San Diego & SoCal Fishing Forums

Haven’t been to Otay in ages was one of my favorite lakes back in the 80’s along with Hodges, we used to kill it in Harvey’s arm, I’m going to try and get my friend ( Ramona ) to take his now repaired boat down there. Curious if the trees way down Harveys are covered in water, what the level the ...

Thanks to Dannicus, I have ventured into the BFS world. I bought an ARK Gravity BFS reel. At the moment I have 25lb braid paired with a 10lb fluoro leader. I know I could get lighter but want the extra size to fight the bigger models and high catch rates at Barrett, etc.

Like my reel/line, I ...

That's awesome! Fun isn't it? Even clones are a fun fight and when you get into a bigger one, forget about it! It's like being a kid again. Every time I land a 5+ I feel positively giddy! I can't wait for my DD, which @Pourboy assures me is coming.

Thanks for the input. It is truly hard to beat the Bitsy Bug. The saddest part of that being that they have been discontinued by Strike King. I guess the rest of the world didn't get the memo on how awesome they are. Get them while you can!

Caught 8 fatties at El Cap today. 2 on my trusty standby jig:
IMG_20250419_194651395.jpg
It's a 1/8 oz. green crawfish Bitsy Bug with a green pumpkin Z-Man TRD Bugz trailer.

All the rest were caught on this, which has become a favorite and I have caught a lot of fish on it in all San Diego lakes ...

6 total bass today at Otay, and five of them were courtesy of this:
IMG_20250421_071600065_HDR.jpg
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:
IMG_20250422_090721580_HDR.jpg
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 ...

You guys are over paying for the Bitsy Bugs. $1.58 at Bass Pro, lots in stock. Just ordered a few.

https://www.basspro.com/p/strike-king-bitsy-bug-mini-jig?hvarAID=shopping_googleproductextensions&ds_e=GOOGLE&ds_c=BPS%7CShopping%7CPMax%7CFishing%7CGeneral%7CNAud%7CGoogle%7CNMT&gad_source=1&gbraid ...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-ne ... 180986444/

150 lb. Gar on 2 pound test.

Caught all my fish otay on bfs yesterday I tied on neko 5” black blue flake had half a dozen mostly 2 pounders after trying diff other baits continued w neko 5” green pumpkin got bout half dozen more around couple better but smaller ones for most part and could not again for life of me get any ...

vito1023 wrote: Mon Apr 28, 2025 6:04 am Those should and will get them.
Do you change out the hooks on any of them ( the Tsurinoya ) or any of them if so what have you found is best hooks for smaller baits?

I do when they break or bend out, but surprisingly, the Tsurinoya hooks have held up pretty well.

Got all my fish on my Chinese 2pc magicl rod and covello 50 reel bfs setup again lol whatever gets it done got good feel so I bring it reel works great also for Chinese engineering I got rod and reel for 60$ each so not bottom line i have never trusted a 2pc rod especially a Chinese one but it has ...

Nearly all 14 fish today came courtesy of this Sixth Sense bluegill colored crankbait. They call it the pressure series and it is the deep diving model. It's been working well in all the lakes I fish and I can easily throw it on my light rods. They really hammer it.

I like to troll it in front of ...

Thanks for sharing!
What's your retrieve on this on, being that? Stop, go? Dragging the bottom? Bouncing off structure? Open water straight retrieve?
I see that you said trolling, but was wondering what was triggering the strikes?

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 ...

Got in some new lures from AliExpress I'm excited to try out. 3 tiny topwaters, a 2 inch mini glide bait, and a small bluegill crankbait.

I've actually owned several of the Japanese counterparts to a few of these, and on the surface at least, these seem indistinguishable. I am actually impressed ...

It won’t be long before you only own one half of that little glide bait. Ask my son. Most of the time, the differences between the quality baits and knock offs will in weight transfer systems/weighting, materials/construction, and the hardware used. They might copy the mold and put a nice paint ...

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 ...