OUTDOOR NOTES : Rams Take Best Shots for Charity

Jack Youngblood remembers when the Rams came out with guns blazing--every Tuesday.

Through the 1970s and early ‘80s, when Youngblood was an All-Pro defensive end, they weren’t bad on Sundays, either, but the weekly shoots with his teammates were a special diversion. Each Tuesday, the players’ day off, a group would usually go to Raahauge’s Hunt Club in Norco, and sometimes after practice on Friday they would target-shoot at the Laguna Gun Club, before it was turned into a golf driving range.

“It was a place to escape to for the day,” said Youngblood, who now does promotional work for the Rams and is the analyst on their radio broadcasts. “We’d get out in the woods and shoot a few birds, then we’d leave from there and go quail hunting someplace. We hunted all over Southern California.”

Now Youngblood has rounded up a new group for a more serious purpose. On Nov. 14, he’ll be at Raahauge’s with Jim Everett, Irv Pankey, Jackie Slater, Shawn Miller and Mike McDonald for the CHOC Padrinos/Jack Youngblood Celebrity Pheasant Hunt to raise funds for the Children’s Hospital of Orange County--specifically, to buy a self-contained, transportable incubator. Price tag: $40,000.

The unit will be on display at the shoot.

“Usually, when you go to these things, you pay your money but you never see where it goes,” Youngblood said. “With this you can say, ‘Here’s what we’re buying.’ ”

The entry fee is $300. The 800-member Padrinos, the men’s support group for CHOC, generated more than $200,000 from a pheasant hunt and other events last year. More information is available at (714) 532-8683.

A few current Rams, including Miller and Pankey, have their own shooting group these days. Youngblood sometimes is invited along, but it’s not like the good old days.

“We used to make several trips every year,” he said, “go off on overnight expeditions into the high desert to a ranch or to Vail Lake to shoot doves and quail. We’d leave on a Monday night and go down and camp, get up in the morning and shoot all day long and come back Tuesday night . . . walk those hills. It was a great way to get the soreness out (after Sunday’s game), chasing behind a covey of quail for two hours.”

The other regulars were Jim Youngblood (no relation), Larry Brooks, Nolan Cromwell, Bob Brudzinski, Dennis Harrah and Rich Saul. Dave Elmendorf, Jack (Hacksaw) Reynolds and others would go along occasionally.

Several winners in last weekend’s first Fall Trout tournament at Big Bear Lake proved you don’t need a boat to catch the big ones. The first two hooked their winners from shore, near the dam.

The Bear Valley Sportsman’s Club organized the event to supplement its May Trout event of the last seven years, trying to promote the lake as a trophy trout fishery. At 8.64 pounds, Virgil Morningstar’s first-place rainbow qualified in that category. The San Bernardino angler was spinfishing with a gold Kastmaster and collected $1,800.

Runner-up Errol Brett of El Cajon won $1,000 with a 5.13-pound catch, using a chrome Kastmaster. Both caught their fish Sunday, the second day of the event.

Carris Toothman, 15, of Fontana won the junior division at 1.21 pounds; Alfred Herrera, 9, of Victorville took the peewee division at 1.38 pounds.

Lin Crawford, president of the Sportsman’s Club, said rain, wind and cold temperatures hurt the tournament’s results, but catches in general haven’t reflected the heavy planting of big fish over the last seven years--7,800 pounds this year, including 3,000 for the tournament. About 50 rainbows in the eight- to 15-pound category were planted, but only Morningstar’s showed up.

Briefly

Randy Blaukat, 27, of Joplin, Mo., found a new way to win a bass tournament. He turned his boat into a submarine. Competing in the Top 100 Super BASS Pro-Am at South Hill, Va., Blaukat was confronted by a low bridge barring the top of a creek where he wanted to fish. He pulled the drain plug on his unsinkable Ranger, cleared the deck and laid on his back with the gunwales awash as the boat slipped under with a half-inch to spare. Then Blaukat caught five bass that put him into first place, which paid $45,000. . . . The next BASS tournament is scheduled Nov. 15-17 at Lake Havasu City, Ariz.

It’s been a year and a half since Berkley introduced its Power Bait, which all but revolutionized trout fishing. Now the Iowa company is bringing out Power Worms, Power Wigglers, catfish and crappie Power Bait and the same trout bait in egg and nugget form.