Castaic - A Lot of Water, A Lot of Shad

[DarkShadow]

My tournament partner, who I haven't fished with in quite a while, hits me up midweek with:

“You still being gay and fishing the salt?”

I hadn't fished the freshwater since our WCBA win at Silverwood a week before. https://www.socalangler.com/well-shit-we-won/

So, with five fully filled lakes within an hour of us, we made the decision to break out the ARC net and go fish Castaic. When he mentioned live shad, it was like asking a fat kid if he wants some cake.

Live shad fishing is extremely unfair. I wouldn't even call it fishing, because the only thing you're really fishing for is schools of threadfin shad. Once you have those, if you're capable enough of casting IN the water, Mother Nature takes care of the rest.

With the water level being so high, the shad were using the flooded trees as hiding places to avoid the predators—and the fat Mexicans with the ARC net—making it a little difficult to net them from the boat.

I volunteered to go barefoot along the brushy shoreline and managed to get enough shad to last us until noon. They weren't big shad, they were more like BFS Shad.

This was a Nooner or Sooner trip, as the Dodgers were set to begin their playoff run against the Braves later that day.

It was absolute carnage.

The smallmouth being mixed in with the largemouth made the day considerably less... didactic.

After the 50th fish, you start casting your bait while daydreaming about a Dodgers three-peat, only to be violently jolted back into reality when a fish boils on your helpless shad.

We had the boat back on the trailer by noon and were home in time for first pitch.

Another fun day in L.A. County.

https://www.socalangler.com/man-fish-an ... t-castaic/

Get your fishin' in before we get nuked!

[Gotfish?]

Entertaining reading as usual, better than what I have read in outdoor magazines and books.

Interesting how bass can readily tell the difference between live shad and fake plastic, no matter how realistic the fake or how skillfully the angler twitches the plastic lure. And how they can reject a bait with hook and line attached. I suspect it is the line that turns them off, not the hook. You might try a setup with 4 lb fluorocarbon leader (BFS or spinning) vs. a heavier setup to see if that makes a difference. Fluorocarbon is not invisible as some companies claim, one can readily see it in a glass of water. Amazing what some people will believe, even when it is easy to test the veracity.

One theory of how lures work is that they work by not looking like natural forage, instead they look like something the bass hasn't encountered before and is thus willing to try. Thus the success of plastic worms, creature baits and urchin baits. And if the bass is hungry enough, it will ignore that fishing line.

Also, some live bait fishermen swear by dyeing the bait to make it look less natural to better be noticed by predators.
https://www.amazon.com/Pautzke-Bait-PFD ... th=1&psc=1 . Might extend the bite once the bass tire of being hooked by natural looking bait. Shall we call this "mismatching the hatch"?

[DarkShadow]

Entertaining reading as usual, better than what I have read in outdoor magazines and books.

Interesting how bass can readily tell the difference between live shad and fake plastic, no matter how realistic the fake or how skillfully the angler twitches the plastic lure. And how they can reject a bait with hook and line attached. I suspect it is the line that turns them off, not the hook. You might try a setup with 4 lb fluorocarbon leader (BFS or spinning) vs. a heavier setup to see if that makes a difference. Fluorocarbon is not invisible as some companies claim, one can readily see it in a glass of water. Amazing what some people will believe, even when it is easy to test the veracity.

One theory of how lures work is that they work by not looking like natural forage, instead they look like something the bass hasn't encountered before and is thus willing to try. Thus the success of plastic worms, creature baits and urchin baits. And if the bass is hungry enough, it will ignore that fishing line.

Also, some live bait fishermen swear by dyeing the bait to make it look less natural to better be noticed by predators.
https://www.amazon.com/Pautzke-Bait-PFD ... th=1&psc=1 . Might extend the bite once the bass tire of being hooked by natural looking bait. Shall we call this "mismatching the hatch"?

I think it's a combination of a few things that makes these fish turn skittish. For one, when you're continually pounding the same wolf pack of fish for hours, it gets to the point that the ones that are left that you haven't caught are probably the smart ones. The moment we moved to a new spot, it was game on.

But I also noticed that the fish seemed to shy away from the shad that were doing their best Mitch McConnell impression, and weren't as lively as they had been in the morning, before bashing their heads continuously over and over in the livewell. I think that's why sport boat captains always tell you to keep a lively bait on your hook at all times.

But you get a lively shad out there in front of a wolf pack that you haven't been actively harassing for 2 hours and it's curtains for that poor thing.