EARLY early pre-spawn - California

[ryanerb]

Went fishing for a few hours in the afternoon on Saturday Feb 8th.

This was to one of my local Central California lakes, which is relatively small, 1100 surface acres.

• Water Temp: 51-52, with some afternoon 54 shallow agains a rock wall
• Water color: Pretty stained overall, less than 1ft visibility near the river end of the lake
• Weather: Overall sunny, high around 65 degress
• Moon: Full moon
• Lake Pressure: Unfortunately a 35 boat bass tourney was going on, which is too many good anglers for this size of lake. I've heard the fish really shut down with this many guys casting after them
  • Bass tourney results: Many MANY guys struggled, couldn't even fill a 5 fish limit. Some guys did well I believe deep cranking. Winning weight was 23lb, 2nd was 21lb. HOWEVER, many guys did not have 5 fish limits, or even close. I don't have the full results yet. I thought I also heard some guys actually got some flipping pretty shallow. Imagine that... 
• My techniques: 
  • Dirty water, I thought a jig in black and blue would be bold
  • A few casts with a bladed A-Rig
  • A few casts with a chartruse red eye shad
• Overall thoughts:
  • I never caught a fish and I don't think I got a bite. I basically only fished from 1-4pm on my boat in various areas of the lake.
  • Stained water, I figured fish would be semi shallow, HOWEVER, water temps of 51 degrees means they might not really want to pull up. 
  • Wasn't very sure fishing a jig deep (10-20ft) was that great, I'm not sure how easy those fish would find that thing 
  • Crank seems like a good way to go, and some tourney guys proved this, but I was thinking with all the pressure the fish wouldn't like the noisy obnoxious thing and maybe would be negative towards it.

 

Would be interested if anyone has any further thoughts, but it was a tough day, and I look forward to that water getting up in at least the high 50s to low 60s before things really start to turn on. I'm still learning

[DeeGee68]

Camanche?

[JediAmoeba]

That jig reeled all the way to the eye is giving me a heart attack.  Please don't do that!  Lol

[NorcalBassin]

Bummer no bites but at least you know some good bass were willing to bite with 2 bags over 20 pounds. If you had another hour it would have been worth throwing some finesse baits (DS or Ned), but it can be so hit or miss this time of year next time you may smoke them on the things you just tried. 

[BASS302]

6 hours ago, DeeGee68 said:

Camanche?

Camanche has 7700 surface acres.  @ryanerb said 1100 surface acres. 

It's probably Santa Margarita Lake.

[J._Bricker]

I’ll guess Hensley...  Chucking that jig @ryanerb along those tules especially if there’s chunk rock is where I’d start. If it fishes like the delta, you won’t get a lot of bites but ones you do will definitely be the right ones!

[ryanerb]

3 hours ago, JediAmoeba said:

That jig reeled all the way to the eye is giving me a heart attack.  Please don't do that!  Lol

Yes!!! Great reminder!!!

32 minutes ago, NorcalBassin said:

Bummer no bites but at least you know some good bass were willing to bite with 2 bags over 20 pounds. If you had another hour it would have been worth throwing some finesse baits (DS or Ned), but it can be so hit or miss this time of year next time you may smoke them on the things you just tried. 

Figured ned/DS would be too finesse and they can't find it in that stained water?

[ryanerb]

45 minutes ago, BASS302 said:

Camanche has 7700 surface acres.  @ryanerb said 1100 surface acres. 

It's probably Santa Margarita Lake.

LoL I didn't know this thread was going to turn into a 'guess what lake that was'