Introducing Josh Giran, from the NE

Hello, my name is Josh Giran and just like you all I am addicted to bass fishing. First I’d like to thank the people at BASS 2.0 for giving me this opportunity to share my experiences and ideas with you. A little about myself, I live in a rural area south west of Pittsburgh, PA. Yes that’s right, I have the privilege of fishing for small fish on the Three Rivers. You know, the location of the 2005 BASSMASTER Classic(lowest total, ever) and the 2009 FLW Forrest Wood Cup. Okay, so I don’t get to fish for five pounders all the time, but as the old saying goes “a bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work”.

I have been fishing all of my life, my farther started taking me fishing at a very young age. But it wasn’t until a strange turn of events that I got into tournament bass fishing. At the time I thought my world was coming apart. But a co-worker and friend, Mike Noel, steered me in the direction of tournament fishing. He had been fishing BASS events for years and took me under his wing. It started with convincing me that I needed a boat. So I went and bought a brand new aluminum boat. Then I joined a federation club. That first year I fished mainly as a co-angler. I read every article I could, watched every fishing show imaginable, and really paid attention to the people I fished with. I was like a sponge trying to absorb everything I could. My friend use to tell me that in a few years I would want to step up to a big boat. That few years ended up being less than two.

So now I’m looking for a big boat. Wow, what a jump in price from the aluminum's. I did a ton of research on all the major brands. I had it narrowed down to three brands. One of my main concerns was having a dealer near by that could fix any problems that would arise. It was February 2008 and I’m at an outdoor show in Harrisburg, PA. I was sitting in the boats, trying to imagine myself running down the lake in it. That is when I meet a rep from Triton Boats, Jerry Johnson. Jerry and I hit it off and before I know it I’m on the Triton Pro-Staff. I chalk it up to being in the right place at the right time. So I order a 2008 Triton 21X2 with a Mercury 225 Pro-XS. I add a Motorguide 36 volt trolling motor and finish it off with Lowrance electronics. So here I go, into the world of professional bass fishing. Okay, before I go any further, I’m not gonna say that my boat rig is better than yours. Everybody has there favorites. In the coming weeks I’ll let you know what I like and don’t like about my boat. That will be the case for everything. I’m just going to give you my experience with it, whether it be a tow vehicle, rod, reel, line, bait, etc. You make up your own mind if you like the product or not.

So I decide to start off slow and fish a few ABA Weekend series. My best finish in that series was a second place on Lake Erie(my second favorite place to fish). I ended up qualifying for the two day championship, but due to money issues I chose not to fish it. At that point I realized how expensive this sport is. In February 2009 I attended the BASSMASTER Classic in Shreveport, LA. A good friend and fishing mentor of mine, Ken Baumgardner (Bummy) had qualified for it through the Federation. All I have to say is WOW! What an experience!

In 2009 I fished the Northern Opens on the Pro side. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I learned that first year. Bummy (Pro) and Tom Landish (co-angler) were my travel partners. Traveling with someone makes things a little easier on the road and also leads to plenty of laughs. Oh, and I’m the “camp cook”, we ate better on the road than we do at home. I also made allot of friends, Koto, Bill, Jonathan, Jason, Ray, Chris, Jake, Monty, Jamie, and too many more to list. This is how I came to meet J Todd Tucker. It was the final Open on Lake Erie out of Sandusky. I was somewhere near Chick Island drifting and throwing a drop shot. J Todd happens to be about 3 miles away and starts heading in my direction. When he gets about 10 yards away he shuts down and says are you ok. I tell him I’m fine. I had my big motor trimmed up out of the water to get a straighter drift along the shoal I was fishing. “Apparently” that is a warning signal to other anglers that you need help. Anyways, that was something I’ll never forget, he went out of his way to check on me and make sure I was okay. I was also fishing Federation tournaments that year and was able to Qualify for the 2010 Mid-Atlantic Divisional.

I again fished the Opens in 2010, but didn’t have the success I had the previous year. That lack of success also carried over to my Federation Tournaments. But again, it seemed as though every tournament I went to, I made another friend or two or three. It has all been a great time and a learning experience and that’s what I hope to share with you in the future. I plan on discussing just about everything that a tournament angler deals with on a daily basis. Sometimes it might just end up being a quick little blurb on how my practice is going, a video from on the water, or a new bait/technique. Who knows what you will see or read? Well now that my little intro is out of the way we can get to the bass stuff in the coming post. Until next time, be safe!

Restore the California Delta newsletter

This is the newsletter for a group called "Restore the Delta"

They are a group of folks in northern California which are committed to the conservation of the California Delta, one of our nation's greatest fisheries. Precedents are set in California and they tend to leech their way eastward year to year, so DO NOT think you may never be affected by legislature like what is going on in California RIGHT NOW.

Posted By: Jessica IñiguezTo: Members in Restore the DeltaNews from Restore the Delta

On Monday, the Legislature voted to postpone the water bond to 2012, demonstrating once again that they are incapable of making decisions about water with calm deliberation and in the light of day.

The Senate backed postponement from the outset, but the Assembly took several votes, with Jared Huffman arguing to keep the measure on the ballot or pull it altogether and revise it, leaving the ballot date open. It took until 9:35 p.m. for the last Assembly holdouts, Assembly Member Pedro Nava (D-Santa Barbara) and Assembly Member Sandre Swanson (D-Alameda), to respond to pressure from legislative leadership and vote to postpone.

Thanks to Food and Water Watch, we know exactly who is behind the pressure. In a fact sheet published last week, FWW reported on research into contributions to the Alliance for Clean Water and New Jobs, the primary pro-water bond PAC. The big contributors:

• the Western Growers Association, a leading agricultural trade group

• the construction industry

• Southern California developers

• land conservancies, especially the Nature Conservancy

FWW reported that the pro-bond campaign also got money from Schwarzenegger’s California Dream Team, which itself had received funding from the energy industry, agribusiness (including Resnick, of course), and developers.

Once the dams are built, once the houses in the desert are built, what happens to the jobs? This isn’t about long-term benefit for the construction sector of the economy. It’s about short-term benefit for interests who are creating additional demand and setting themselves up to market water at ongoing profit.

And what about farm jobs? Is this water going to be used to put large numbers of farmworkers back to work in the fields? Unlikely. In the long run, agribusiness stands to benefit more from marketing water than from growing crops. (If they can’t make money growing cotton, they’ll make money growing houses.) Water cutbacks were not responsible for last year’s job losses, and nothing proposed by the water bond can guarantee more stable economies in communities that have grown up depending on unsustainable water deliveries.

And wherever we are going to grow in California, traditionally-landscaped housing in arid regions of the state is not the way to do it.

When green is not “green”

Let’s look at development in arid regions of the state. We really hate to quote the Public Policy Institute of California, creator of the Apocalypse vision of the Delta. But in a 2005 report, “Lawns and Water Demand in California,” the PPIC estimated that the amount of irrigated landscaping in California equaled the size of Westlands Water District.

According to our own researcher, Deirdre Des Jardins, “The report says that California’s Landscape Task Force concluded that outdoor use constitutes about half of residential demand in the state (California Urban Water Conservation Council, 2005), which was about 5.8 MAF in 2005, according to the 2005 California Water Plan.

“That would mean that residential landscaping uses as much as 2.9 MAF of water - almost three times what Westlands uses. . . . Furthermore, the water use for residential landscaping in desert areas is much higher, per capita. The PPIC report says,

"’The water provider for the Las Vegas Valley, located in the Mojave Desert, estimates that roughly 70 percent of residential demand goes to outdoor irrigation. Officials in Riverside County estimate that 80 percent of residential water in the Coachella Valley - an area with a similar climate - is used outdoors (Bowles, 2005).’

“This is because not only do lawns in inland areas use a lot more water than in coastal areas due to higher evapotranspiration -- the lots are generally LARGER than coastal areas. That's why water use in Bakersfield is about 300 gallons per day per person, twice the use of 150 gpd per person in the East Bay area.”

Deirdre uses California Water Plan figures to estimate that landscaping is 40.4% of urban water use in California. She says, “So if urban users simply cut their landscaping use by 40%, they could reduce their use of water by AT LEAST 16% statewide.” (That’s 40 percent of 40%.)

Metropolitan Water District, which gets 30% of its water from the Delta, could manage with about half of that by implementing some of the same water-saving techniques that agriculture has been using for decades – smart irrigation scheduling, and moving to drip systems. But we cannot expect MWD to use any water it saves to serve a larger number of customers, because MWD is only relevant if it is moving water.

What percentage of California’s water comes from the Delta?

While calling for smarter use of the water we have (a subject short-changed by the water bond), we need to keep pointing out the flawed implication in DWR’s oft-reported statement that two-third of Californians are served by water from the Delta.

The suggestion, always, is that the well-being of a large percentage of Californians depends on fixing this fragile region we call the Delta.

Really, how many Californians rely on water from the Delta?

There are lots of questions here, including what constitutes reliance on water from a particular source. If you rely on that source, how much do you “need”? Enough to drink? That plus enough to flush your toilet, shower, and run your garbage disposal? All those plus enough to wash your car and keep your lawn green in August?

Also, do you get all of your water from one water source? For example, some people in the Bay Area get their water almost exclusively from the Delta, while others get part of their water from some other source, such as Hetch Hetchy.

DWR is the source of the statement that water from the Delta serves more than 25 million people. But other information from DWR suggests that the State’s reliance on water from the Delta is not as high as this figure implies.

Steve Evans of Friends of the River has done an estimate using a bar graph from the 2005 California Water Plan. This bar graph shows California Dedicated Water Supplies for Water Years 1998, 2000, 2001 and lists supplies in six categories: Local Projects, Colorado Project, Federal Projects, State Project, Ground Water, Reuse & Recycle, and Instream Environment.

First, Steve averaged each category. Then he added the Federal Projects and State Project columns, getting a total of 9.3 MAF from those two sources of supply.

Finally, he divided 9.3 MAF by the total amount from all six categories, 80.4 MAF. That produced a percentage of 11.56%.

So based on DWR’s own bar chart, the Federal and State water projects supply less than 12% of the water from all sources.

Steve notes that quite a bit of federal water is diverted and used by contractors before it even gets to the Delta, so the actual amount exported from the Delta is less than this calculated percentage.

Deirdre Des Jardins suggests another way of doing this calculation. She takes the total Agricultural and Urban Water Use in California in 2000 (which was 43.1 MAF according to the Pacific Institute) and divides that into Delta exports that year (a bit over 6 MAF according to DWR). This produces a figure of about 17.5%. That was in an average (rather than a dry or wet) year.

So statewide, it looks like at most 17.5% of the water Californians use comes from the Delta.

In July of 2009, there were just under 37 million of us. If some imaginary subset of Californians used only water from the Delta, and they used all the Delta exports, we would be talking about at most 6.5 million people.

Let’s get back to reality here. Let’s stipulate that two-thirds of Californians (as many as 24 million people) probably do rely to some extent on Delta water. But overall, water from the Delta provides less that 20%, and perhaps as little as 10%, of the state’s overall water supply.

If we ended exports tomorrow, we wouldn’t have two out of three Californians dying of thirst.

Restore the Delta will keep taking apart conventional wisdom this way over the next two years while the water bond lingers on life support. And we will keep telling the story of the Delta, a place of ecological, economic, cultural and historical importance, that is under attack by those promoting California’s unsustainable 20th century water policies.

Interesting paraphrase from Guy Eaker as printed in BassWestUSA

This is taken a bit out of context, but worth reading the entire article. If you don't subscribe to BassWest USA mag, you should.


Eaker believes that part of this change is due to technology and part due to networking. "GPS has changed BASS completely." Prior to tournament cut offs, when BASS pros are no longer allowed to tap into insider information, they can discuss lake hotspots with local pros and guides. Armed with several waypoints, they're able to quickly find and evaluate structure that in the past would have taken days, if not weeks, to find. "All you got to do is call your local buddy and get the GPS readings and your're on 'em." And let's be clear -Eaker isn't complaining, just stating a fact of tournament life. The other side of the coin is that if you're new to the tour and don't have those local contacts, you're at a decided disadvantage.


www.basswest.com

Champlain to Erie

Again I want to thank all of you for your kind words and support while I was in NY. What a derby. Beautiful setting, great fishing, huge smallmouth which were eager to eat. This was my first experience going after northern smallmouth and I feel like I learned quite a bit regarding natural lakes, I guess I will get to try and prove that next week on Erie.

I can tell you now what 'big' water is. I thought I had some kind of definition in my head as to what a rough lake was and well, I was wrong. If you go to the great lakes or anything like that, ask questions, do your research, utilize the internet to gather as much information as you can about how to be properly equipped and how to contact help if you need it. A 5 blade prop may indeed save your life.

So, moving on to lake Erie, this again will be an opportunity to get on some smalljaws but there is a difference in how this derby will unfold unlike Champlain. Many more anglers will be going after smallmouth where in NY at least half the field were splitting efforts between largemouth and smallmouth. I really think that helped me in NY. I am not saying you cannot get on a LM bite on or around Erie but the better fish in numbers and size are said to be SM. Lots of territory available around Detroit, Erie, St Clair, the Detroit and St Clair rivers are all in play so this will tend to 'stretch' the field. There surely will be one day where Erie will get to big to get on so the remaining areas will fish a bit smaller but still, that is a huge area. Current will also be guiding factor for some and I hope some of my Delta experience will help me find some of the ambush points available to those fish in the rivers.

I'm very excited to get up there.

I will post some pics of what I find.

Champlain Practice - Mike H

I love to get on waters I have only read about, it's just cool to even be here on Champlain. When I think about it I believe that this is the first real natural lake I may have ever fished in my life and well, it is a little different. I have spent the last two days trying to find a way to really fish my strengths without making the 60-70 mile trip one way to the skinny south part of the lake even though the AFS derby was won there yesterday or that's what I hear. I guess I will hold that as a contingency plan IF we get fair weather allowing me to make the trip. I feel like it is a big risk to put a plan together there simply because you never know if you are going to be able to get there and back. I have looked at some 'riverish' spots way up north by the Canadian border and really only found a couple three good largemouth, not much but something, good here is 3.5 lbs and better. Today the lake is supposed to be flatter and I plan on going and finding a place to get 5 brown fish for a limit and then expand on the green fish thing if I can. I know LM are the way to win here and I really want to put a milk run together fish SM early and LM the rest of the day hoping for a couple of kickers. Inland sea needs to turn on for my plan to come together.

Thinking about Champlain, Mike Haggerty

As the northern circuit starts to look me square in the face, I have to change gears here and try and prepare for some unfamiliar lakes and techniques. Love it.... I have to try and wrap my head around an entirely new set of standards regarding northern BIG reservoirs ie Champlain and probably St Claire. A lot of new questions are running through my head, a lot of unknowns for me logistically as well as strategically. What's the forage? What do the crawfish look like? Can you make the run on Champlain from launch to the mats and back on one tank of gas? How does the wind set up predominately? How big is the water in bad weather? How do you effectively stay on 'pelagic' smallies day after day? Can I use my electronics well enough to be effective in open water? Where do I pull up to in a high wind situation? Am I versatile enough? I could go on for a while here but you get my point. I've been told time and again that a bass is a bass is a bass but..........., I drink that coolaid a bit too but we all know a lake Erie smallie acts a whole lot different than a G'ville largemouth. My experience level here is pretty low but at least I don't have any bad habits right? This will be a huge learning experience for me regardless and that fact alone makes it worth it. If I have learned anything up to now, there is no substitute for time behind the wheel on as many different lakes as you can muster, period. If you plan to succeed, you gotta catchem everywhere any time. I am really looking forward the challenges that are in front of me but I would be a liar if I said I was not a little intimidated as well.

Confusion at Ouachita - Mike H

Boy how a couple days can bring about such massive changes in a fishes behavior. First two days I was here I was just kind of looking around searching for bites here or there, caught a ton of fish on a squarebill and trap and whatever else I decided to throw at them, found a bunch of fish on the north side cruising for bedding sites with even a few locked kinda, conditions looked real promising. A mild cold front passed yesterday early and even after that I was able to scrounge up a small limit X 2 just finessing and re running a few spots I like from the day prior. Today though was a killer. I added Ricky T. to the back seat and neither of us could put a HALF limit together. Gonna have to take today as an 'off' day and go look around some more tomorrow. Up lake it seems a bit flatter, smaller and may not hold the population of fish as the central or eastern sections but it looks more like what I am used to seeing at home (hate to use that as a crutch but hey, it is what it is). I will look at the east section of the lake at least a half day and treat it like Amistad sans the huge swimmers, it is deep, steep and supposed to be clear, maybe I will run into some of this rumored clarity or GRASS. So far this lake lacks cover of almost any sort, lots of snot moss on the bottom, the occasional stump. I am going to start treating this a lot like a pure structure lake for sure but on a mini scale as the fish HAVE to be thinking spawn. They have to. Really. They do.