San Diego & SoCal Fishing Forums

6 total bass today at Otay, and five of them were courtesy of this:
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It's a Diawa 3" TD Minnow, and it has definitely become my #1 jerkbait for BFS fishing. It has great action and casts a country mile. Most fish hit a twitch twitch pause retrieve, while two hit it on ...

Caught 11 topwater bass at Murray early this morning on this:
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It's a cheap Tsurinoya 60f topwater walking bait I got via AliExpress. They were really cheap, like $2, but who knows how bad tariffs are going to effect them.

Now I'm not gonna lie, most of the bass I ...

Hello, my name is Dan and I am a topwater-aholic.

With topwater action soon getting ready to start in earnest, I thought I'd share the BFS topwater baits I have great success with. All of these are thrown with BFS reels. The rods vary depending on lure weights (as described below). Additionally I ...

Coming in at $100 is this Histar Aurora Air reel paired with a Handing Magic L two piece rod. If the names don't sound familiar, it's because they are straight from AliExpress. After roughly 15 trips to san diego bay, every thing has surprisingly held up very well. Can easily cast ting baits such as ...

My BFS rods had short handles and after fishing the opener at Barrett I added extensions to the butts. Worked great my second trip and on vaca.

I used quadcopter carbon fiber tubes and the ends were small fishing rod end caps all from Amazon. I looked at other rods i have and cut to size.
Rod extended to around 1/2" from end of grip. I added wood shish cabob sticks inside with epoxy for strength. There are some good you tube videos on do it.

This is a Nage by Eurotackle. It's a 2.25 inch micro jointed swimbait. It's sinks at a moderate fall rate, so I can count it down. It twitches well but also looks great on a straight retrieve. When the small bass were busting at Murray I threw it on top of them and started a fast retrieve as soon as ...

It was around 5:30 a.m. when The Gooch — yes, that’s what we call him, don’t ask — woke me up.

"It’s five in the morning, David. You better be in jail, or caught a 12#."

"Neither! Your buddy Jose just caught a four-pounder on that Megabass Karashi you keep threatening to throw but never do ...

Let’s be real—when people talk about the "Big Three" lakes around here, Piru Lake is definitely the red-headed stepchild. Castaic? That place is a legend. Back in the '90s, when I was still learning the difference between a spinnerbait and a spoon, my dad and I would roll up with all the colors of ...

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Saturday morning, I found myself out at the Marina del Rey jetty. I wasn’t planning on being there, but it was either that or prefishing Diamond Valley again, which we affectionately now call Cubic Zirconia Valley. I had gotten my ass kicked at DVL ...

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I realized something this week. I haven’t actually fun fished in a while. Like, just gone out to fish without a tournament hanging over my head like the cloud that follows Eeyore everywhere.

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My thumb was finally dripping bright red blood, and yet I was smiling ear to ear, having just released my PB Spot. It kicked my ass like if I owed it money, ripping drag from my still-new-to-me Stradic 2500S in a tug-of ...

I been hitting the Harbor hard this year as Puddingstone was tough early in the season and been closed to fishing for many weeks. Those who fish the Harbor know the bite centers on the Tides. The more moving water the better although not necessarily the biggest tide of the day. I try to hit good ...

Late post, been rebuilding my Skiff from the ground up. For the last week I’ve completed 101 tasks no one will ever see, got stuck halfway in, under the forward floor, in between the two fish holds for about 20 thrilling minutes. Panic kills! Eventually but not without a major scratch and some ...

Another Trip to Canyon Lake. I have been fishing Newport Harbor quite a bit. Easy and close to home. Still I miss the Topwater Bite enough to again, get up at 3:30 am, on the Jump Lagoon by 5:30 am, first Bass, minutes later. All in all a better Topwater trip this time. I had 7 landed by the time ...