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OCdockskipper

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Everything posted by OCdockskipper

  1. While a majority of the time the deeper docks would be the first choice, it really depends on the lake & what the forage are doing. On my home lake, there is a seawall that surrounds the lake and much of the foundation has been undercut over the years. Bite sized bluegill and green sunfish are always tight to this undercut, in as shallow water as possible. Often the bass here will hang out under a dock (regardless of the depth), looking towards the seawall and waiting to make a run to flush out the baitfish. A well presented jig or plastic skipped under the dock into the seawall usually gets bit.
  2. No, that is a thin largemouth.
  3. If you are talking about a traditional side view image, I believe the unit would have to be turned sideways in order to go from top to bottom on the depthfinder screen (or you would have to tilt your head to read it. I don't have a down scan depthfinder, but I believe those do go from top of the LCD screen to the bottom (because the depthfinder is giving you a "looking down" image). However, it would make sense to have the depthfinder on the bow to be mounted to the left (port) side of the front of the boat, so that the right side of the LCD screen is towards the bow. Then when you turn your head to look at the screen, it will be moving in the same direction as the boat. As an aside, how long until depth finders don't use a screen and instead project an image off the bow of the boat showing whats under the water (similar to a "heads up" instrument panel in some cars)?
  4. We spent a few days in Phoenix in July of 2014 and I fished the 3 ponds at Papago park (right next to the Phoenix zoo). While I caught fish out of all 3 ponds, I caught the most & biggest fish from the top one (closest to the canal). The water on that pond had the most color and a KVD 1.5 square bill in bluegill pattern was the most effective lure. 5 of the fish I caught out of out of that pond ended up being over 3 lbs and even though there is a lot of shoreline cover, they all came from open water. The lower pond was the clearest (& largest), there a Rapala X-Rap jerkbait in steel (a bluegill color) was most effective for me. Most of the other anglers seemed to be using plastics &/or jigs, which is why I am guessing I had good luck on the reaction lures. The only fish I caught on a plastic worm was right next to a piling of a wood platform on the lower lake.
  5. File this under extreme vagueness, but as a teenager back in the late 70's, I remember reading an article in either Field & Stream or Sports Afield about a man who knew Lake Powell better than anyone else. Apparently he had worked on the river for years before Glen Canyon Dam was built, and as the lake began to fill, he took thousands of photographs to supplement his memory. The article was about how he guarded those photos for a decade or so & never let anyone else see them until his later years when he made them publicly available.
  6. Following the suggestion of Etrout72, I used a Double Fluke rig for the first time today. I tied it with the two swivels & a (carolina rig) bead between them as opposed to just the two swivels alone. It worked well, but I noticed the line would fray just above the knot from the mainline to the main swivel, enough that I had to continually retie after 40 - 50 casts. The bead & the second swivel were loose & slid like they were supposed to, so I am not sure if the bead was causing the fraying or something else. Ironically, I chose to add the bead thinking it would protect the knot. For those of you who use the Double Fluke rig, do you use a bead & why or why not? Also, does it sound correct to suspect the bead as the cause of the fraying or does that happen with just the swivel too?
  7. Of course, when I went out today, it was overcast all day. Visibility was real low, so I couldn't see any followers or wolf packs. I did toss the double fluke a bunch after hooking up using other baits, just in case the fish I caught was part of a school. 5 times it led to another bite, and one of those was a double. Don't know if I would have caught those fish with the original lures, but it is fun to have the possibility of a double with every cast. Thanks again for the suggestion.
  8. I've used a Humminbird Fishin Buddy 120, a portable depth finder, for about 6 years & it works well on a small Pond Prowler. It is no longer made, but there are a few newer models with color screens for under $200. The advantage with these on a Kayak is no need for a battery, they run off of 6 AA batteries. I find I get 4 or 5 full days of fishing (8 hrs plus) before I need to replace the batteries, although rechargeable batteries could be used.
  9. For little guys, they have amazingly strong jaws. If they latch on to a finger or thumb, it is a bear to pry them loose.
  10. OCdockskipper

    OCdockskipper

  11. This story is about a bedding fish, but a little different than what you asked for. I was out the first Saturday of this past April, with the spawn coming to an end and only a few stragglers on beds. At mid-day, I was coming back to my dock when a gardener working 2 doors down started waving me over. As I pulled closer, he pointed towards the water & said in broken English "He has been watching me all morning". Stuck between the seawall & a paddleboat, I see a bed with a small male & large female locked on, facing the shoreline & the gardener. I back the boat off, make a couple of casts but neither fish moves, they just continue to focus on the human standing in front of them. I go ahead & dock my boat at my house & walk over to my neighbors house to get a better view. As I do, a carp swims by the bed, only to get chased off by the male. About that time, my neighbors' 4 grandchildren come down to the dock. I lifted each of them up, had them put on my sunglasses so each could see the bed & the fish. I always try to teach these kids about the fish, so I was explaining why the bass continued to stay so close to shore when they obviously saw the gardener standing nearby. As the gardener finished up & left, one of the kids asked if I could catch the bigger fish. I told them I could try, but it was more likely the smaller bass would bite and that it may take a long time for me to get the female to take a lure. I wanted to set their expectations to not get frustrated when it took a long time to get her to bite. With the gardener gone, I went back to my boat, pulled around to the bed and cast a 5" wacky senko past the bed, up onto the seawall. As I pulled it quietly into the water & to the edge of the bed, the female turned towards it. I hopped it once up into the bed and she swam over & dropped nose down. I didn't see her inhale, but my line jumped, so I set the hook. She immediately took off for deeper water & I landed her a few minutes later as the crowd of children roared their approval. So much for setting expectations, she bit on the first cast!! I brought her back to my dock to show the kids and they were amazed at the size of her head & mouth. She weighed 5 lbs, 4 oz, but had already dropped most of her eggs and probably would have been well over 6 lbs just a few weeks earlier. The kids got to see her swim away, although she didn't return to the nest immediately.
  12. I prefer to throw those sized crankbaits using "The Fishing Machine", spooled with 4 lb test.
  13. You are welcome, keep us updated as you figure them out.
  14. Believe it or not, the young girl in that decoder ad grew up to be Bruce Jenner...
  15. I always thought the drop in the handle was to accommodate reels like the Ambassador in your picture, which sit high. The drop in the handle made the center of the spool line up with the guides height wise. I remember in the late 70's, Diawa began to make their Millionaire reels more low profile so that the matching rods did not need that handle dip. The lower profile reels also made it easier to palm the reel.
  16. So does BPS with their Bionic Blade series of rods, although they only offer it in a 5"6" and 6" medium rod. The reel seat doesn't drop down as far as on the older rods because modern casting reels sit lower, but it gives a similar feel. Probably because of my age, I still prefer pistol grips for quick, accurate casting to close targets.
  17. I call these type of lakes "Development Lakes", since they are built to enhance a housing development. From the picture, yours seems to fit the profile: shallow, bowl shaped, very little or no emergent vegetation, cement borders, aerators to eliminate stagnation. Here are a few tips from my experience about where to fish: Often that concrete border has been undercut by catfish & carp rooting around wherever it ends in the water (sometimes out 5 or 10 feet out from the shore). That becomes home for baitfish and if the undercut is deep enough for the bass themselves. The bass will either hide out under it or swim around the perimeter looking to flush out baitfish. I see a couple of small docks and/or paddleboats on the water. Bass being bass, they will hide under them when the sun its out. The less used the dock/paddleboat, the better, unless it belongs to someone who feeds the wildlife. The bread thrown to ducks & geese attract bluegill, who attract the bass. If there are any semi-serious bass fishermen on the lake, trust me, there is a sunken Christmas tree or two some place. As far as lures techniques, my main recommendation would be to downsize & slow down. Be it topwater, crankbait, swimbait or jig, go with the smaller versions (Zara puppy instead of a full sized spook, 4" senko instead of 5", etc). There will be days when they won't chase moving lures, but will still eat a finesse jig or smaller worm all day long. Skip under the docks with a wacky rigged senko, that is something grandpa in the picture has never done. If you really want to keep it simple, just use a Z-Man TRD (Neg rig) all day long - these lakes are a perfect match to it. The fish will follow seasonal patterns, just in miniature and they kind of know the baitfish don't have many places to hide or run away to. Finally, if you have access to one of those paddleboats, use it. They really aren't too tough to fish from, will give access to the entire lake & you can even mount a Hummin'bird portable depthfinder on it to figure out where those sunken Christmas trees are.
  18. Apparently the fall into the gorilla enclosure was worse than first thought...
  19. Great suggestion, I'll rig one up for this weekend. Thanks
  20. That can really mess up a day of fishing. You are walking down the bank, picking up fish here & there, when all of a sudden Herbert with the big under-bite shows up behind you and starts doing awkward somersaults. It turns off the fish & can be very distracting...
  21. I would suggest that it is more lake dependent than region dependent. While nearby bodies of water may share some characteristics, it isn't unusual to have a good lake & poor lake within 20 miles of each other. That said, for my home lake, under 20 fish is a slower day and over 40 is a good day. During our six weeks of winter, cut those numbers in half. In comparison, when I was younger & fished a different lake almost exclusively, under 3 fish was a slow day and over 8 was a good day. Experience and better gear & techniques makeup part of that difference, but the body of water I think is the biggest variable.
  22. I haven't fished Mission Viejo in 5 years, but George Coniglio (the guy who caught the 19-12 there in 2006) caught one that was 25.6" in length last spring. I haven't read where the overall population is now, it may still take a few years to return to anything like what it was. I typically fish from daybreak until mid afternoon. The fish caught in early morning usually don't have followers, they are either solo fish or their behavior is different (even if I catch multiple fish from an area only yards wide). The only times I can count on seeing up to a dozen or more followers is mid-day during this period of the post-spawn or a few weeks during the fall. The difference in the latter period is I am catching the fish away from the shore, over the tops of small weed beds in 5-7 feet of water. In that situation, the followers don't scatter, I can cast a jerkbait back to the same area and catch quite a few. It is only with this post-spawn, very shallow hunting that they follow & then scatter at the boat and I can't find them.
  23. On my home lake, many of the bass are in a post spawn/not-yet-summertime pattern where they roam the shoreline in packs of 3 to 30 fish. I call them "wolf packs" because it appears their goal is hunting down the remaining fry from this years spawn. They seem to be like tuna, just constantly on the move, and not setting up residence anywhere. They will sometimes pull up under a dock, but I have never seen them stay put for more than a few minutes. Once one of them begins to go, the rest follow looking for the next set of fry to attack. This behavior lasts for about a month, until they settle into a more typical summertime pattern. I do okay catching those bass acting this way, either by seeing them before they see me and and casting in front of them or by skipping under docks. What I have never figured out to do is how to catch more than the first fish from these groups. No matter if it is the sighted (seen?) fish or one from under the docks, as I bring the hooked fish to the boat, there are multiple others around him, either following or trying to grab the lure from his mouth. They then scatter as the caught fish gets closer to the boat. They don't go back under the docks or resume their hunt, it is kind of like I am a cop breaking up a party and the bass take off like drunken teenagers to heaven knows where. The only thing I have ever tried occurred once as I was reeling in a 2 lb fish. About 2 feet below him was a fish 3 times his size. With my free hand, I grabbed a rod with a wacky rigged Senko, opened the bail & dropped it towards her face. As it descended towards her, a different smaller fish shot in & grabbed it. Now I've got 2 rods both hooked up, while the bigger fish is just watching the commotion of the 2 struggling bass. I kind of was hoping the big bass would eat one of the smaller hooked bass, but she just turned & swam away. Who knows, maybe they were her bodyguards. It wasn't as fun trying to land two fish at once as I thought it would be, so I gave up on that technique. Is there a way to manage or corral those wolf packs to keep them in place & catch multiple fish from the group or is "one & done" just the nature of the beast this time of the year?
  24. That was what happened, his thrashing is what drove the hook down my nail. He was on one treble & I was on the other, but fortunately I was able to pin him on the deck of the boat pretty quick to get him to stop moving. These pictures were after the fact, I wasn't really interested in any photography while I was still attached to the fish.
  25. It looks like you have inadvertently discovered an alternate to Botox. If you can patent stabbing women in the forehead as a medical procedure, you will be rich!!
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