Hello everyone this is my first post. Yesterday I was fishing at Castaic Lake here in Southern California(where I usually do). I was fishing a gulch on the southeast side of the lake. While fishing there I noticed a tremendous amount of shad swimming all over the place. Sometimes curious to see my bait and sometimes swimming in enormous flocks, possibly to run away from a predator nearby. Anyways, I was able to spot quite a few bass which unfortunately, from my boat, I am never good at telling whether or not it is a large mouth or a striper. I would throw either a drop shot with a worm (margarita mutilator) or just a simple Carolina rig witha pink work but they paid no attention. At one point I saw two large splashes which seemed to be two fish that came up to the surface to eat some of the shad and then all the shad darted to my boat to get away. I approached that spot along with another bass boat that was about 50 feet away from me. The anglers on the other boat threw an umbrella rig, and the other threw a top water bait and just walked the dog. I threw a pink plastic worm and my girlfriend and my dad each threw a drop shot with a plastic worm at the same spot. Ultimately nobody in that area had luck at catching anything especially in that instance.
My question is, when in a gully, gulch, ravine, or whatever have you of a lake, and it is apparent that there is a lot of bait fish swimming around, could this be a negative factor due to the fish just being full? At first I was thinking to myself this is not a good spot because the bass would be full from all the bait fish here. On the other hand, I saw bass swimming to the surface and eating them so that sort of proves my theory wrong. I am hoping that I can get a learning lesson from my poor fishing day and any insight would be helpful from others. Thanks for sticking through my long post!
Water depths: 10-30 feet
Water Temp: 75 degrees
Outside Temp: 95 degrees
Blue Sky
63% moon night before
