Bassfan
10-20-2013, 10:24 AM
Decided to go to Pyramid for the first time since about April-May and see if things were much different from what I’ve seen lately at Castaic. Got there early enough to be first boat in line and soon followed by Dave. I had read that Dave was coming so recognized him when he pulled up even in the dark. Had a chance to talk for a bit but it was cold! I thought boats would pour in behind us like at Castaic but not many came.
The gate opened and I headed straight to the launch in the moonlight. It was still so dark I had a hard time telling if I was in a legal parking space when I parked the trailer.
I stayed around the dock area until it got a little lighter and cast around for nothing. I could hear the occasional fish jump but had a feeling they were bass. Launched and tried more casting in the general area in the channel but not even a bump.
I haven’t done much more than an hour or two of trolling a couple times at Pyramid so this was a day of learning. About 7:00 I put out the first rig for trolling and before I could grab the second rod the first went off.
For about an hour it was really steady with a mix of dinks ranging from the 10” Pyramid dink to the recent Castaic dink size and occasionally a 2 lb. nice fish mixed in. It stayed decent until, as Dave said, about 9:30 to 2:30 when you were lucky to get hit. The Pyramid stripers obviously belong to the same union as the Castaic stripers because they both observe the same break period.
After driving around for a while with nothing, one rod started going off around the tip of the island and in the few seconds after I grabbed the rod the boat cut the corner across the point and I was in a big area of 5’ deep water where 4’ of it was dense weeds. Tried to steer out while holding the rod but the second rod hung up and then the one I was holding also hung up. Both rigs dug their way to the base of those weeds and were solidly stuck. The breeze was just enough to keep sending the boat away from where I needed to be, and with two lines they were hard to keep out of the prop and away from each other. Had to drop an anchor to have any chance to work near the snags. I tried using the rig retriever I bought that worked well last week at Castaic but with the weeds I couldn’t get it down to the rig. Every time I tried I just pulled up clump after clump of weeds. Somehow the slack that formed in the braid then formed a complete mess with the retriever so then I had two problems.
Finally after an hour spent messing with it I pulled straight up hard with the braid, while trying to keep it from breaking, and the first rig came up with a huge weed ball around it.
Used the same method on the second rig and got the same result except this one came with a bonus. There was a 2 lb. striper that looked exhausted inside the weed ball. He almost looked happy to get out of the weeds until he ended up in a cooler.
Had to cut some braid and retie both lines but after a long time it was back to trolling. The weeds were a challenge all day both the huge ones growing almost to the surface in places and the floating clumps that ride the line down to the rigs. It seemed like every time I brought in the rigs to check, they had streaming weeds. Half the day may have been spent trolling for nothing with weeds hanging on keeping the fish away.
It was like a weekday with only one or two skiers, a few Jet skis and not many fishermen.
I covered almost the entire lakeshore including a lot of places I had never checked out just to try and explore to find where they were. It was much easier at Castaic to find the fish even if they wouldn’t hit at least you saw them on the finder but at Pyramid, they seem more scattered. Didn’t see any sign of a boil or even a fish jumping after 7:30.
In the parking lot Dave showed me some of his custom painted lures. I was really impressed by the beautiful workmanship.
By the end I had landed 20 stripers and 2 smallmouth all from trolling so it was a very nice day.
5 were nice size from 2-3 lb. and the rest various size dinks. Sorry about no pictures, all I have is Dave as a witness!
The gate opened and I headed straight to the launch in the moonlight. It was still so dark I had a hard time telling if I was in a legal parking space when I parked the trailer.
I stayed around the dock area until it got a little lighter and cast around for nothing. I could hear the occasional fish jump but had a feeling they were bass. Launched and tried more casting in the general area in the channel but not even a bump.
I haven’t done much more than an hour or two of trolling a couple times at Pyramid so this was a day of learning. About 7:00 I put out the first rig for trolling and before I could grab the second rod the first went off.
For about an hour it was really steady with a mix of dinks ranging from the 10” Pyramid dink to the recent Castaic dink size and occasionally a 2 lb. nice fish mixed in. It stayed decent until, as Dave said, about 9:30 to 2:30 when you were lucky to get hit. The Pyramid stripers obviously belong to the same union as the Castaic stripers because they both observe the same break period.
After driving around for a while with nothing, one rod started going off around the tip of the island and in the few seconds after I grabbed the rod the boat cut the corner across the point and I was in a big area of 5’ deep water where 4’ of it was dense weeds. Tried to steer out while holding the rod but the second rod hung up and then the one I was holding also hung up. Both rigs dug their way to the base of those weeds and were solidly stuck. The breeze was just enough to keep sending the boat away from where I needed to be, and with two lines they were hard to keep out of the prop and away from each other. Had to drop an anchor to have any chance to work near the snags. I tried using the rig retriever I bought that worked well last week at Castaic but with the weeds I couldn’t get it down to the rig. Every time I tried I just pulled up clump after clump of weeds. Somehow the slack that formed in the braid then formed a complete mess with the retriever so then I had two problems.
Finally after an hour spent messing with it I pulled straight up hard with the braid, while trying to keep it from breaking, and the first rig came up with a huge weed ball around it.
Used the same method on the second rig and got the same result except this one came with a bonus. There was a 2 lb. striper that looked exhausted inside the weed ball. He almost looked happy to get out of the weeds until he ended up in a cooler.
Had to cut some braid and retie both lines but after a long time it was back to trolling. The weeds were a challenge all day both the huge ones growing almost to the surface in places and the floating clumps that ride the line down to the rigs. It seemed like every time I brought in the rigs to check, they had streaming weeds. Half the day may have been spent trolling for nothing with weeds hanging on keeping the fish away.
It was like a weekday with only one or two skiers, a few Jet skis and not many fishermen.
I covered almost the entire lakeshore including a lot of places I had never checked out just to try and explore to find where they were. It was much easier at Castaic to find the fish even if they wouldn’t hit at least you saw them on the finder but at Pyramid, they seem more scattered. Didn’t see any sign of a boil or even a fish jumping after 7:30.
In the parking lot Dave showed me some of his custom painted lures. I was really impressed by the beautiful workmanship.
By the end I had landed 20 stripers and 2 smallmouth all from trolling so it was a very nice day.
5 were nice size from 2-3 lb. and the rest various size dinks. Sorry about no pictures, all I have is Dave as a witness!