After a Castaic trip a few weeks ago that ended before it started (impeller issues – luckily Lakeside Marine is just down the street), I managed to get a Pyramid trip in today. The forecast was for gusty winds, but I was hoping the morning wouldn’t be too bad. Sure enough:




Water was pretty clear, not much weed growth yet, water temp topped out at 72 degrees (seems high for this time of year?)
Wanted to take advantage of the calm conditions, tied on a MM roboworm dropshot, and managed to pull up a few of these guys:






Catching was steady but not exactly WFO, just enough to keep it interesting.
Big bass of the day was 3.5 lbs on the digital scale. But this one had a huge mouth, I could fit my fist into it. Spawned out female?




Was very happy to catch 3 smallmouth on the day, always fun to catch those guys. Two of them were on a dropshot silver slug-go 3”:





Winds started building up around noon – that’s about when the catching got weird. First, got a striper on a dropshot roboworm. Never really had that happen before:




Then I switched to a nose-hooked senko, and tied into something that fought much harder than the usual bass. Was very surprised when this one came up:




I don’t really fish with bait, so this was actually my first ever catfish since I was a kid. I didn’t even know they would hit an unscented plastic worm. But hey, weird things happen every so often, right? Well, the senko produced this in a different spot:




This one was a bruiser, went 5.2 lbs on the scale. Took a while to bring in on 6lb flouro. Lots of fun, though. Lightning struck twice, but that could never happen again, or so I thought. Third spot, and the senko produced this fatty:


She looked like she was ready to pop! She was quickly released to do her business. In fact, all fish, including the striper and the other catfish were released, mostly because I was focused on the LMB/SMB and I wasn’t at all prepared to bring any fish home.

Friday the 13th turned out to be a lucky day for me, and I managed to catch 4 species in a day. If I had any worms I would have tried to catch a bluegill to make it 5. Perhaps next time?

Oh, and as the winds were picking up I tried trolling for stripers for a bit. Went from yellow bar, past bear trap, and almost to the dam. Didn’t see any signs of striper at all, but with the bass fishing so good I didn’t spend a lot of time at it.