Lake Berryessa 'Fly Only' Tournament April 27,2024

[Ryan]

Just wanted to let everyone know I'll be throwing a first of it's kind fly fishing tournament on lake Berryessa. I know Bass n Fly does it's thing, but this will be different being on a lake. Will be much easier fishing and I expect all boats to limit out!

I won't be fishing it, and nobody is making any money off this, we just want to throw a great event for the bass fly community, where everyone has a blast and catches a bunch of nice fish.

Picked Saturday, April 27'th for being the prime of the prime as far as timing goes.

We might have a few first-time tournament goers. My job will be to help walk through and "guide" those who are new to the whole tournament process. Can be a good learning opportunity. I really just want to help share this fun I've been having in tournaments the last few years!

The sponsor list of companies contributing gear kind of blows my mind!

I've got sign-ups and rules on my website at www.flyfishcnv.com/tournament

If interested, please help spread the word! And feel free to contact me with any questions.

Edit: We got the permit, we are all legal and good to go!

[MThompson]

Excellent Idea! I am in. Was up there yesterday and that place is about to explode. Weather permitting it should shape up really well for flyfishing end of April. Is it OK to fish solo? Highly doubtful I will have a partner...

[MThompson]

Is it $220 or $250 day of the event? Website is a little confusing?

[Ryan]

Great stuff to hear!!! I'll have to fix the mistake. It is $200 if you sign up before the tournament with venmo payment. Or $220 to pay cash the morning of the tournament.

[cmcdhuibh]

Lake is at 440ft kind of rare for Berryessa.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Great timing, naturally and this is one of the top reservoirs for bass in California.

It should be a wonderful event for all.

The lake is huge so don't worry about it being crowed.

[Ryan]

Thank you very much for the support as always Bill! I really am looking forward to this event. Going to be a special day!

We have 20 boats signed up so far. Which equates to $4k in cash prizes and we've got around $3k in gear delivered through sponsors so far. Lots of more gear to come as well. Big fish winner is going to get a Galvan Torque T-7 reel, $200, and the Galvan Big Fish Plaque!

Looking better than I had expected so far!

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Wish I still lived in Davis so I could attend with one of my grandsons.

Looking forward to seeing some pictures.

[Ryan]

Yes if only Bill!! I will be posting a good story and pics on here I promise.

cmcdhuibh, forgot to respond, yes the lake is now finally spilling over the glory hole as far as I understand. Being the second year of having plenty water, it's looking good for the bass. I'm getting bass as chunky and as healthy as I've ever seen on Oroville lately. Berryessa produced allot of abnormally plump fish earlier in the year. Pretty clear to see the fish are loving the higher water levels. Also gives us anglers a whole bunch more submerged structures to fish. And having shade from trees on the water is very nice for fishing as well!

[lee s.]

Rest assured Ryan, Berryessa is doing well. Susan and self did a trip with Johnny yesterday in the rain that produced 60+ for numbers with 80% 2+lbs to about 4#-5#. You should have a GREAT tournament.
.....lee s.

[Ryan]

Here is the update as promised! The tournament turned out excellent! John H was very generous and helped by taking pictures in the morning. He got some truly amazing shots. I'm not familiar with how to post large full size shots on here, unless I can post full size the shots will not be given justice. So maybe John can showcase some of his beautiful work!? A few of your favorite shots John??

I am also still waiting on pics of the weigh ins and award ceremony from my friends professional camera. I will be sure to post those up soon to come!

All this being said it was all a big success I feel. Allot of people have told me they felt things went smoothly. Pretty chaotic day for myself so that was all good stuff to hear. But what a cool crowd of people we had! It must have been 60-70 people for the award ceremony.

The fishing was tough for some. Great for others. Real good for most. The winning bag was caught by Roger Bloom & Jon Nelson weighing in at 17.07lbs! Roger also won the Galvan Big Fish Award with a 4.16lb largemouth. Took just about 14lbs to make 5'th place! Seriously impressive stats for a fly tournament. 66% of participants acquired a 10lb bag. That's 18/27 boats!

It took 14lbs to get into the cash money. However it took 12.91lbs to win gear.

Fun stuff!! Much more to come soon!!

Most people were doing the float n fly. My black leech seemed to be the most popular fly. I know Corey and Andrew in 2'nd place were using the float n fly, but for the rest of the 14lb+ bags I have my suspicions they were doing something a bit different! Lol. I didn't even ask.

Got a whole list of things I can do to improve things drastically. But I've heard nothing but positive feedback so far!

[MThompson]

This event went as good or better than any events I've fished over the years. Very organized and friendly. Looking forward to the next one and I'm sure you'll have even more teams than this one. If I could make one suggestion, perhaps next time you find a way to spread out the goodies a little more. The payout was great but some of those prizes could be spread around with a simple raffle during the awards ceremony. Maybe some love for the first out of the money and even smallest bag. This would give more folks a chance of going home with something. Might want to bring a bump tank also.
Hope I'm not coming off critical. It was an awesome event. Thanks again to you and all the folks who helped you.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Thanks Ryan for having a wonderful fly fishing event and so close to Sacramento and the Bay area.

I am sure JohnH will get some great photos up here.

I have known Roger Bloom since he was a teenager and he has become a top fly fisher.

With his career with the CDFW, now retired? he is a wealth of knowledge.

[Ryan]

Thank you Bill! Roger is 100% on my radar now after seeing his results! Very cool you and him go back so far. He helped by giving me little head ups about different things for running my first tourney. As far as I know yes, he is retired from CDFW.

Mike glad you made it out! All great stuff to hear. Thank you so much! Good advice on spreading the prizes out. This is something I can do for sure. I had factored in having 15-20 boats maybe so that's how I crunched all the numbers for dividing up the prizes. Then in the last 10 days before the tourney we had a whole bunch of sign ups and it became way bigger than I had imagined! I kind of forgot to take some time to relook my divying for winning teams.

I think that's a great idea to raffle allot of the donations off actually. Next year I will see what I can do about getting a swag bag to the first 20 boats to sign up or something as well. Got an idea floating around about a big bluegill prize too or something.

Not sure when it's gonna be but I'm gonna keep this running. Hopefully I will have another tournament going before a full year has passed. The goal now is to get more than 1 tourney going per year.