My Day Fishing

Every fisherman has his "fish stories." And if there is one characteristic by which almost every fish story is known, it is its tendency to be over exaggerated. With that in mind, I will try to stay as true as I can to the actual facts of this afternoon.

I have noticed many times when fishing the little city lakes right now in "Winter" (this is SoCal) that the bass can be found about 5 - 15 feet from the bank of the lake as the day warms up. James and I figure that with the water being as shallow as it is, the bass move up towards the bank as the day warms the water. Lately we have had several days that didn't really warm up and those bass aren't being found close to the bank anymore. This gave a little more credence to our theory. So James and I have been discussing for about a week and a half the possibility that the bass are staying out in the deeper parts of the lake when the days remain cool. Now these little lakes probably aren't any deeper than about 10 - 12 feet in their deepest areas, so we started thinking that running a medium depth crankbait (maybe 9 - 12 feet) out towards the center of the lake might produce some larger bass.

James was the first to put the theory to the test. As you can see here, it was pretty successfull for him.

So I ran down to Blue Water Bait & Tackle and grabbed a Norman Deep Little N Firetiger and headed over to Harveston for my own testing.

I had been there for about 20 minutes, casting that crankbait out into the center of the lake (right next to the gazeebo again) when I felt a strike. I set the hook and instantly my rod was heavy and my line was on the move. I gave the rod another quick pull hoping to set the hook a little better (just in case). That woke up whatever was on the other end of the line and he started to pull hard. I eased up my drag just a little hoping to allow him to get himself tired.

I was keeping my rod tip up high and this fish was really starting to get annoyed. He hadn't shown himself yet, but I could tell by the weight of the fight that he was the largest bass I had hooked to date...anywhere.

Just then I saw the surface of the water start to move, a quick flash of silver, and there he was.

As he broke the surface of the water about ready to throw my bait my eyes got big and I could feel my heart start to speed up. Now that doesn't usually happen. I've hooked enough bass now and seen enough head-shakes and tail-dances to not get too excited. But this was different.

He came up out of the water with his mouth wide open preparing to do a head-shake and I kid you not his mouth was no less than a full 4 - 5 inches across. He only came out just passed his gill plate so that only his head was exposed and he was already a good 6 inches out of the water at least.

He gave a quick head-shake, threw my crankbait, and was gone. Judging only by what I saw of him, he had to be well over 4 pounds, and probably closer to 5.

As he dropped back into the water my heart rate was still on its way up and probably didn't stop until it was almost 2x its normal pace. I didn't catch a glimpse of him or anything else for the rest of my time there.

So James pulled a 4 - 5 pounder out of RSM and now I hook a 4 - 5 pounder at Harveston. Both of us were using medium depth cranks about mid day in the deeper parts of each lake. I'd say our theory is looking pretty good.

Hooking a nice 4 - 5 pound large mouth bass in these little city lakes...

Now that's a thrill !!!

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