My brother from another mother Henry David Thoreau (American author and over all boss hoss) laid down some serious knowledge with this quote;
"Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after."
Neck Beard = Immense knowledge listen to what I say!
This quote speaks to me on a couple of different levels. When I do go fishing I am trying to catch fish, especially during a tournament. But there is much more to it. The whole experience of being outdoors and trying to figure out a species that lives an an environment that is foreign to us is awesome. It takes a lot of imagination because most of the time you can't see the fish you are pursuing (although modern technology is catching up to mr. bass). Fishing can be a real escape for people. I like to totally forget about what's going on in my life and focus my energy to try and figure out what the fish are doing, where they are, what they are eating ext... My mind is always racing when I am fishing, I compare it to a duck swimming along the surface of the water. To the human eye the duck looks calm cool and collected but below the surface the ducks feet are paddling like a hamster in a wheel.
What are the bass doing down there?
I also love the scenic beauty of the Central Coast. The landscapes are inspiring and nice to look at when the bite is slow. Attached are a few pic's from my adventures on the water:
Back side of Bishop's Peak, a small farm pond I grew up fishing that is no longer there:(
There is the pond!
Pituophis catenifer catenifer - Pacific Gopher Snake. Get back on land!
The second tournament with the Castaic Bass club kicked off at Piru Lake. I drew Walt as a boater, a young ambitious angler like myself. I looked for some good spring time water on the map and Diablo cove as well as the cove near the marina seemed like good places to start. I also wanted to try to fish a little in the river portion of the lake.
My baits of choice for this tournament were the senko, spider jig, spinnerbait and a crankbait. I left my drop shot at home not realizing that it can be a very productive tool for shallow bedding bass. Walt was catching them left and right on the drop shot.
Between the two of us we caught 16 bass, I caught 4 of the 5 keepers. We had a limit by 8:00 am. Walt fished the drop shot most of the day with a 4" roboworm in oxblood on a short leader. I caught bigger fish because I was fishing a larger profile bait. The senko is a bulky 5" bass inciter that shimmys slowly to the lake bottom. I prefer to fish it weightless and wacky style.
Our total weight was 10.55 pounds good enough for a third place finish out of 14 boats! A big key for us was the decision to fish the cove by the marina the hour before weigh in. We caught three good fish there enabling us to cull two of our smaller fish. The winner came in with 12 pounds and said they used spinnerbaits, although I was not that convinced they were honest. Fisherman tend to fib from time to time.
Another bait I am starting to hear more and more about is the Ika. Made by Gary Yamamoto fished on either an okachobee rig or weightless reverse Texas rig. It has a slow fall similar to a tube.
Since I can't fish the lakes I love, why not love the lakes that are near me now? That is exactly what I did when I attended my first meeting of the Castaic Bass Club held in Valencia, Ca near Magic Mountain. The club meets the Thursday before the tournament at El Torito restaurant. The Club fishes Castaic Lake, Castaic Lake Lagoon, Pyramid Lake, Piru Lake and Cachuma Lake. All with in an hour from where I live in Santa Monica.
The membership year will run from January through November. All members will pay the following dues or fees:
Annual Dues-$25-payable upon joining the club in January, reduced to $15 if joining in July 1 or later.
A. Monthlydues-$10.00 each month, including the month of joining. All fees are due at the monthly club meeting. Members must pay their dues before tournament day!
B. Monthly tournament fees-$10.00 for each tournament fished. $5 big fish option is available for interested members.
C. Non-boaters are required to pay their boater fishing partner the following minimum amounts to cover their share of boat operation expenses.
Castaic Lake: $30.00*
Piru Lake: $35.00*
Pyramid Lake: $35.00*
Casitas Lake: $40.00*
Cachuma/Lopez Lake: $70.00*
My first tournament with this club was to be @ Pyramid Lake and my boater was Brian. Castaic Bass Club fishes a team tournament format, which is great because it builds camaraderie. Gate opens @6 am the low was 41 F, high 68 F and partly cloudy. Weigh in was at 3 pm at Yellow Bar.
Brian and his boat.
Brian was a great guy, new to the sport. We did not have the best day because this lake was new to both of us. I should have done a little more research before hand as well as map study but I thought Brian would have a good game plan. We caught two keepers on the flick shake, which I will find to be a common occurrence in this club.
Me giving my signature thumbs up!
Why is it called Pyramid Lake? I don't know:(
Here are a couple of videos on the flick shake:
Take home lessons from this tournament were to step in and make suggestions, especially when fishing with someone who is new to the sport. Also learn more about the flick shake!
A July Naci night tournament! Oh yeah! Boats launched at 7 pm and weigh in was at 3 am. I really enjoy night tournaments, especially at Nacimiento. The lake can get really crowded during the day in the summer months, which means lots of boat traffic, muddy water and sad bass:( Studies have shown that bass do most of their foraging at night in the summer so night tournaments give us anglers an opportunity to take advantage of that. Because of the low light conditions your sense of touch/feel is enhanced and when a good size spotted bass blasts your lure it really gets your heart racing.
Look mom! A dragon. Bring your drop shot lets slay this beast.
My game plan was to drop shot until it got dark then throw reaction baits (spinnerbaits, lipless crankbaits) and some jigs/chatterbaits. Started just outside snake creek and didn't catch a thing until it got dark. Boo.
When night finally feel upon us, I was able to catch my first fish on a black spinnerbait with a #5 size willow leaf blade. The black profile of the bait shows up better under low light condition (aka moon light). It was a really nice spotted bass so I was pumped! Ended up catching 4 total and pops had 1. If we were fishing a team tournament we would have done well, but since Ambushers is an individual tournament we didn't do so hot. Think I finished 11th or 12th. Winner won with jigs by the dam.
One of the key take home points was to have some back up blades for my spinner baits. During the tournament a fish busted the blade off my spinnerbait and I did not have another one of that size (#5).
Naci is a lake with a lot of spotted bass that are about the same size (fisherman call them clone fish), around 2 pounds. If you catch 10-11 pounds of fish you are looking good. One fish in the 3-4 pound range to add to the clones and you're set. There are largemouth bass at Nacimiento and it is a good strategy to go for a couple of them either around a dock or in some stick ups. I feel the spots hang around the rocks @ Naci more than the largemouths.
I attached some instructional videos for how to rig a drop shot. A great Nacimiento bait. If you are going to fight the dragon, bring a drop shot. The pro in the video is Skeet Reese a big time bass slayer.
Last time I had the pleasure to fish Lopez I caught a monster! A six plus a bag of chips pound fish, see pic below caught on a spider jig (Gary Yamamoto):
6.65 pound bucket mouth fatty aka Lopez Lunker :)
I figured Lopez in the summer would be a great day. The weather started off cool and overcast which is nice because Lopez has a reputation of howling like a hungry wolverine. I started off fishing in the Lopez arm with reaction baits. My dad and myself caught a lot of fish but most were dinks, probably young fish a few months old. Pop caught a nice keeper on a senko but we had to make a move because we needed size.
The rest of the day I concentrated on main lake areas with my spider jig and drop shot. Ended up with 3 keepers for an 11th place finish, not that great. Winner worked drop shots on main lake points.
Take home lesson was to fish main lake in the summer and leave the shallower areas for spring time. If I do fish areas with shallow water, concentrate on the deeper portions where fish can recover in post spawn. On a positive note if I had not made the adjustment during the tournament I could have skunked (zero'd).
My first tournament since 2006 was going to take place at Santa Margarita Lake and I was excited! I took my good friend Tyler out to do a little pre-fishing to see if I could develop a pattern before the big day. We got a little action on spinnerbaits during our outing but no keepers (keeper bass = 13").
A little side note about pre-fishing. It helps you eliminate unproductive water and zero in on the most productive areas. It also helps you determine which techniques are most likely to work in each situation, and builds up your confidence so you won't panic and prematurely start switching patterns after the tournament starts.
I like to start pre-fishing at home looking at aerials of a map as well as a topographic map. I start with what time of year it is as a starting point and look for areas on the map that make sense. There is a big mental side of fishing that I plan on learning more and more about. Visualizing your day being a success thinking there is a fish near by on every cast, these things help your mental game. Then I can go out and work an area with the baits I want and if it works I can look for similar areas on a map with out having to fish them.
Topo map of Santa Margarita
You never want to "burn" the fish you want to catch during the tournament. You want to get bites so you know where the fish are, and you may want to land a fish or two in each spot to see how big they are, but you don't want to catch so many fish that you "educate" them. You can ensure this by bending your hooks closed or cutting them off and, instead of setting the hook when you get a strike just try to shake the bait (but never shake babies) a little so the fish will drop it.
During the tournament the spinnerbait bite fell off. We were not catching any keepers! Not sure if I was in the wrong areas or if conditions changed on me but I adapted and fished a smaller more subtle bait slowly. Which for me is a drop shot. I fished the drop shot near a tree leading back to a spawning cove by the marina. I caught three keepers off that tree through out the day. The worm I was using was a 4" cut tail yamamoto worm.
The funny thing about that worm was it was on old one I had lying in my box for years. The color was faded and I only had three of them. The fish must have been feeding on something that looked just like that because as soon I lost my last worm in that color, so sorry no mire bites. It was a tough day because out of 30 anglers I ended up in 6th place with just three fish. I forget what my total weight was.
The angler who won used spinnerbaits and senkos on a striper flat in the area of the lake near the dam. Blades were a god idea I just never found the right water.
I was inspired to buy a rig just for drop shoting so I can detect the soft bites and really let the set up reach its full potential. A drop shot for me is best on about 6-8 pound Trilene flurocarbon line professional grade, a light weight spinning reel with a smooth drag, and the rod for me should be relatively long 6'9"-7' (I feel it gives me more casting distance and more leverage for hook sets, well more like pulls with the bites on a drop shot, if you set the hook to hard it will rip out).
The rig I ended up buying was a Pflueger President spinning reel combined with a Okuma Reflexions 6'9" ML spinning rod.
What a lunker! The story behind this big fish starts out as a family vacation in Ojai at the Blue Iguana. I asked my Dad if he could bring down his boat so we could get in a little fishing at Casitas Lake and he said sure. So I was pumped knowing that Casitas has produced some of the largest bass ever caught on record. I started rigging up rods with a big swimbait, spinnerbait a drop shot rig and one of my favorites the old spider jig.
I met my Dad at the opening for the lake and we find out that there is a ten day waiting period for boats after they are cleaned and inspected. This is because of the “Policies & Procedures for Vessel Inspection for Quagga Mussels”, which requires a 10 day quarantine process. Long story short we can't take the boat out. We decide to fish a little from shore. I was throwing a white spinnerbait with double willow blades.
3/8 oz Stanley Wedge Spinnerbait w/double willow leaf blades and trailer hook. Don't forget the trailer hook.
I caught one keeper bass out of the weeds so I kept throwing the spinnerbait as I walked down the bank. With the wind blowing into the cove I cast my bait into the wind and realed it into a medium sized log knowing that bass like to face into the current. BAAM! Bass on! I set the hook and leaned like a chollo to get that sucka to shore. I was shocked at the size. My scale was not with me so I snapped some pics of the fish laid down next to my rod and got a measurement that way. The conversion was 9.19 pounds. What a beast, so close to my goal of ten pounds. Some day I will land a double digit largey.
So pumped on this fish! Camera on the rocks solo shot.
The basic formula for calculating the weight of a largemouth bass or smallmouth bass is: length x length x length divided by 1600. ((24.5")*(24.5")*(24.5))/1600= 9.19 pounds! Man I wish I had my scale. Look at that belly.
Take home lessons for the day included a new respect in the spinnerbait as a big fish bait, great around cover.
I was inspired last year to put more time, energy and money in to my fishing. After taking a couple of years off to kind of get settled here in LA (you know make some friends, work, find a good place to live) I started to fun fish again in 2010, which lead to a few tournaments.
It all started on a beautiful early April outing with my good friend Tyler @ Lopez Lake. The water temp was in the lower 60's which is the magic # for spawning! I took some time to look at the lake a little differently then normal. I got the map out and said to myself, "Where are good spawning areas?" What parts of the lake have nice shallow flats with cover and migration routes in and out? Normally I might just look at Lopez and say what areas have I had success in the past, but this time I took a more scientific approach. I located three areas on the map that had these characteristics;
The section past the bridge in the Arroyo Grande Arm.
The Witenburg Arm and all of its stick ups.
The back of Lopez Arm.
All of these areas have creeks that run back into them, nice cover and are flat. My plan was set, I would stay off the main lake and fish these 3 areas. Turns out the Witenburg Arm was closed and I never made it back to the Lopez Arm because the fishing was so good in the AG Arm!
Tyler and I caught about 20 fish that day ranging from 2-4 pounds. Most were caught on a wacky rig senko watermelon w/red flake with a 1/0 wide gap finesse Gamagatzu hook on 8 lb flurocarbon. The line was key because the bites were subtle. I was pitching the bait to pieces of cover where I thought a bass would be spawning or getting ready to spawn. The depth I was fishing was from 5-8 feet, perfect for the senko to do its subtle shake on the way to the bottom.
Nice Bass Ty!
I'll take one too please.
It was so much fun I brought my dad out the next day and he caught his biggest bass a 6 lb 7 oz MONSTER! Nice job pop.
Dad wins! 6 lb 7 oz beauty.
This weekend really helped build my confidence and sparked my interest once again. Maybe I can figure these little bass out after all.
My take home lesson for the day was to fish the conditions not past success. Look at the lake like you have never fished it before and come up with a game plan. Also details such as hook size and the type of line you use are very important. Everything should be set up to allow the lure to work the way it is suppose to.
