Got the call last night to take today off, so immediately checked the forecast for wind and packed the car with the boat s#it before I was even sure where I was going. I knew I wanted to do freshwater and brought it back to Piru after deciding I needed a thorough crappie hunt, and I wasn't sure if my boat/outboard were bone dry to pass quagga inspections elsewhere.
Woke up at 0630, left the house at 0730, arrived at 0830, on the water at 0900. 54º water temp. I was hoping bass would be staging to spawn but not in that cold of water. Thought I would explore the north arm that looks to wiggle past some trees and out of sight. Turns out, right at the tree line, it turns to about a foot deep. So that idea was done. So I started casting for bass around the timber to see if I could knock a couple out quickly with a spinnerbait, but nothing was happening. Moved over about 50 yards and started seeing bunches of marks in 6-12ft of water. Pulled out the hair jig and went to work bouncing. Felt like I hooked timber and then felt a little tick, set the hook.
Viola, species #111 black crappie! Decent one too.
15 minutes later, switched colors from black/green to white. Bam, another.
I kept switching colors hoping to really dial them in, but I couldn't get any more bites, then the wind picked up quite a bit at 1000. Decided to finally make use of my anchor on the area, but finally gave up around 1030 in search of...well, whatever I could find.
Started on my way to the south end of the lake, just metering the bottom, getting a sense of just how inaccurate the Navionics topography is for the lake. The gradients are vaguely accurate but the depths are all over the place, even adjusted to water fluctuation, which appeared to be about -50'.
I was eyeing some bass up and down the water column in 20-40ft of water, so I put out a deep crank to troll while I gathered an understanding of the lake. What I heard, though, was that there are brown trout in the lake. Nice ones too. And it's worth jigging a 1/2oz KM in deep water. So eventually I made a b-line for the dam area, which surprisingly only topped out at 60' of water. But there were TONS of marks.
I would assume those are trout marks, but I'm surprised they'd be that thick, considering it may have been 10+ years since the last trout stock, from what I've gathered. Too big of marks to be bait, though, and bass aren't gonna be in wolf packs in late winter. I set up anchor and jigged over them, and put out the 1000 size baitfeeder with coho eggs for a solid hour before I'd had enough taunting. On to bass.
Went over to a stretch of shoreline that I liked last week and parked myself in some timber and casted parallel to shore and into deeper water with an LC pointer for a bit. Occasional bass boils fueled my hope. Eventually I mixed in a dropshot roboworm. Finally got a quick bite on the dropshot but it spit it out real quick. Decided to throw out some catfish dough on the baitfeeder while I continued to be teased by boiling bass.
Eventually, around 1400, the wind got even more stiff and it just got too nasty to bother, so I packed it in.
Catching the crappie made this one a big victory on paper, but being taunted by multiple other species afterward left me feeling a little sore about the trip. It's becoming a goal of mine to catch a panfish/bass/cat/trout slam at a SoCal lake, which might be impossible this time of year, but it seems like a fun, ambitious exercise to hone all the different skills for each one and put it all together in a single day.
14 deer in this frame:
