Big Hands

All of my biggest bass were caught in winter or early spring. My buddy and I were trolling large swimbaits on lead core line a lot at one time because I had elbow surgery and casting was not in the recovery plan. We fished Monday through Friday one week in February and caught at least one over 10 lbs each day that week. My PB came on a crankbait a week before Xmas. I love fishing in nice weather, but I like winter fishing because I know my chances for bigger fish are generally better that time of year. ---------------------- I notice that you seem to enjoy fishing a variety of different waters. It is tough to crack new water in a day. I say 'new water' because if you haven't been fishing a lake regularly, it can be like fishing new water each time you go. I would probably venture out more than I do to other lakes, but with the Quagga quarantine thing, it makes the penalty for doing so untenable for me. The good thing is that I keep up as things are changing. The bad thing is I am fishing the same lake every time I go.

Yessir! There are two lakes close to me that have 'em (Castaic and Pyramid), and probably a few others not terribly far away. Oddly enough, I don't think I have ever caught one in the lagoon below the dam at Castaic, but they are definitely in the upper (main) lake. I usually get them mixed right in with the largemouth. You can usually tell it's a smallie on the line when they are meaner than usual. They put up a great fight. And they're still mean once you get them in the boat.

Snuck out for a few hours this morning and had about 3 - 1/2 hours to fish. Had a few quick bites that didn't convert because I always try to set earlier rather than later to see if they're taking it quickly (they weren't . . . again). Caught a couple early right off the bat, and then things got a little slow for a while. I was just working a single 200 yard stretch. I made a move with an hour left to fish. Had several bites and finally got a little smallie, my third fish of the morning. Moved down just a little ways, and got another hit and miss, and then another hit. I set the hook and it was solid, and then it pulled back . . . . HARD. We went back and forth for a bit, then I think I felt it get wrapped in something and the hook parted from the 7 lb leader at the knot. It was a still a little earlier than my deadline, but I just put the rod away, secured my tackle and headed home with a big smile. The strange thing was, I didn't even feel disappointed, I wasn't mad, and I didn't have any negative thoughts. I just grinned, knowing that I hooked into something big enough to pull like that.

I have a travel trailer that I keep at a local storage yard and one day as I was leaving, (there is a gate that you have to unlock and lock back up again on weekends) there were two young men putting an older Ranger with a Yamaha 150 into a stall right next to the gate. I talked to them about fishing for a little while before leaving, and went on my way. I always take note of when it's there and when it's gone as it's next to the road and I drive by it going back and forth to work. I was listening to a podcast a couple weeks ago, and a bunch of things suddenly all added up and I realized that the young man I talked to that day is Matty Wong, the recent Bassmaster Nations champion who earned himself a spot in the Elite tour for 2022 and a spot at the Classic. I have actually been watching his YT channel for a while, but still hadn't made the connection.

I fished yesterday. The water level has risen lately. I have attached a pic to illustrate how much it has risen less than 10' in my estimation. Water temp was 59° in the fish arm and 61° in the ski arm. The fish I found willing to play were in 15' to 25', but metered others in 10' to 30', some deeper, but those may have been stripers or something else. The red line on the first attached pic is where the water level is today. The actual pic was taken the first weekend in October. I attached another pic that shows one of the few areas that was not denuded of trees before the lake was filled. The problem fishing those trees is that the water level is normally about 100' feet higher. There are a few shorelines nearby that have some trees (or what's left of them) that are higher up on the bank, but not many. The clump of cottonwood trees (or whatever they are) up high on the bank in the left side of the frame is also (according to some) where the California state record bass of 22 lbs came from. WRB may feel free to correct me if that is not the case. This is also about 100 yards or so away from the spot where my PB of just under 13 lbs came from. No disputing that though as I was only one of two people there to see it ;~) There were more bank anglers in the line to get in yesterday than boat anglerss, and the face of the dam had quite a few people strung out on it. There are also a LOT of tumble weeds blown up against the dam and just floating in the lake in general.

This works, or at least it did back in the 80's when I used to do it ;~) Of course I didn't fish in lakes where there were other opportunistic creatures like turtles or gators that were happy to steal-a-meal left dangling in the water.

nvm

I have a 7'3" Daiwa Kage MH/F rod that I really like, They make a Tatula in the same configuration, which I imagine is very similar. I imagine just about everyone has a MH/F casting rod in their quiver, so I think that is a well contested space with several good choices from which to pick. I would advise trying to see if you can handle any rod you're considering buying before plonking down the cash though. While they are many solid choices, there are subtle differences that may or may not be deal killers that you'll never know about until you handle the rod yourself. Things like split vs full length grip, cork vs 'something else', reel seat style, grip length, plays nice with your reel(s), foregrip, hook keeper, balance, and even aesthetics.

I remember going to the Fred Hall fishing show in the mid-80's and my wife and I filled out a few 'raffle tickets', but there were so many that we could have spent the entire day writing our names, addresses, and phone numbers on those stupid little raffle tickets. The following year, I thought I would be smart about it and had a small rubber stamp made so I could fill out a ton of them and surely have a decent chance to win something. I didn't win anything other than the chance to speak to the hordes of timeshare telemarketers that began calling soon after the show. The rubber stamp idea was retired, never to be used again.

Castaic has a ton of sheer cliff or steep banks, and there are a number of bank anglers that do pretty good, but they are limited in what they can access and have to work harder to not be surrounded by other anglers. There are also some regulars that do well out of rental boats, but at around $100 per day, that adds up quick. Your own small 12' to 14' aluminum boat with a 15 to 25 hp outboard, a foot controlled bow mount trolling motor and maybe a cheap fish finder will get the job done for a relatively modest investment, and will get you more places with more overall capability than a kayak for the same money IMHO.

I have had success with doing just that for most of my fishing life since starting to use plastic worms back in the early 80's. It's how I often start my day by hitting them soon after I feel them because that's what comes naturally to me. After I miss four or five on what I thought were good hits, then I'll start letting them chew and swim off, and then I start actually landing them more consistently. I could be using the wrong hooks for the baits I am using and maybe they need to take the bait in further to get them stuck with that type of hook, and that is why I am trying to gauge whether or not others find this happening to them too so I can possibly eliminate some variables and home in on what is truly happening. It's getting to be c-rig season for me here. The bass are deeper and a littler less anxious to chow down these days. What I am hoping for this winter is: to get more consistent at landing c-rig fish drastically improve (that's a low bar for me) my jig game still throw some deep diving cranks, slabs and swimbaits just to see if there are some willing takers here and there Once I figure out the bite, I enjoy trying little variations to see what happens and possibly get better. Figuring out what is actually happening will be the first effective step in doing that. Believe me when I say that I would prefer to get them pinned sooner rather than later. That's why this is odd to me. The slipshot was my rig of choice for a long, long time. And that's where I would would hit them as soon as I felt weight or a bite. The mojo slipshot sinker (as opposed to a 3/4 to 1 ounce egg sinker) does allow for more slack in the line, and I wasn't using anything other than 6 lb mono with a tiny rubber band tied onto the line as a sinker stop. Yea, if I feel something, I'm swinging. Even with 10" worms, a 3 lb bass will inhale the whole thing at night and it's on. Perhaps that's a better way to frame it rather then fearing commitment. They are after all, simple creatures. Back to the laboratory! That reminds me of crappie fishing with Charlie Pack on Lake Waco. We were sticking those 11' rods back in there and dropping tiny jigs through any little pocket we could find. And there would be some ridiculous snakes wrapped around that stuff with stunning regularity. I saw more snakes in one day that I may have seen in my entire life, and I have seen more snakes than the average person.

I have attached some pics of the type of structure and cover I am talking about fishing in. This will give you more of an idea of why I am throwing weightless senkos right up tight against the back and not having to work the bait much. It's mostly tumbling down on it's own. Even when I fish parallel to the bank, I'll only have to slightly move the bait to get it to tumble from 1 to 10 feet with good pauses in between. On the steeper banks, if I can't get the bait with a foot or two of the bank, I would be reeling it back in and casting again. On the sheer dropoffs, I really need to be within a foot of the edge to be in the best position to have it tumbling down the bank with minimal action imparted by me rather than the bait just sinking in a free fall. On the banks that are at more of a 45° angle, if it lands five feet from the edge, it'll still be ok. Not saying I couldn't catch fish any other way, but this was easily my strongest most consistent pattern from May through September this year. And there are areas within walking distance of the ramps at Castaic where you can find similar terrain and use this method from the bank.

Heavy cover is a relative term around here. We have some submerged trees, but not many and we have a patch here and there of very closely spaced stickups. But mostly it is what would be a twig-ish stickup or denuded bush. And lots of rocksAnd I get bit often in the stickups as you might imagine, and I do let them run from the stickups. The attached pics give a good representation of the structure and cover I normally fish. Not exactly the stump fields you'll encounter in a lot of lakes, but if you think you can drag baits through there with impunity, you've got another thing coming. One thing about letting them run with it is that with a weightless senko or a dropshot, you can usually see what direction they're heading. And with those, I don't usually let them go as far as I do with the C-rig. With a Carolina rig and a 3/4 ounce sinker, since the sinker is likely staying put and the line is running through it I really have no idea where they are headed and that can be a problem when I reel down on them to set the hook if they haven't run straight away from me. Once I reel down and sweep on em, I have an idea of how solid the hookset felt. Lots of times, it doesn't feel great even though I felt like I cranked down on them all the way. I do know that my hookup ratio is much more favorable when I let them run at least 10' with it on the Carolina rig, and they only occasionally get hooked at the top of their stomach. If I was getting gut hooking a fair number of fish, I would just go ahead and take my chances with earlier hooksets, but that isn't the case. I get to fish in Texas occasionally, and that is a completely different animal with regard to heavy cover and bustin em sooner rather then later. Those bruisers will tangle you up in a heartbeat if you fiddle around much.

Like many here, I have been fishing for several decades, which included a span of years where I did little or no fishing, and other years where I fished a LOT. It just be circumstantial or anecdotal, but when fishing plastic worms back when pistol grip rods and reels spooled with monofilament were the weapons of choice for the majority of the masses, it seemed like when I got a bite on a plastic worm, it was imperative that I reel down and swing ASAP or risk losing the fish. Now, it seems to be quite different. A texas rigged worm might be the exception here as it seems like I can still bust em quickly and still be hooked up. But with many other setups, it seem that if I set the hook sooner rather than later, I come up empty. But if I let the fish run with it, sometimes up to 20 feet(!), and then reel down and use a sweeping hookset, I get a better hookup ratio. I can even play a subtle game of tug-of-war if they are futzing around and the pressure from my end makes them clamp down and swim off more aggressively. it's like they carry it around for a bit before deciding to committing to swallowing it. Or it could just be my imagination.

Kinda like only moving it so it gets to a different spot where I can mostly let it set still and let the natural water movement impart the action. . . or not. Or casting to a sheer dropoff and just letting the bait slide down the face. If it comes to rest (and you're not bit) just let it set for a bit and then move it just enough to get it falling again. I will say that the way the bite had been working from spring through the summer was that I was throwing right onto or very close to the water's edge. Then just getting the bait to fall down the ledge or letting it set and most bites on the weightless senko happened within the first 30 to 45 seconds. That is not how I work most baits. I am usually fishing them very slowly all the way back to the boat with bites coming at all different parts of the retrieve. With the weightless senko, I seemed to get bit pretty quickly or not at all. I'm not claiming that it's that way for everyone, but it has been that way for me, and several others I have talked to. A senko on a dropshot works great too, but that (as with many other baits) could get bit at any point on the retrieve. I will lime watch for bites on both a semi taut line or a very slack line. I wouldn't say I am any sort of line watching expert, but the bite was so good this summer, that I felt like I could play around and experiment with what worked and what didn't. For some reason, and I am wondering if it's just me, but it seems that bass at the lake I fish are very willing to hold onto a plastic bait for a long time. Long enough for me watch a slack line for movement, crank in some line, feel for the fish and then decide when to set the hook or reel up into them. The flip side to that is that if I don't let them play around with it a while and opt for a quick hookset, I seem to come up empty a fair amount of the time. It seems like I can even play a subtle bit of tug-of-war with them and they'll still hang onto it and even swim off aggressively when I apply some pressure. I attribute at least some of this to using braid (with a fluoro leader) and having some fairly sensitive rods, but I have been wondering if it's a general shift in the local bass behavior where they will hang on longer, but take more time to actually commit to the point where I can get a hook into them. I was even thinking of starting a thread to see if others have noticed this behavior.

Three can fish from my 16' tracker jon, but there will be compromises, LOL. If you're going to have four people fishing any freshwater lake for bass, it would be more about having a good time with friends than it would be about fishing. 1 angler = very serious 2 anglers = serious to very serious 3 anglers = semi-serious 4 anglers = casual, not really serious

In a state where the record bass weighs 10 lbs 14 ounces, that probably stings a little.

With the exception of going to Texas in May to pick up my boat and fishing for three days on Lake Fork, due to Quagga muscle restrictions that require quarantine periods of 10 to 30 days if I fish somewhere else, I fished all of my days (around 50) on either the upper lake at Castaic, or the lagoon right below the dam. Caught at least a couple of bass every trip. I don't recall this ever being the case, but at Castaic, EVERY fish I caught this year (since January) was on plastic using either a weightless wacky, dropshot, Texas rig or Carolina rig. I tried other methods here including squarebill crankbaits, lipless crankbaits, deep diving crankbaits, jerkbaits, big swimbaits, glide baits, chatterbaits, jigs, jigging spoons, flutter spoons, ploppers, poppers, dog walkers, underspins, a-rigs. . . . all to no avail. And to make this even weirder (to me anyway) is that the bite from May through September (while the lake was dropping 100' often at close to a foot per day) was the best I can ever recall for that part of the year. . . as long as I was throwing plastic. On my trip to Lake Fork in May, EVERY fish I caught was on a crankbait. I tried other methods there too, but the only bait I had success there with was a small-ish crankbait (a simple Berkley 2" gold/red Flicker Shad did most of the damage that trip and they wanted that thing bad - weird). I kept trying but could buy a bite on plastics, and my buddy that has a place there kept telling to forget all the other stuff because that was what they were biting. He wore me out with that thing and I finally had join him. Bass, catfish, barfish, sand bass, crappie and drum were all willing participants. I get home and BOOM, all summer long, it's once again plastics that are working for me. It has been a very good, but strange year of fishing for me. In 2022, my goal is to finally become a jig fisherman.

Maybe you should buy her another one. . . . ;~) Maybe two.

Everybody fishes for different reasons. Some fish for different reasons at different times. He's not wrong, but there's room for all of us to enjoy it for the reasons, and in the way that we choose to.

All three are greats in the world of finesse fishing and seemed to spend a LOT of time at Castaic. I don't know for certain, but I would have to put Dick Trask as the top dog with Don Iovino right in there too. Three very different personalities too. I can still see in my mind Dick's instantly recognizable red/white classic old school bass boat sitting out in what looked to be no-man's-land for hours on end. With the water currently down 140', you can see why he spent a lot of time there. Of course, Aaron Martens took the ball and ran quite far with it. I was surprised to hear that he didn't really like to finesse fish all that much, but he certainly knew what to do when he needed to use it.

Might be other factors or conditions at play. I think Lake Fork probably has more crappie in it than bass, and it seems to be a 'decent' ;~) bass fishery.

If a bass is 'in the mood' (whatever that may be), they will strike a rectangular block of wood (or even dung for all I know) with no paint at all if they are in the mood. They will eat birds, rats, lizards, snakes and salamanders too. If it moves or not, if a bass thinks it might be food, they are liable to try to stuff it into their shad-hole to find out if it is or isn't.