FLW Western College Regionals- Delta

[rfrazier]

Alright... Take two on this post.. I wrote a super long one and lost it when BR went into maintenance mode! Going to pump this one out fast. ;D

The FLW College Fishing Western Regionals were held on September 19th-21st on the California Delta. It was a 3 day tournament with 20 teams of two. I fish for the University of Oregon. We had three teams who qualified for the regionals, one of which lives on the Delta. FLW provided us with the wrapped championships boats. We were allowed one day of prefishing the day before the tournament started, with off limits starting the week before.

The pre-fishing proved to be tough, and the dock talk rumor was not many people were on good fish. It was 100 degrees throughout the weekend. My partner and I decided to run to Discovery Bay and drop shot docks, which is how we had qualified for the tournament when weather conditions proved to be tough the first time around. We knew we could get ~12lbs a day, and hopefully a nice kicker as plenty of big fish have come out of disco. We lost about an hour and half making the run each day.

On Day 1, we got on the fish early in the day during the high tide and had limits in the first couple hours. Later in the day we targeted shade pockets at the back of docks and were able to cull little by little. We had 11-14 which was good enough for 6th place.

On Day 2, we decided to use the same tactic as we knew we were on a consistent bite and assumed one of the other teams would run into some trouble. We figured we were in perfect position to sneak into the top 5, and escape the pressure of the cameras, although we ended up having a camera boat and camera on our boat the first half of the day. My partner had a couple of kicker fish break off which was tough, but we were once again able to bring in a limit of 9-03. It proved to be good enough for 5th place, as we beat out another Oregon team by a little less then a pound.

Day 3... Same deal. We had 6 decent fish within 45 minutes. We were fishing a new bay then we had the previous day, and as we got farther off the main channel the bite started to die. This was our big mistake, as we could have made the adjustment quicker and continued to pound outside points with more current. Having to worry about tides and current definitely makes the Delta a tough place to fish with little pre-fishing. Our 10-03 3rd day limit was enough to move into 4th place and land $8,000 as well as a trip to the National Championships in Tennessee on Fort Lodoun/Tellico Lakes (April 9th). Our goal was to make the top 5 and advance, so I was quite happy with the result. We never got the kicker fish in the boat we needed, which the Delta is definitely capable of producing.

The tournament will air on the Versus Network this sunday (October 13th) at 12:30 eastern. My name is Reed Frazier... check it out! If anyone knows the Tellico Lake/Fort Lodoun area I would love to pick your brain! Hopefully will get the chance to prefish during my spring break.

FLW and the National Guard really hook it up for us... jerseys, traveling expenses, boats, food, everything. Here are some pics.

We fished out of the chevy boat the first two days.

Day 3 morning show. We were in the Castrol Boat, and getting interviewed in this picture.

Waiting to weigh in 1st on day three.

4th place.

Top 5.

[SWH]

Awesome man congrats. Unfortunatly i dont get VS stupid cable company but i will see if i can watch it online after it airs. Again congrats and good luck!

[Infidel.]

Very nice!  I'm in the same no VS boat as you SWH.  >