Four of us went down on Saturday to scout some spots to shoot on the opener. Our first two “go to” spots were posted! Crap, we began looking around more in the Brawley area and settled on a new spot that looked good. Our only concern was that there were guys already shooting in the area (at euros presumably), so we wondered if they were spooking the mournings. Anyway opening morning arrived and we staked out our spot. Action was steady but not spectacular. We stopped at around 9:30 as it was getting really hot. Went to the cleaning station at our hotel and breasted out our birds. At that point each of us had around 20 birds roughly 60 percent mourning, 30 percent ECD and 10 percent white wing.
Went back to the spot in the late afternoon and everyone finished off their limits and got a few more euros. We stayed a second night and hit the same spot this morning (Monday) but it was pretty dead.
We were pretty happy with our success and mostly just lots of great laughs while shooting, hanging out at the pool and hitting the local restaurants. Such a great annual tradition we look forward to.
Some pics below. The video is of something we hadn’t seen before. A wounded dove landed in a canal where we were shooting. My buddy was watching it thrash in the water when a LARGE fish attacked and inhaled it. He said he saw a large tail fin and big splash. A bit later another dove landed in the canal and so I started recording when it drifted into the location of the earlier attack. This time the bird was pulled under for a few seconds and then it resurfaced. I’m guessing it was a flat head catfish? I guess it could’ve been a largemouth bass. You never know what you’re going to see out there.
