Big Hands

In my experience, John Murray has always been an angler that is open to and actively does try things that are different. Do that enough, and you'll probably hit on some things that others are not likely to have tried. The only time that I recall having a tournament here at Castaic Lake with a top tier field of western US anglers (in spite of tremendous fishing at that time, it was just way too small to fairly host such an event) was way back in the 90's when this place was on fire with big fish. I went out to watch and observe them practicing. I ran into John on the ramp and asked how it was going for him. Turns out that he (among many others that were not familiar with the lake) had been struggling a little bit and he had resorted to trying some things that were not exactly mainstream, LOL. Of course, in spite of not having a great practice, he was the consummate professional and was quite nice to talk to. ======================== As for the triple drop shot, I can see myself giving this a 'shot' (pun intended) just to see if it works any better than what I would normally use. I imagine it catching fish, but it remains to be seen if it will be feasible/cost-effective for lil' ol' me that isn't exactly being paid to catch fish by any stretch of the imagination.

There is a YT video specifically about the history of the Lake Fork Flutter Spoon with none other than Joe Spaits. He tells how he developed and modified the early prototypes based on those used up north. I have been to his modest tackle shop a handful of times in my travels to Lake Fork and have had the pleasure of talking to Joe and he even gave us a behind the curtain tour. Such a gentleman and he makes great spoons. My biggest Lake Fork bass (8.5 lbs) came on one of his spoons, but it wasn't the flutter spoon. It was one of his smaller hammered jigging spoons. Those little spoons are also some fish catching slabs.

Very first fish that hit your topwater bait, I saw that you were lightning quick on the hookset. It's not easy to do, but with topwater baits, I think it's better to pause for a second before putting the wood to them. I think it gives them a chance to fully turn resulting in a more secure hookset.

Agriculture uses 80% to 85% (depending on who you believe (TnRiver46, please don't savage me for vacillating on the percentages, LOL) of the water in California. If you drive north on I-5 through the central valley, you'll see mile after mile after mile of almond trees. Feast on this: California produces 1.59 BILLION pounds of almonds per year. It takes about 1,900 gallons of water to grow one pound of almonds. It takes 1.1 gallons of water to grow 1 almond. Multiply those two numbers on the first two bullet points, and it comes out to. . . 3,021,000,000,000. That adds up to. . . . 76,481 gallons of water for each of the 39.5 million California residents every year. That is roughly 210 gallons for every California resident (adults and children alike), every day of the year. Do we actually have a water shortage? These are facts, not opinions. I'm not here to be political about who or why. People can take these facts and do some of their own research on top of it and draw their own independent conclusions.

Savaged! Ouch ;~)

I have been sitting back eating a virtual bowl of popcorn and trying to figure out why there is an emphasis on the shorter rods for this application? I do fish weightless 5" senkos, but have so far preferred rods more in the 7 foot and slightly over length. I have a 7'1" rod that is otherwise very similar to the 6'10" that I also have and I definitely prefer the longer rod. Is it for skipping more easily or something else I am missing? If it's about skipping, then I probably just just know what I don't know because I don't have much use for skipping. Disclaimer: If my skipping game was weak, that would be an upgrade from where it is now. I'm just trying to learn about something I don't know much about. . . .

If they (the mighty-mighty quagga mussels) can migrate upstream through that stretch, they will eventually achieve the world domination they seem to be seeking ;~) By law, they must let as much water flows in through Piru Creek on the west side of Pyramid Lake out and into Piru Creek below the dam as though the lake was never there. They have the same requirements for the water that flows into Castaic Lake through Elizabeth Canyon, and must flow out over the spillway of the lagoon into Castaic Creek. I was just wondering if they (the quagga mussels) got into Lake Piru from Lake Pyramid rather than the other way around.

Isn't that Piru Creek that flows from the dam at Pyramid Lake to Lake Piru?

I live five minutes from the ramp at the lagoon, and ten minutes from the ramp at the upper lake, so I can go at the drop of a hat whenever the mood strikes. With access so quick and easy, I can go for a few hours at a time, or sometimes I stay out longer if I want. The heat gets pretty ominous in the summer along with idiot (er, I mean wake boat) traffic and the midday wind, so I don't go as hard then. Winter fishing, I often go from opening to closing time, but mostly 1/2 day trips. This past Sunday, I went to the lagoon for 6 hours in the morning with my nephew, came home to eat and rehydrate (it was a balmy 104° at noon), and then hit it again from 4:30 to 7:30 in the evening by myself. That was a good day.

Press release regarding the quagga mussel situation at Castaic Lake It is my understanding that as of 8/31/21 Castaic Lake will accept tags from Pyramid and vice versa with no quarantine period. What this means for boats that have been on Castaic Lake for other bodies of water moving forward and vice-versa, I have no idea.

There are people that think 3/16 is larger than 1/4, but maybe those people should not be allowed to operate a rod and reel, let alone operate a motor vehicle and reproduce ;~) but I digress. . . . I am not necessarily a fanboy for the metric system, but I also would have no qualms if weights all used a metric system. A gram is a gram is a gram. When it comes to fractions of ounces, the unit is all over the place and I can understand that there could be confusion. And why should I have to do the conversion in my head when there could be a single standard where the larger the number, the more it could weigh. Using 1/8" graduations assumed made working with rebar very easy when I was building forms for foundations way back when pterodactyls freely roamed the skies. Number 3 was 3/8", number 4 was 4/8" (or 1/2" if you break it down), number 5 was 5/8". If we we are so resistant to go with the metric system, cuz you know. . . 'Murica', we could at least adopt a standard common denominator and just use the numerator to express the size. Eighths, sixteenths, whatever, just agree on one and use it. If someone needed to, they could even use a .5 if they need to go in between. As long as I am up here on my soapbox, teetering though I may be, I would also like to implore weight makers to actually give us the weights they advertise. I have 1/4 ounce dropshot weights that actually have "1/4" stamped into them that weigh 5.5 grams. That's 1.5g light for each weight. I noticed that they didn't perform the same and looked physically smaller than other 1/4 ounce dropshot weights and that is why I weighed them. I can't imagine that a weight manufacturer wouldn't know their 1/4 ounce weights are 1.5g short. As for noticing a difference in small increments of weight, I probably can't tell the difference in RoF from 3/16 to 1/4 ounce, but the fish might. I can however usually tell the difference in castability and maybe to a lesser extent in certain kinds of structure, how easily is gets hung up. Sometimes it makes no difference in how easily it snags, sometime it does. I do like having different weights available as tuning options for those times that it does make a difference. I grabbed a handful (if my hands were teeny-tiny, but their actually not. . .) of worm and flipping weights from the 3700 box I keep in my one satchel that I bring on my boat most days, and this is what was in there.

I have a 4' x 8' sheet of white peg board as the back stop for my stainless steel workbench in my garage that is 90% fishing tackle and one small corner for rolls of various tape. It helps to be able to hang stuff up for sure, but it is not yet organized the way I ultimately want it to be. I also have some shoe box size plastic bins that I keep plastic worms in that are a little ways out of my current rotation, but not quite ready to be binned.

My priorities when choosing a texas rig weight: 1) Can it deliver the bait to the target location in the conditions present? If I can't get the bait to where the fish are, nothing else really matters. If yes, proceed to #2, if no, select a weight that can or move closer so that it can and then proceed to #2. 2) Likelihood of becoming snagged. Heavy weights can be cast further and will help to keep line straighter, which aids in strike detection, but could also result in becoming hung up more often, sometimes to the point of being unfeasible in some conditions. The shape of some weights could adversely affect the bait in this respect. 3) Ability to maintain contact enough to be able to detect a strike. If I am trying to feel a strike (or even just feel the weight of a fish that has ingested the bait), or even just watch the line movement, and I am unable to do so, everything that comes after this seems irrelevant to me. 4) Rate of fall. Rate of fall can impact the probability of bass striking a bait, but if I am not able to present the bait to the fish, or I can't detect the strike, there's not much point in worrying about the rate of fall IMHO. 5) Shape/profile as it relates to the overall silhouette of the bait. This could be somewhat compromised to meet the above requirements. 6) Everything else. This is for me, but I don't fish the same conditions as everyone else. I can accept that priorities could change depending on the conditions one fishes in.

I like spoons. . .

Okay, my pointed head just exploded here. I found a hook like that on one of my baits and took it off figuring that it had been somehow damaged. That a hook could be so distended just blew my mind, but there it was plain as day in my hands so I couldn't act like I was imagining it. I played with it for a while with a couple pairs of needlenose pliers trying to bend it back into a symmetrical shape and finally gave up. I threw it in the trash earlier this week while cleaning off my work bench. =================================== I have a Vision 110 that I was fishing off of a lighted fishing pier (at night) about a year and a half ago. Pre-spawn. Two big bruisers came wandering into the area slowly cruising, so I tossed the jerkbait out a little ways and was doing the twitch and stop deal (just like Matt and Tim suggest, LOL), and one of the two bass wheeled around while the bait was suspended in the water and just stared at it from about 8 feet away. I gave it two tiny twitches and it charged over and slammed it in the blink of an eye. A nice chunky 8.5 pounder was the result. Just a few nights later, I was just throwing it again . . . because why wouldn't I be, right? This time, another bruiser of similar size is suddenly up behind my bait and I had run out of water so the bait was only a couple feet from the pier. I just stopped and the bass came up to within inches. The bait sat suspended, not sinking, nor rising. It just sat there and sat there and sat there for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, I figured that if it really wanted to eat it, it could have a long time ago, so I gave it two baby twitches and the bass slowly sank and sauntered off into the depths. I'm still not sure why it passed on my tasty plastic offering, and wonder if there was something else I could have done (or not done) to entice the beast. That night on the way home, I (or some otherworldly demonic force) snagged the bait into my soft bag. First one treble, and soon (as I tried to free the treble) another treble was buried into the soft tackle bag. Not wanting to cut into the bag, I cut the split rings and then tried to free the treble (that has barbs on the outside) to no avail. Alas, I had to cut the hook and pass the barbs through the same direction they went in. Draws another breath. . . I had read that ST-36 were highly regarded, and so I bought some of those and whatever split rings they had on the hook and got the hooks replaced. It didn't take long to see that the bait just didn't act the same, and I only caught one more fish on it in the next month, but hadn't really had a chance to see what it was doing in the water. Then, I had it back out at the pier one night and could see that it was no longer suspending the same way it had before the hook change. My local tackle shop was able to order me some of the stock Megabass Katsuage trebles (might be the same as the VMC Outbarb), so I replaced the ST-36 with the stock hooks. But now I'm paying attention as though I am trying to remove fly poop from pepper. The bait still doesn't suspend like it used to. At some subconscious level, I decide to obsess over this bait so I can figure out how to restore it to it's former glory so I can presumably catch 8.5 pounders each time I use it. To make a very long story only slightly shorter, I end up spending a few evenings trying many different split ring and hook combinations in order to get it to suspend pretty neutrally with the nose pointed ever so slightly downward. In all of my years of bass fishing, the best anglers I know are the type that fuss over details. I don't know that they always matter, but over the long term, I think that mindset pays off more often than not. If this happens again, I may just cut a hole or two in my soft tackle bag, LOL.

I have an old Zebco underspin that I use to exercise the cats using a 3/8 oz plastic practice weight. I could see a reel like that being useful in hand-to-hand jungle combat, but we have almost nothing of that sort in my area.

Easier said than done? ;~)

Three syllables, begins with an "M" and ends with a "k"?

That's because they are usually long gone by the time the cabinets and doors are hung.

As many of you that fish here know, they have been letting water out since the beginning of May so that they can do some infrastructure work on the dam and related facilities. We had some record low water levels in 2015 and 2016 and as best as I can tell, the lake is at right around the same level now and will still be lowered several feet. This hasn't really stopped the fish from eating all summer, but it seems to be slowing a little in the past week or two. That, or I just haven't homed in on the current pattern(s) quite yet. I can tell you that they are still eating plastics thrown right at the water's edge and if they are going to strike, they have been hitting the baits soon after they hit the water. Also, note where I have drawn a red line across the ski arm. That is the approximate location of the current buoy line as of some time in the past several days. I was hoping to explore some of the topography in the back of the ski arm, but it's currently off limits. Oh well.

My drive to the lake takes about as long as it would take to go through the drive through at Whattaburger, and much less time than it takes at In-N-Out. I think that means I'm hungry and need to make myself some lunch.

I have watched several of her videos. I don't think she dresses that way accidentally, but she is a fairly tenacious, decently skilled angler and seems to enjoy herself.

Of course I can't suggest that anyone fish illegally and we live in different times now, so I'm not sure they would still just holler at you. We did occasionally get hassled, but please note that this was when I was a teenager. . . . . and I will turn (gulp) 63 in October. I think they keep the reeds mostly chopped down these days and they provided necessary cover for anglers and fish alike, LOL. There also used to be a small reservoir at the corner of Santa Gertrudes and Foster Road (also on the golf course property) that most people did not know existed, but I think it is gone and is now just the maintenance yard for the golf course. That had some huge bass and gigantic bluegill as well, but it was . . . . more difficult. . . . to fish there. I guess I'm darn near a fossil myself. I remember when La Mirada Regional Park was built. We used to ride dirt bikes in the field before it was a park. I know they have bass there, but there are also other options near there **cough** Clark Park **cough** that may produce better. Regional gets absolutely pounded, especially when they provide a meager sprinkling of tiny trout for the put and take crowd. Still, the bass fishing in suburban park lakes in the area is generally kinda grim most of the time. I would view it as practice for the times when you can make it to one of the local lakes. There are people that regularly do OK (some even better than OK) fishing from shore at Castaic, even off the face of the dam. True, and you can fish from a boat on both of those lakes. I would go to Puddingstone before driving even further to Santa Fe Dam. But you'll have to pay to park at both of those places and night fishing isn't allowed that I am aware of. Those pit mine lakes next to the freeway have always intrigued me. . . . but I don't think you could ever hope to fish in there these days. There is also a small lake called Mungi Lake just west of the 605 that looks like it would have some killer bass habitat. I only fished there once for a couple hours, but it might be worth a look.

That's the way we do it here. Charge $24 to launch and park (from a little after sunrise until just before sunset - no night boating on most lakes here), corral everyone into a tiny bullring, and let the cat herding commence. Funny that they wanted a receipt insuring that you had gas with MTBE in it, and then banned it a couple years later. Brilliant! And gas prices here are currently between $4 and $5 per gallon. Staying close to home makes much better sense with all this nonsense taking place. Or moving somewhere else. . . .

I think it takes a while to get in synch with a fishing area, and then you need to fish it regularly to stay in sync. Each body of water has it's own idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. For me, since I pretty much only fish the lake (and the lagoon below the dam) that is close to my house due to quagga restrictions, it seems that conditions will prevail for a while, and then suddenly shift for one reason or another. Adjusting to those shifts can be a challenge and result in some less than stellar fish counts. The other thing that can be challenging for me is that much of the time, is that I just wanna fish the way I wanna fish. And that can change from day to day, or even on the same trip. I usually try to do a heat check before trying methods, patterns or areas that I don't normally fish just to get a feel that the fish are still willing to eat something.