Weyer is Punching Mad
Places 2nd at the California Delta National Guard Event
By Terry Battisti
Northwestern Staff Writer
September 29, 2009
Charlie Weyer was introduced to punching mats back east in his days on the Elite Series. He saw firsthand, from Sam Aversa of Penetrator Weights and Steve Kennedy, how effective it could be when faced with fish that had holed up in the thick vegetation trying to escape the heat of the summer sun or find a warmer sanctuary in the late winter.
Although he had watched other anglers succeed with the technique back then, he really didn’t understand the intricacies involved with crashing a 1-ounce-plus weight into the grass or how the fish would set up within its confines. Last year, though, he began to gain a better understanding of the technique and his homework paid off handsomely with a 4th-place finish at the California Delta.
As this year’s National Guard Delta event drew closer, he knew the punching technique would be a big player again. Because he knew he needed to refine his technique more, he spent a month at the Delta between May and June and then spent four more days right before the cutoff. In that time he not only refined his technique but increased his knowledge of places that would hold these fish. Again, he would find his investment would reap big returns and almost a win.
Pre-practice
With a Delta win within his grasp last year, Weyer was going to do everything he could to put himself close to a win at this year’s event.
“After my finish last year, I wanted this tournament bad,” Weyer said. “I knew the fish would be on a punching bite and I had to devote the time to find the areas these fish would be in during the tournament.
“My first session of pre-practice started on May 19th and I fished until June 29th,” he said. “That was right after the Oroville Stren and I fished right through and beyond the Delta Stren. At the Delta Stren I had a great practice but just wasn’t as dialed into the bite during the tournament. I placed 32nd in the standings but more importantly, I found a lot of areas that would be good for the National Guard event.
“Then, right before the cutoff in August, I went back for four days at a time that had the exact tides for the upcoming tournament in September. That’s when I get really dialed into the bite.
“That trip I probably has the best four days I’ve ever had on the Delta,” he noted. “I had two bags over 25 pounds and two others that were in the 22- to 23-pound class. I even took a couple of the college kids out to show them the technique for their upcoming tournament and they caught an 8 and a couple 5s and 6s.
He knew going into practice what the bite would be and committed to throwing the punching rig.
“When I got there for each of my practice periods, I had two rods on my deck,” he said. “One was rigged with a 1 3/4-ounce tungsten Penetrator weight and the other with a 1 3/8-ounce weight. Both rods had a 4/0 Reaction Innovations BMF hook and I switched between a Reaction Innovations Sweet Beaver in California 420 and sprayed grass.
“With those two rods rigged, I went looking for the elodea and the pennywort,” he added. “I figured out the bigger fish were holding in the elodea but I could catch limits of fish in the pennywort.
“In pre-practice, there were a lot of shad and bluegill around the vegetation and the sprayed grass color worked the best but during the tournament, the fish got on a crawdad bite and the California 420 color worked better.
He was also targeting specific depths of water.
“In pre-practice, the fish seemed to be in the 4- to 6-foot range but when I came back for the official practice period, the fish had gone a little shallower depending on the stage of the tide,” he said. “By the time the tournament rolled around, the fish were in the 2- to 6-foot range.
“There were other differences between my last pre-practice period and the official practice period,” he said. “One was the grass had grown to cover about 30-percent more area and the fish seemed to have switched from biting on an outgoing tide to an incoming tide.
“My official practice was pretty productive,” he said. “The first day I had about 40 bites and caught a 3 1/2 and a 7. The second day I probably had 30 bites and the third day between 10 and 15 bites. On the last day of practice, I went back to the stretch of water I initially practiced on and had seven bites in seven flips. That’s where I ended up catching most of my fish in the tournament in that one little 1/2-mile section of water.
“I also have to say I had some frog fish going but I figured I use that as a backup plan. The weather was just too up and down during the tournament for what I thought would be a consistent frog bite.”
Game On
“On the first day of the tournament I wanted to hit three or four of the areas I’d found in practice,” Weyer said. “So I started on this one bend in the river that’d been good to me but couldn’t see the vegetation due to the high tide. I got anxious and started fishing blind but it only produced a couple bites.
“After about a half hour of that, I ran to another area where I could see the grass better and after 400 yards, I had 18 or 19 pounds in the boat. At 9:30 am, I left and went to the area I’d fished last year and fished that until about 1:00 pm without catching anything that would help me.
“The next spot I hit I ended up fishing for the rest of the day but that was by luck,” he said. “I was ready to pull the trolling motor when I saw some grass in about 2 feet of water. I made a pitch into it and an 8-pounder ate the bait.”
Day 2 resulted in a below average performance but it also helped him figure out an important bit of information.
“Day 2 I started out where I’d caught the big bag the day before,” he said. “My plan was to stay there until I caught my limit. I had five in the boat by 10:00 am but I had lost a lot of fish during that time. The weather had changed and the fish weren’t reacting to the bait the way they had the day before.
“That day they didn’t eat the bait on the fall or on the hop. They were eating it between hops and they weren’t eating it hard. I was impatient at setting the hook and because of that I probably lost 15 fish that day. What really hurt was a 3-pounder that I set the hook on. It came flying out of the water, hit me in the chest, came off the hook and fell back into the river. I had a feeling that fish may come back to haunt me.
After weigh-in that day, he had a chance to talk with fellow Triton team member Ronald Hobbs about his day.
“I was pretty upset with my performance,” he said. “I was trying to figure out how I could make better contact with the fish and my buddy Ron told me has was having a lot of luck using a punch skirt. Before that, I’d been missing fish with it so I stopped using it. He showed me a better way to rig the skirt that would result in better hookups.
With the punch skirt in hand, he was ready for Day 3.
“I went out on Day 3 and with the punch skirt I had 22 1/2 pounds in the boat by 9:00 am,” he said. “I feel the skirt helped add more of a crawdad realism to the bait and the fish hit the bait more aggressively. They were hitting it so hard that it would knock a vibration into the rod. There was no doubt they were eating it.
“After I had that weight in the boat, I went and practiced for the next day”
“May Day 4 plan was to do the exact same thing as the day before,” he said. “I went to my spot and had 16-plus pounds in the boat by 1:00 pm. Then I went and fished the area where I’d caught the 8 a couple days before but didn’t catch anything to upgrade. I had what I was going to catch by that time.
Reflections
“I noticed that the fish this year were a lot more bunched up than in years past,” Weyer said. “That made me fish slow and hit every blade of vegetation. I think that’s where a lot of guys failed – they were fishing too fast. A good idea of how slow I was fishing was it took me four hours to cover one 1/4-mile stretch of shore.
“Looking back, I knew that 3-pound fish I lost on day would haunt me. I wish I could go back and rerun that second day but that’s not possible. If I could I’d go back and be more patient on my hooksets.
“This by far was one of the most exciting times I’ve had in my tournament career,” he said. “Punching mats is the biggest adrenaline rush there is – it’s all right in your face. One fish you’ll set the hook and it’ll come flying out of the water at you and the next time you set the hook, your rod doesn’t move. I’m addicted to it.
Notes
Charlie Weyer placed second with 74-12 – 9 ounces behind eventual winner Rusty Salewske.