San Diego & SoCal Fishing Forums

It finally happened for me, I had one of the absolutely epic days that Barrett is known for. Started going last year and had some solid days but this was on a totally different level. Pretty much non-stop bites all day. Don’t know what my total count was but it had to have been pushing 100. All day I don’t think I went more than 3-4 casts without catching. My hand was sore the next day from gripping a rod fighting fish.

Fished up and down Hauser all day and had reliable, almost automatic bites on jigs (black/blue and green pumpkin), shaky head worms, wacky rigged worms, free rigged creature baits, and hook up tube baits. Popper worked great from first light till about 7:30. Probably could have thrown it again throughout the day though as I kept seeing fish pecking at the surface.

Nothing over 5lbs, but many 3-4 pounders and tons of 1.5-2.5ers. Surprisingly not many dinks.

Interestingly, I caught one female that seemed mid-spawn, had a huge belly and had a male chasing as I was feeling her in. Seemed kind of late for that. And while most fish looked plump and healthy, I caught a few that had big heads and skinny bodies; combined with how aggressive they were feeding and the lower water level this year, I'm wondering about overpopulation and too much competition for food. Nothing we can really do about it but could be something to keep in mind for future years.

No reaction bite whatsoever. Threw a small spinner and a jointed swimbait and didn’t get any bites. Didn’t try jerkbait or crankbait. Even with the baits I did use that were catching lots of fish, whenever I worked it more quickly or used larger motions I didn’t get bites. It was all about bottom contact (or near bottom sometimes) and using slow/subtle presentations.

Thanks for the detailed report. Its been magic out there so far from the April charity events til now and I can’t imagine it dropping off for a while. We had similar results getting near the bottom vs chase baits and also fewer dinks than recent years. Will also throw gas on the fire and say a slot limit harvest could do the fishery good at some point in the future, but I doubt we would ever see that. Maybe DFW would execute something like that by themselves but there would have to be a million studies to support an action like that. The years of the zombie bass are a good while ago and nothing needs to be done anytime soon. They would probably do another shad plant before a harvest anyway.