Lake Castaic November 1st

[Iceman]

I think I may be going back next week .........killer lake! and I need to mark that elusive striper off my list. Trout plant and big baits sounds fun.

[steveooo]

Uh-oh. Andy has a video camera and some editing software Welcome to the 21st century

That does look like fun, and I also need to check the elusive striper off my list. Maybe next week you say?

[lowprofile]

troll a CD14 in black/silver. i've heard good things.

bass fishing is surprisingly fun in a yak.

[slobslayer]

This video made me wanna get back into freshwater. CHeck these swimbaits out online...www.moreaubaits.com
Its all i would fish in freshwater and kill um

[capntim]

Nice Andy. Fall weather fishing there is great. Oh and I got an open
striper box that needs checking as well.
Tim

[tattuna]

Good fishin with ya Andy. Thanks fer lightin the fire

Goin back Monday....maybe Thursday too. Had them stripers around me but they were up and down too quick. Got the bug again.....

[BigSexyFritz]

I've fished castiac my entire life. Pm me before you go out next and ill go over some places to target that aren't too far of a paddle.

[GHOSTHUNTR]

You might want to try DVL. I was really into throwing the big swimbaits for stripers a few years ago, and let me tell you, when they eat it there is nothing better in freshwater. Sometimes after a plant they will boil and it really feels like you"re on the ocean. Terns and seagulls and even pelicans showing you where they are. If they are boiling throw the Lunker Punker at em and walk the dog with it. I've had big stripers throw this lure 5 ft. into the air on a miss. Sometimes a frenzy will make you think of tuna, not stripers, they are very aggressive fish. Get the real Punker, not the cheesy plastic one, and throw it on 25 or 30# line. I've got them up to 28# using this method. It is a ton of work, and you have to be at the right place, right time, but when it happens it makes it all worthwhile, kinda like La Jolla. Go the day of the trout stock or the morning after and you will cut the odds considerably.Watch your bait all the back because many times you will see them swirling behind it before they strike, talk about exciting! If they are not boiling, an 8inch Huddleston is your best bet. Get a rate-of fall 5 or 12 and let it sink and then SLOWLY reel it in. If its barely moving it's going the right speed. The best way to rig these baits is with a treble hook and braid. Tie the braid to the eye of the bait and place the hook back behind the dorsal fin, this keeps it weedless and helps with shortbites, which happen alot due to the size of the bait. Hope this helps and, by the way, Stripers are very good eating, and very prolific, please do everyone a favor and take some home with you!!!

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by GHOSTHUNTR

You might want to try DVL. I was really into....

Great post with excellent info.

I love fishing Big Baits, I know I should try the LPs but being cheap I fish mostly BBZ's and Huds.


Personally at Castiac I've had more strikes on Huds but landed more fish on BBZs

I'm a hardcore striper guy and I've actually spent more time fishing freshwater stripers then any other fish. They are my favorite fish you can catch fresh water and I've caught my share. Locally I'd say DVL is the lake to fish. The only drag is you need a sit inside kayak.

Lakes go through a cycle when stripers get into them. Initially you have a rapid growth rate and end up with a lot of big fish but then they eat through the forage and you end up with mostly smaller fish. Castiac and Pyramid still kick out a good fish now and then but they don't have the numbers of large fish that DVL has. I'd say DVL and lake San Antonio are the two best fishing lakes in California for fish over ten pounds because they aren't completely overrun yet with smaller fish.

The exception of course is the O Neal forebay up at San Luis Reservoir, because it's fed by the duct intake in the Delta it get's enough bait to produce some giant fish, and when forage get's scarce the fish head down the duct which helps keep their numbers more balanced. If you want a true lake trophy O Neal has the biggest fish, DVL is the best bet local.

That said where I want to try for them next is the Amercan River during the Shad Run. I'm talking Delta fish up to into the fifties that are actively feeding on American Shad over a pound.

One more thing for a fifteen pound+ striper anything under 12 inches long is food. That includes Largemouth, Crappie, Bluegill, Trout, even other stripers. The best thing you can do for the fishery is keep every one you catch.

Jim

[Iceman]

Charles good fishing with you and Anthony as well! Good luck Monday, I may drag Brent up on Wednesday.

Thanks for all the insight from the guys that have put in their time wit the stripers. I have caught plenty of LMB, but have only targeted stripers twice and have tried to mimic shad with my lure selection. Looking forward to tossing the big trout imitations on the Calstar 90J

[Fiskadoro]

Originally Posted by Iceman

I have caught plenty of LMB, but have only targeted stripers twice and have tried to mimic shad with my lure selection. Looking forward to tossing the big trout imitations on the Calstar 90J

They are easy to catch Andy. You just have to find fish that are feeding and put something they want in front of their nose. They can be incredibly aggressive when they are hungry.

As a follow up to what I posted above I called a buddy of mine that still fishes stripers where I grew up in North Texas at Texoma and we compared notes about the boom bust striper cycles that lakes go through.

It's kind of what I thought, and then some. In Texas the fish are stocked and with the exception of Texoma Stripers do not spawn in Texas. They started putting them in the late sixties and early seventies. I personally caught my first one a seven pounder fishing with my Dad when I was thirteen. When I turned 16 and could drive I started fishing them every chance I could at lake Granbury and got a 13.5 16.5 then a 18 pound fish in a relatively short period of time.

Here's one of them I think the 18.


I'm like 16 there. That's probably the largest Striper I ever caught at Granbury, I fished it until the early eighties but never got a really big one over twenty.

I started fishing Texoma in 1980 and it was a unbelievable striped bass fishery. I can't give exact number but conservatively I was getting a hundred fish over ten pounds a year. Keep in mind I was going to school just 20 miles away, and then commercially fishing Catfish there during the summers so I was fishing a ton of days but it was not a big deal to get a five fish limit with fish all over 10 pounds at Texoma back in the early eighties. At that time the state record was 34 pounds. In July of 82 I got a 33.5 pound fish, following June I got a 36.5 pound fish but got screwwed because I caught it late at night on a Saturday, and could not get it to a grain scale till Monday because of the Blue laws.

This is that fish in a clipping from the Dennison Herald.

Shortly after I had to leave to go to school in NY, and I never really got to fish it much again, until a few years ago when my Mom died. When I went up and fished there it was the same wide open fishing, but all the fish were in the three to five pound range. Most of the younger guys I met fishing there had never even caught a 10 pound fish.

Here' what the Texas parks and wildlife has to say about it.

".....Lakes that produced numbers of fish over 30 pounds in the 80s and 90s now struggle to produce fish over 20 pounds. According to Roger McCabe, Regional Director of Inland Fisheries, District 2, there are a number of reasons for this. In the 1980s, biologists began increasing stocking rates to improve the population size and catch rate. The trade-off for having more fish is fewer large specimens because of increased competition for food......... Lake Texoma was first stocked in 1965 and has the largest land-locked population of striped bass in the United States. Natural reproduction occurs annually in both the Red and Washita River arms. No stocking has occurred since the early 1980s. The lake record fish weighed 35.12 pounds and was caught in 1984. This lake has the highest daily bag limit for striped bass in the state: no minimum length, and 10 fish per person per day with only two longer than 20 inches. Texoma’s striped bass population is prolific, and for numbers, no other lake in Texas can compare....."

They don't mention the record for Granbury but my old fishing buddy says the largest striper they've caught there was only 19.5 pounds. He also sent me a link to Fish and Games stats on the fifty largest recorded stripers caught in Texas. Only four of them were caught since 2000 twenty seven of them were caguht in the 90s, and the rest come from the 80s. Both my larger Texoma fish would be on that list if I just had bothered to send in the paperwork. The deal was that back when I was fishing there I was sure there would be 40 and 50 pound fishing coming out of Texoma in a few years, and that Granbury was just a few years behind it. I used to release all my stripers six pounds at Granbury and under ten pounds at Texoma, because I wanted the population to grow, so there would be more big fish down the line but looks like I was wrong on all counts.

So what does this have to do with fishing them in Cal. Well first off I'm making a couple of points. One if your fishing a lake with quality striped bass fishing like DVL hit them hard because it might not last, and two when you catch them keep them because the less there are in the lake the better the fishing is going to be down the road. Actually if you read between the lines what I'm really trying to do is to get you guys to go fish them. They fight great (better then seabass), get big and are good to eat (white flesh almost as good as seabass if you cut the red meat out) and basically in our local lakes you can't overfish them. Hey I'm just being selfish, the more you fish them the more big fish for me down the road

Go get them!!

Jim

[hook1fred]

cant use a sit on top kayak at DVL.... I'm an avid LMB guy but if you want to catch BIG stripers at DVL go there the day of the trout stock and watch them boil on 2-3 pound protein pills, awesome. Hudds, punkers, triple trout, bbz's all work there

[GHOSTHUNTR]

Fiskadoro, you are right on the money about the striper cycle. 5 years ago you stood a reasonable chance of catching a 20+ pound striper up at DVL, they were caught weekly during the trout season. Those fish just aren't there anymore, they've been replaced by hordes of 3-5 pounders. Same thing happened at Skinner back in the day, these fish just aren't really suited for landlocked resevoirs. Although it will never be like it was(it was fantastic) you will occasionally have years where the big boys will show( like at Skinner 2yrs. ago). If you've never fished the California delta for big stripers, its a must. The fact that they spend time in the ocean means they are bigger and even a little meaner than the lake versions, what a killler fishery up there.

[GHOSTHUNTR]

Originally Posted by hook1fred

cant use a sit on top kayak at DVL.... I'm an avid LMB guy but if you want to catch BIG stripers at DVL go there the day of the trout stock and watch them boil on 2-3 pound protein pills, awesome. Hudds, punkers, triple trout, bbz's all work there

I've seen football field sized boils at DVL that would rival anything in the ocean for pure ferocity. I had my two boys out there one day and we were fishing off a point when someone flipped the switch and were smack in the middle of a giant boil. They were in such a frenzy a couple of them actually thumped the bottom of the boat. You could not make a cast(360 degrees) without landing on them. Needless to say, immediate triple hookup on 8 and 10 lb. gear. All three fish were over 10lbs, talk about getting some young kids hooked on fishing!

[TEAMFISH]

Thanks Andy, you got pumped for a little freshwater action. May try Castaic on Friday November 16th. Any advice or FYI?

Haven't caught a striper in 30 years and that was on the Colorado river.