Castaic: schoolie stripers and CRAZY incident on the dam 6/24/2014
Hello FNN, hope all is well!! This will only be my second report/post in the freshwater section and I believe it'll be an interesting one. Here goes:
Destination: Castaic Lake
Target Species: Striped Bass
So with the day off, I called my buddy and asked him to excuse himself from work early in order to go fishing. After a minute of contemplation, he said "F-it, let's go." Right on!!What a pal.
. Now my friend Doug, he's purely a saltwater guy who has never landed a freshwater species, EVER. Being inspired by dkinla's report a few days ago,I suggested that we head to Castaic Lake to partake in some striper fishing. When I picked him up a little past noon, we were both a bit hungry so we decided to get some grub. He recommended Pena's Tacos in Tujunga. Why am I denoting this? It was my first time there but it was THE BEST dang carne asada torta I've EVER had, that's why. After filling our bellies, we arrived at the upper lake and began fishing the dam around 2:30. The water was low, the sun was burning, it was time to put in work. The action started quickly as we nailed 3 schoolies in about 15 minutes. Lugworms were the ticket.
Typical size today.
A few long hours surpass and we only manage to land 3 more fish. However, on the sixth hookup, something very interesting happened. This is where it gets fun. It's about 6:30, the bell starts going off on the rod that is positioned at the very right portion of our area. Fish on. I immediately make my way and begin to reel the fish in towards the concrete bank. A few seconds later, a gentleman to the left of us, yells out, "Hey!! you have a fish on!!" Double hookup, oh yeah. Doug begins his walk over to the rod when all of a sudden, the pole violently unhinges from the rock formation to which it was supposedly secured to and begins a sickening decent towards the lake!! It was too late, the striper had dragged the rod into the lake to its watery grave. I couldn't believe it, I have never experienced an episode such as this. Now this setup, it's nothing special. In fact, it's just a cheap $20.00 Shimano IX combo that I purchased when I first started fishing. I caught a lot of my "first fish" on this setup so it does hold quite a bit of sentimental value. I was bummed.I sat down on a rock behind my other pole and began to get angry at myself for not double-checking the mounting.
Doug turns to me and says, "Forget about it, you're never gonna see it again, let it go."
He was right, the rod was gone, there was nothing I could do, no point in thinking about it. Just at this moment, my other rod starts to go off. Trying to mentally disregard the previous incident, I said forget this and begin to reel this fish in. It was heavy, I believed it to be a monster. I continued to bring the fish closer when to my unimaginable surprise, I saw something other than a fish underneath the water. No way, it can't be, IMPOSSIBLE!!! I pull and reel a little bit harder when BAM, my rod tip comes poking out of the surface!!! When I got it close enough to the shore, Doug grabbed the tip and pulled the dang thing out of the water!! The fish was still hooked so I grabbed the tangled line and pulled it ashore. Unbelievable, less than 5 minutes before I was grieving about my rod. Now the polar opposite. I had retrieved my setup AND manually landed the fish that was the culprit of this madness to begin with. Are you kidding me?!?! This was nuts!!I was overjoyed, ecstatic, complete jubilation.
Here is a pic right after the retrieval.
Instead of heading towards deeper water away from the dam, this fish swam nearly parallel along the shore, tangling itself with my other line.
You can see the grass on the reel, LOL.
After a few minutes, Doug shakes his head and says, "Let's go man, there is no fish we can catch that will top that today." He was right on, after a crazy incident such as this, it was time to call it day. We ended up with 7 fish for the session.
Here is a group shot
My buddy was able to land his very first freshwater fish. It was a blessing to see how happy he was when his striper was out of the water. But being a little a camera shy, he didn't want to take a pic. I'm glad we got on some fish. If we didn't, convincing him to fish freshwater species would have been impossible in the future. All in all, it was a such a fun and memorable day. We didn't catch the most fish, we didn't land the biggest fish, but we had the most fun on the whole damn dam. I know this was a long post so I hope you guys enjoyed it. I have one word to describe this day, AWESOME.
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I could see how a rod could be yanked out and dragged in before you know it if you hook into a DD striper 
With the oncoming blazing heat... might have to return to surf fishing soon...
Originally Posted by cutbait
Good times!!
