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View Full Version : Saturday 1/25/14 Striper Slay and a good belly laugh



DMS
01-25-2014, 09:34 PM
Today Lulu and I had to run her nephew, who has been visiting to the airport for an early morning flight. We made sure to get him there plenty early so he would not miss his flight and so we could chase stripey again!

We stopped for some worms at Galleon's and in conversation, I heard that Fishinone was fishin' today... that was not a surprise.

We hit the gate a few minutes after 7 and drove right in as we saw the spread of bass boats from the tourney fanning out across the lake. Short minute to rig the boat for launch and we were off to our spot. Put the anchor down and the lines out and didn't get much right away, but after a while we started serving some customers. The fish were really picky, but we picked away at a few until I pulled out my 2# line as I saw good marks and was not really getting the expected love. Right away, I hooked up but had a casualty on the spiderweb line. Back out again and hooked up and this one felt like a tuna or something. About 10+ minutes later, I saw a nice striper on the surface and finally coaxed a nice 5#+ striper to Lulu's waiting net! A 5# striper on 2# line and a little bitty trout pole! As we picked along we found another nice one on the trout pole. This time Lulu was on it, but the fish just kept swimming away. She was afraid to farm him and he was headed to spool her, so I helped get her back around and passed the pole back and I netted a nice 4.5# striper! As we picked away to our limits, we were digging the nicer fish and I got the big one of the day on the 4# line and Lulu netted a 6#+ fish for me.

We where enjoying the day. We had some wind, but overall, really manageable and we were getting on as we filled the well. As we were getting to our last couple fish, we noticed the bass boat off to our side had moved a bit closer, but not too close... they were picking the schoolies. I notice they had 5 people in the boat... I mentioned that they couldn't really move around much. All the sudden, one of the guys had a nice fish. Lulu was watching the fight as I tended another worm bite... all the sudden, I saw a huge splash and I thought that it must have been a 30# striper, but it was a 150# angler who simply fell overboard while trying to net a 4 or 5# striper. The other 4 guys in that boat, Lulu and me all busted out laughing. It was about the funniest thing I have seen in a long time and the best part was the guys over there kept busting out laughing every time they calmed down. I pulled the glasses and saw the guy wringing out his clothing. Lulu told me he changed his clothes. Note to self, if you are going to fall in the drink, bring a change of clothes.

Anyway, we got 19 and on the last bite, we got teased by the short biters until I stuck a final 4# fish. We took some photos, stowed the nets and rods, cleaned up a bit from the blood and guts and slime on the deck and pulled anchors and headed for the barn. We didn't set any records for speed, but had a great day as we pulled out of the gate at around 2:30 with 38# or so of fresh stripers.

Final for the day was one fish over 6, one over 5 and 3 over 4 for five nice ones. 15 schoolies to fill out or limit.

I heard that Ron and Jim did good today too.

DMS

Photos below:
Here is our limit from 1/11/14 (3 hours of fishing)
http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s13/mythreesticks/IMG_2542_zps7862162e.jpg

Here are the two largest a 6+ and a 5+ the 5 was on 2# line
http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s13/mythreesticks/IMG_2553_zpseac82fcd.jpg

Here's Lulu with our haul
http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s13/mythreesticks/IMG_2562_zps548d3408.jpg

one more good shot
http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s13/mythreesticks/IMG_2556_zps7384e811.jpg

And last Saturday was no fishing, but we where there to count the votes for the DrumOff
http://i148.photobucket.com/albums/s13/mythreesticks/IMG_2549_zpsae849413.jpg

CAPT'N
01-26-2014, 08:34 AM
Great job out there! I was looking for you in line. I fished with Ron, and we caught fish I will leave it for Ron to write a report. Were you in your normal spot?

Congrats on some nice fish.....

Capt'n

TroutOnly
01-26-2014, 10:13 AM
great slay dan and lulu,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,bob,,,,,,,,

DMS
01-26-2014, 10:17 AM
Great job out there! I was looking for you in line. I fished with Ron, and we caught fish I will leave it for Ron to write a report. Were you in your normal spot?

Congrats on some nice fish.....

Capt'n

Thanks Capt'n
We found a place away from the pack that we have been fishing. I saw Ron's rig in the lot when we arrived and after we pulled out but didn't see any boats we recognized except I think I saw Carlo's boat when we were traveling in the morning.
DMS

DMS
01-26-2014, 10:32 AM
great slay dan and lulu,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,bob,,,,,,,,

Thanks Bob,
Hope to run into you again soon. I suppose its sort of the off-season right now. Since you are the expert on these stripers, I will put some observations/questions out there to you and the group.

By the way, the 5 pound fish we got was really, really thin. I don't think I ever caught such a thin striper at Castaic. Other than a few pieces of stolen bait, none of the fish had anything in their stomachs. I also noticed that the bite is really, really picky. A lot of nibbles and abandoned, even with my super boinky kencor trout rods. For a while the 2# was getting bit when nothing else was. Also a couple of the nicer fish had the start of eggs.
Do you think that the fish have eaten through the shad in the lake? Last year at this time, I metered blankets of small schools of both striper babies/dinks and shad. is this normal for this time a year? I would expect the fish to slow down a bit, but its really not so cold. Maybe it is warm enough still to keep them active, but they have eaten through a lot of the available food.
With all the fish that have come out of that lake since May, there must be millions of those fish out there.

I know we can't predict, but I can't imagine any decent recruitment of any species with so many hungry stripers, especially if the shad are depleted. Maybe the shad are so prolific that only a few can repopulate the water in the spring. I wonder if next summer these schoolies will have enough food to grow to the next stage. I also wonder if we are going to see the lake flooded with very, very small fish (like Pyramid seems to be now). Speaking of Pyramid, I wonder if we are going to be stuck with sorting through extremely large numbers of dinks for the foreseeable future.

I suppose all these questions are really unanswerable for sure, but I sure hope that we are not heading to these fish crashing the bait population and starving/stunted with small size. If that happens, they should remove the limits (maybe they should already). In the meantime, I'm sure having fun running our own boat and catching fish.

DMS

Fishin4runner
01-26-2014, 07:42 PM
Glad to hear you guys got into them and had a good laugh. Maybe I will see you out there one day.

Marley
01-26-2014, 09:07 PM
You're hot on those stripers Dan, sounds like you have Castaic dialed in. Nice day!

fishinone
01-27-2014, 03:54 PM
This post needs pictures.

I'm sorry I missed you guys out there.

Nice job on the limits.

DMS
01-27-2014, 09:20 PM
This post needs pictures.

I'm sorry I missed you guys out there.

Nice job on the limits.

OK, I signed up for PhotoBucket and added photos! I don't have any photos of dude swimming. but Lulu says he went in head first.

Stumpknocker
01-28-2014, 06:05 AM
I've wondered about the striper food availability question too...I've caught and cleaned a bunch of fish from Necktie over the last few months, and the only thing I've seen in their stomachs is sardine chunks, some green peas, and one sculpin...no recognizable shad at all...don't have any answers though...on another note, with 5 guys in the boat, I'm guessing he was pushed :LOL:

fishinone
01-28-2014, 06:56 AM
I had bait balls going under my boat over and over on Saturday. I don't know what they were but the striper were chasing them.

They were chasing something else too. One at a time they would chase something through that made little arches one right after another. Whatever it was it swam funny.

Bassfan
01-29-2014, 10:04 AM
Nice job Dan and Lulu, good to see you guys back in your old form, slaying away.

TUNAVIC
01-29-2014, 10:18 AM
Cool read and very nice pics and results,I remember a buddy of mine going in the water once S/W,he was trying to retrieve a rod that went overboard,and it too was pretty funny! Thanks

Cya Tuna Vic