of drifting grass at Probation Pond, harvesting weeds more efficiently than fish. It’s a familiar kind of optimism...
The 15 Pounder
It was a random Saturday in April where my tournament partner and I actually had the day off. Normally Saturdays start with alarms going off at ungodly hours and us finishing our sleep in...