San Diego & SoCal Fishing Forums

Got out early with @619bassin and @Dfishin also Vince who's not on the site. Small crowd today. Day started out pretty warm with a light ESE wind. Water temp was about 78F at the surface.

Goal was to try some new baits and long story short, my favorites are still my favorites. Tried a couple times with a lure that looks like it might be amazing (hira tailor) and with a texas rig I managed to lose two of them in rapid succession. Also tried the Megabass Ibrake. I think that lure could find grass in a swimming pool. And a deps bullshooter, which actually did work. That lure came in a package of other lures I bought and if I had known it was an expensive lure I might have been a little more careful with it, possibly not even using it. Lures that worked were my usuals, popper, small jerkbait, weightless creatures and a little rear spin jig my bride thought was cute and the fish think so too. Most fish were between 1.5 and 2.75 pounds. Did try some places I haven't fished closer to the dock and got some better fish there. Wind was reasonable at 1130 which was nice, since the wind has been a lot lately. Most important to this crowd, I am seeing a lot of little shad now in the shallows. Not the massive bait balls of a few years back, but decent numbers of the shad. Hope some busters come with September. See you all out there.

Thanks for the report. Good as always to you see you guys. I don't know how you guys stand by your trucks and talk until they let us in. I try to rest up

Sounds like a very fun day Dave and we noticed tiny shad fry last trip. Late spawn? Might be the answer to the popular question.

JWall wrote: Thu Aug 28, 2025 9:58 am Sounds like a very fun day Dave and we noticed tiny shad fry last trip. Late spawn? Might be the answer to the popular question.

I think it's more complex than a late spawn. I think the drawdowns affect the thermoclines, which then affect the dissolved oxygen. I had the panoptix on my old boat and could see hovering bait balls before with some bass below them, but now I am wondering if that was more indicative of a compressed oxygen level and not the bass herding them. Now what I don't understand, is if the shad are shallow ( appears so ) why isn't topwater insane at dawn? I'm not getting any bass on the top until the sun comes out. Unless the shad aren't liking the water temp at the surface, I think they prefer under 75F, then they are in some strange temp vs DO band in the middle. Or maybe I am overthinking this and should just use dropshot and a senko like I am told to?

I'd like to use the depth finder to map the thermocline and then figure that fish relative to that thermocline. That will imply some level of DO, since I can't measure DO at depth easily and to be honest, all we care about is where the fish are. I also believe there are a couple versions of DO ( my thoughts, I'm open to anyone's ideas) I'd say there's surface DO ( easily measured) and Thermocline DO ( not so easy to measure ) and Bottom DO. The surface DO should be consistently good at Barrett since there's always an afternoon wind that basically makes little whitecaps. It's the other two we'd have to figure, and that might be the key to why the shad are just "showing up" where we can see them, and also why the bass are so skinny this year. Comparing that to temp, would again imply there's a spot between the warm surface with the right amount of DO that the shad are happy. And on the dinner plate.

It was a really nice day and the wind was not bad at all. I tried different baits also, XD8, swim jig and also got one on the Rat. All were quality 3+ lb