San V 2/8 A dirty dozen

[Moose]

Was shocked to see how much the water came up since Monday. I would guess 5-7ft if not more! If you are familiar with the tree on the left side of Barona Cove (not the ones in the middle of the back) it is completely underwater now. There was at least 5ft of it showing on Monday.

Bipolar weather today. Raining, windy, and cold to sunny, still, and warm and back again several times throughout the day.

Started out throwing a spinnerbait to see if anything went shallow with the rising water……they didn’t. Actually did have one nice swirl on it but didn’t stick. Started slowly working my way out deeper, and deeper, and deeper. Finally around 9:15 I got my first fish. I was sitting in 42ft throwing out deeper, into 60-65ft. Between 9:15 and 11:00 I got 8 off of one bush. The bite died as fast as it started and stayed that way until around 2. Between 2 and 3:30 I got 4 more to make it an even dozen. Missed a few more bites but surprisingly didn’t bust off any in the bushes.

The fish were full of crawdads! Several had dads sticking out of their throat and others had really red top lips. Surprisingly I could not get a bite on jigs or creature baits, only on the dropshot. Another weird thing about the bite today, they wanted it deadsticked. Two of my first three fish came after I cast out, set the rod down to retire, or redo a leader, and when I picked my rod back up, there was a fish on. I started to let it sit for about 15-20sec after it hit bottom and 7 of my twelve hit before I ever moved the bait. I would just watch my line and it would either “pop” or just start swimming away.

Much better day than I expected but all the fish were small. As you can see by my scale, it was a bunch of clones today.

[Fisheromen]

Careful, I think you are almost smiling in that second pic!
You figured it out again!

[Mcfish]

Wow..60'-65'..that's working for them! Did you have to fizz all those fish? How's the water visibility with all the runoff?

[Moose]

I was too damn cold to smile yesterday!

Yes, I actually had to fizz almost all of them. I really don’t like fishing that deep for them, for that reason, but it was the only bite I could find.