Are you willing to do the work?

Their's an age old question, are you willingly to go the extra miles to insure "Success beyond belief!" I put it to the test a few weeks back and found if you did, "it will really happen!" If you put in the time, the energy, the miles and the money, fishing is "Off the hook at Lake Wohlford!" (I don't think most people will, so I'm writing this report!) Lol We are going after the Trifecta of species. (Crappie, Catfish and Bass)

It all starts with the Bait! For the Crappie and Bass we mostly have been catching them on Live Minnows. Their not cheap, $6 a dozen for the smalls and $12 a dozen for the mediums. Their is also only 1 reliable place to get them in Lakeside CA. (20 east of San Diego) So when I do a Minnow run, it's 100 miles each way to get them! Keeping them alive at the house is a ***** too. I need to do an 100% water change every 20 hours or the dead lose is terrible! Now for the secret Catfish bait, I need to go 50 miles North from my house to Marina Del Rey to buy them. (they cost $40 a bundle) Since I went fishing 3 times this week, the cost per trip wasn't that bad! $60 in Minnows and $40 in secret Catfish bait for all 3 trips.

Another part in doing the work is to get their early in line before they open. They only rent 13 boats a day because of Covid 19. (they need to let half their boats sit in the sun for 24 hours to kill the Virus) So in the beginning you needed to get their early just to get a boat. (now it's to get one with a New motor) Have I scared you off yet???? Lol I should have! We went Thursday, Sunday and Tuesday. (when the fishing is this good, all my friends want to go) On Tuesday we got their at 5:30 am and we were the only ones in line. When they opened at 6:00 am, we still were the only ones there. (it was $20 dollar senior day on the boat rentals and we were still the only ones there!) Why because unless you do the work, "Fishing sucks!" Lol

On to the Fishing.

On Thursday I had Rita and Phil with me. The plan was to fish Crappie and Bass half the day and then drift for Catfish the second half of the day. At Lake Wohlford their is 3 good structure spots to anchor up on for Crappie and Bass. So we started out at my favorite one. Live Minnows for the Crappie and Bass and I threw out 1 Catfish pole with the secret bait. At the end of 3 hours, we landed 9 Crappie, 1 nice Bass and 3 Catfish. We then went drifting for catfish for the next 3 hours. We ended up catching another 20 Catfish, mostly C&R them! Called it an early day to beat the work traffic home on the Freeway.

On Sunday I had my friend Robert with me and fished the same routine. We only caught 4 Crappie that day, 2 dinks, a decent keeper and 1 real nice one. We did the Catfish drifting and it wasn't as good as Thursday but we still ended up with 20 Catfish. We did stay later because it was Sunday and didn't have to fight the work traffic home.

On Tuesday I had the old gang with me. (Phil and Glenn) Glenn has a bad knee so this was going to be a short day. We started off with the Crappie thing and only caught 3, so we went Catfish drifting early. I don't know why, but the Catfish were bigger today and hungrier! The boy's wanted to take a few home, so I had to set some ground rules. No killing any Blue Catfish and only take home the stockers. (release all native Catfish too that were born in the lake) Glenn thought it was funny that I could tell the difference between a stocker and a native. He also laughed at my logic of releasing the natives that were born there. I said, the natives know how to feed themselves and the stockers are dumb! If the stockers don't figure out quick how to find food, they will starve to death! (Glenn found that hilarious!) The fishing was soo good, we never had a dry drift that we didn't catch at least 2 or 3 Catfish. Just to show you how good it was, we had a triple that we were all hooked up at once and I had a double fighting 2 Catfish by myself at the same time! The last drift of the day, Glenn said it's kinda slow! I said "give it time." We ended up on that drift, catching 4 and had 2 fall off. (so much for a slow drift)

Before anyone starts throwing their gear in their car and heading down there. Words of caution, we are outworking everyone there so your results will vary! I talked to the dock worker who turned us on to the Crappie spots, about how's his fishing being going along lately. He said, he and his buddy yesterday caught 1 Crappie and he only caught 4 Catfish. (while we were killing it!) I should mention about the test we pulled on Tuesday. Since their was 3 of us with 2 rod stamps each, we could fish 6 poles legally. We put out a control pole with a N/C to simulate what an average fishermen would be catching. We had 60 bites and at least 25 Catfish caught with 5 poles using the Secret Catfish bait. The Night Crawler pole got 1 bite and 1 Catfish landed! Wow what a difference!

We have decided to drill down on Lake Wohlford as our go to lake. We already had the Trout down, now we got the Catfish right where we want them! Now we are going to start concentrating on the Bass and Crappie. Let's see if we can get those species figured out too?