Offshore Yellowtail

I cast the small mack to the edge of the kelp paddy and freespooled the reel as the mack took off, suddenly there was a thump on the line and the line started peeling off the reel at a very fast pace. I waited for the count of five and put the reel in gear, the rod bent nearly double and line started screaming off the reel as whatever was on the other end of the line wanted no part with what was on my end.

After a hard fought fifteen minutes, the fish started to come more easily to the boat and soon he was visible about twenty feet down in the clear blue water, I short pumped him hard and soon he was in my net, a beautiful twenty five pound Yellowtail. After a few seconds to admire his beauty we slipped him back into the water and watched him quickly disappear into the depths. We had already kept two for the dinner table and released ten more to fight again another day, and with arms aching and smiles on our faces we headed the boat for shore.

This is a common scenario off the coast of Southern California and Baja during the summer and fall months when migrating yellowtail flood into our offshore waters. This is also the time of the tuna invasion and the two species are fished in the same areas with common tactics. When I ran tuna trips out of San Diego we often caught Yellowfin tuna, Bluefin tuna, Albacore, Bonita, and Yellowtail on the same stop on a single kelp paddy, not all the time but it happened often.

Now I know your next question is, how do you find fish in that vast expanse of ocean? If you leave out of San Diego, do what the majority of sport boats do, run eighty miles in the dark
at compass headings of between 180 and 210 degrees ( follow the lights of the sport boats, they mostly go in the same general direction ) then just before dawn slow down to six and a half knots and drop your trolling lures in the water. Don't troll in a straight line, instead troll in a stretched "S" pattern, when you see several boats stopped in one general area troll towards them but always keep two to three hundred feet away from them.

If you don't catch any fish after trolling nearby for a while and you see they are hooked up stop about three hundred feet upwind of them and cut the engines and drift with live bait. Let the size and eagerness of the fish dictate rod and line size, if the fish are eating any and all baits with abandon, switch to forty to fifty pound test and a heavy rod, if they are finicky drop down to a light outfit with twenty five pound test, a fluorocarbon leader of about four feet will get you many more bites when the fishing is tough.

Be on the lookout for floating kelp paddy's as the tuna and tails tend to hang around these "offshore structures," when a paddy is spotted try to make a couple of trolling passes near it, throwing several live baits close to it as you pass, if there are no hits try trolling in a large circle around it throwing a bait at the rate of four or five a minute, if no hits and no splashes are seen
as game fish grab a chum bait from the surface, continue on in the same general direction as the swell. As far as trolling lures go, use three to four inch lures early in the season when bait fish are small, and five or six inch lures later in the year when the bait is bigger.

As far as lure colors, most fishermen have a rainbow of colors with them, "Tuna are colorblind!"
they see only shades of grey, so have white feathers when it is sunny and black when it is overcast. I have caught many tuna trolling in the dark with a black feather. Yellowtail are not colorblind, if fishing for them, I usually troll a CD 18 mackerel colored Rapala deep diver. If both yellows and tuna are in an area I will troll green and white feathers, four to five inches long about one boat length behind the boat. If fishing is slow I will troll the CD 18 back 100 to 150 feet behind the boat off an outrigger and troll three feathers from the Stern, don't make the mistake most anglers make and stop the boat as soon as you get a hookup, keep trolling and you
will probably hook a couple more.

As soon as you land a yellow or tuna be sure to bleed them before putting them on ice, this will greatly enhance the flavor, and they will keep longer in the freezer. After you get a hookup on a trolling lure keep the boat moving and start chumming one bait every 8 to 10 seconds, do not stop! You can get a fish on every feather if you keep moving, as you reel in the fish keep the chum going to entice the school to come to the boat. Wind the trolling fish in quickly. Then have your people cast live bait into the boiling fish at the stern. Throw enough chum to keep the fish near but not so much that you fill them up and they leave. This is where experience comes in, if the fish are crashing chum bait as soon as it hits the water, slow it down some and if the fish seem reluctant to come to the boat, throw more chum to get them into a feeding frenzy.

When five minutes go by with no new fish, its time to leave and start trolling again. Do not just troll away from the area, troll the area thoroughly for at least twenty minutes. Troll in circles, then troll x's across the circles. My first circles are fifty to sixty across, then add twenty five yds. to the size of the circle on each pass, when your circle is appx. one hundred and fifty yds. across make the next two passes your x across the circles. All the time I am throwing baits at the rate of four to five a minute, have everyone watching for tuna crashing baits inside the circle.

If they are eating chum baits but not your lures, they may be spooked by the boat, then move the boat upwind of the fish, cut the motors and drift down on them. If they still refuse to eat, start your trolling again, always keeping a lookout for kelp paddys or birds feeding on the surface.

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Yellowtail on Fin Bait

We have already discussed the effectiveness of live squid for yellowtail. But what do you do when there are no live squid available? Fin bait is the next best bait, mackerel, sardines and to a lesser degree, anchovies. I will use anchovies for chum, then throw iron jigs for the yellows.

Choveys are small and weak and don't last long when pulling the large size lines usually used for yellows. Large sardines and small mackerel are the bait of choice when yellows are your target. But first before we can catch yellows we must find them.

Yellowtail are members of the jack family and they can be found in many different environments, offshore islands, rocky points, kelp areas, rocky reefs in depths of twenty to two hundred feet, offshore open ocean and just about any other type of near shore area you can think of. I have caught yellows in all of them. Yellows are found away from structure by looking for them crashing bait on the surface and the hordes of birds diving into the schools of bait fish the yellows have chased to the surface.

Tackle for yellows depends on the area being fished and the size of the fish in the area. At the famous Farnsworth Bank at Catalina Island where the reef comes within fifty feet of the surface and forty to fifty pound mossbacks ( very large home guard yellows ) are always a possibility, the prudent angler uses fifty to eighty pound mono on heavy tackle. You may not get as many bites, but, you have an excellent chance of landing the ones you hook. I have had a boatload of anglers go "0 for 40" on Farnsworth yellows because no one had anything heavier than forty pound test on their reels that day, the fish were very large and biting deep that day and even with forty pound test and buttoned down drags, the yellows just pulled you right into the rocks and sawed you off, end of discussion!!

When fishing open water yellows, these fish could have been landed on fifteen or twenty pound test because the bottom is a thousand feet down and there is nothing except the boat bottom to

cut your line on. This can be done on private boats, on party boats I recomend thirty to forty pound outfits to help control your fish and keep clear of other anglers lines. Nothing makes you a target of other anglers scorn and anger faster than fishing with tackle to light for the conditions and having your fish tangle other peoples fish and causing them to lose a fish they have fought for a long time.

If you see fish crashing bait on the surface, a bait cast near the crashing fish will usually get a quick hookup. For sardines I use a 2/0 to 4/0 short shank premium hook. For mackerel I use a 4/0 to 6/0 depending on the size of the bait. Always match your hook size to the size of your bait, a hook that is too large will quickly kill the bait, one that is too small will cause you to

miss many hookups. When you get bit give the fish a chance to get the bait into his mouth before you set the hook. With sardines three to five seconds will work most of the time, with macks I usually let the fish have the bait for six to ten seconds, put the reel in gear, let the line come tight and "pop 'em a good one!"

When the fish starts running just hold on, don't wind the reel, wait until the fish stops then put as much pressure on the fish as you can, but when the fish gets near the boat he will make another run straight down. When the fish is running I change hands holding the rod to rest the rod hand. Yellows make several long runs and several shorter ones and you need to rest your

arms as much as possible during the fight.

Offshore yellows can be found around floating kelp paddys, sometimes as small as a trash can lid, but usually larger ones are best. When I am searching for offshore yellows I troll two CD 18 mackerel pattern Rapalas about 100 ft behind the boat, when I see a kelp paddy my first pass is made about fifty ft from the paddy. As I pass I have someone throw a handfull of sardines next

to the paddy, if no fish are seen boiling on the bait.

Come back for the conclusion to this exciting way to catch yellows!

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Live Bait Fishing for Yellowtail

Once you hook your first yellowtail You will be hooked as well! This fish is a very special fish for Southern California and Baja, Mexico anglers. It is a very powerful, hard fighting and great eating member of the Jack family. It is one of the most prized inshore fish in the Southern
California/Northern Mexico area. In California they are mostly a early summer to late fall fish, as they prefer water above sixty five degrees, though some may be caught all year at the local islands ( Catalina and San Clemente ).

Fishing is best when the squid come into shallow water to spawn. You can usually buy some from the local live bait operations, buy some from squid boats at Catalina Island, or you can catch your own at the Island. I prefer to buy them from a bait boat at Catalina as these have
not made two trips across the channel and are not all beat up. Yellowtail may be found at many locations at Catalina, the East end, the Vees, Farnsworth bank ( use sixty pound test here ) and the West Cove area are a few of my favorites, though the best fishing spots usually have a large number of party boats and private sport fishers anchored in the best areas, not hard to find.

When anchoring in a large fleet of boats try to stay at least forty to fifty yards from other anchored boats, yellowtail make long powerful runs and you don't want to get tangled with other fishermen's lines/anchor lines. Anyway yellows travel in schools and the boats on the outside of the fleet are usually the first to get hooked up. Just in case live squid are not available at the Island, I usually bring about ten pounds of frozen fresh dead from the super market ( don't get frozen squid from the tackle store or bait dock, these are low quality with no color, super market squid are eating quality and have all their color, they work twice as well ) .

If I get live ones I use the frozen to chum with. After you are anchored safely have one person start chumming. Cut the squid into three pieces for small ones and four or five pieces for larger ones. Now start your chum slick by throwing one piece of cut squid about one every ten seconds and once every two minutes throw a live one out.

You don't want to feed the fish, just encourage them to come into your area. I have several
rods rigged and ready to go should I need them. ( 14 ) I start out with two rods rigged with twenty pound mono on either casting or Shimano Baitrunner spinning reels on six and a half foot med-hvy rods. If the water is clear I will put a four foot fluorocarbon leader on the end of the line, this makes a big difference where the fish are heavily pressured. I always use premium hooks, Owner is my favorite, but any premium super sharp hook will work. For live squid I use a 4/0 short shank, and depending on the current I will put a 1/4 to 1/2 oz. egg sinker on the line before I tie on the hook.

This gets the bait deep enough to keep it away from the birds. Now put the reel in freespool and slowly let the squid drift out with the current. I let one go about twenty five yards and the other about thirty five yards from the boat. The next two rods have thirty pound test and have conventional reels, and six foot heavy rods, they are rigged the same way except they have
one to two ounce egg sinkers depending on the current. They should be straight down about half way to the bottom, put them in rod holders in free spool with clickers on. The squid should be hooked once through the pointed end.

The last two rods are heavy forty pound outfits with a four to six ounce heavy white iron jig, these have one or two squid pinned on the treble hooks, and are dropped to the bottom then reeled up about two feet from the bottom. Now put them in rod holders and let the rocking of the boat bounce them seductively right off the bottom. These rigs will catch yellows, white sea bass, calico bass, halibut and many other island bottom feeders. When a fish hits the Iron jig, the hook should be set as fast as possible. When a fish eats the squid rig, you should let him pull about fifteen feet of line off the reel before you set the hook. Put the reel in gear, point the rod tip at the fish, and when the line comes tight, set the hook hard. The drags should be set as tight as possible just short of the lines breaking point.

Yellowtail will make a series of hard runs, while they are pulling line from the reel, just hold on, don't wind the reel. When the fish stops running immediately start pumping the fish as hard as your tackle will allow. After landing any gamefish I quickly bleed it and put it on ice, this insures great quality steaks for the grill. These tactics work well anywhere yellowtail are found.
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Fishing Reefs for Calicos

Reefs are offshore rockpiles or rocky highspots. If the rocks break the surface they are boiler rocks, if they are found underwater and do not break the surface they are called reefs. Reefs can also be man made, the Calif Dept of Fish and Game has tried many different materials to make reefs. They have used old car and truck tires, ( they are light and strong currents pushed them away ) trolley car bodies / car bodies ( they quickly rusted away ) and the reef material of choice, giant rocks quarried at Catalina Island and barged across the channel and placed in strategic positions on the sea floor, usually in forty to eighty feet of water.

Instead of making one large reef the DFG makes several smaller ones (five and twenty in number to spread fishing pressure over a larger area ) They made many reefs in Santa Monica Bay whose bottom was mainly miles and miles of sand and mud, not very conducive to giving bass, sculpin, sheep head, rock bass, sand bass, lobsters, octopus and multitudes of other fish, mollusks and crustaceans places to live and spawn, and give the hatchlings places to hide so they are not all eaten before they are one year old. After building many reefs on the floor of the bay, it is now alive with thousands of fish where once was just mud bottoms with few fish.

There are many ways to fish these underwater rock piles, my favorite is anchoring upcurrent of them, throwing out some chum, live and chunked sardines / anchovies and wait until the fish come up the chum slick and away from the rocks. Once the fish are away from the rocks and up in the water column you can fish them with light gear and have a blast. Depending on the size of the fish I see in the chum, I will use anywhere from six to ten pound Berkley Vanish fluorocarbon mono fished on light to medium action spinning tackle, consisting of a six to seven and a half foot rod with a Shimano bait runner reel ( small size ).

I carry spare spools for the reels with fifteen and twenty pound line in case the big ones come out to play. I use spinning reels most of the time when fishing live sardines or anchovies, as
you can cast them quite far without backlashes, so common to baitcasting reels and novice fishermen. When I fish big baits I use a baitcasting outfit loaded with twenty to forty pound test mono, if the water is clear or the fish are spooky I will tie a eight foot fluorocarbon leader in the same pound test on the end of the line. Not since using straight fluorocarbon as it is very costly in the larger line sizes, and the fish is looking at the bait not eight feet up the line.

Getting the boat positioned properly is half the battle, if the boat is not directly up current / up wind the chum will not go back to the reef and you are wasting your time / chum / money. Sometimes you have to reposition the boat several times during the day due to changing currents or wind direction. Don't be lazy if your boat swings out of the optimal position your catch will go way down. I take a soda bottle and wrap it with used mono I have removed from one of my reels and tie a six ounce sinker to the end, this makes a great marker, just drop it over the side and the line unwinds and when the sinker hits the bottom the front of the bottle will point into the current. This will help you figure out where to drop the anchor.

I have six premade for forty, sixty and eighty foot depths and mark them with a water proof magic marker. Once the boat is anchored just up wind of the reef, I start chumming with chunk baits and when I see bass move up the chum line towards the surface I will start throwing some live chum into the mix. Chunk chum should be about one inch long, I keep some stainless steel shearshandy to facilitate cutting the chunks and on the way to the fishing area I have someone cut about a third of the bait into chunks and put it into a pail. A steady stream of chum keeps the fish going strong. I use a ratio of one live bait to ten chunks, each thrown at about six pcs. per minute.

If the fishing is hot I will throw a small handfull of chunks once every two minutes or so followed by three or four live baits. Once the fish are in a biting mood I will switch to a swimbait fished on a twenty pound outfit. It is cast out past the working fish and allowed to sink on a tight line through the fish, if I am getting many hits on the swimbait I will change to a larger and then larger bait still.

When the bass are full on is the time to throw the "dinosaur" ( twelve inch swimbait ) because the bass are now in a magical state of competition and caution is thrown to the wind, its "feeding frenzy time"!! During these rare feeding frenzies you may catch several of the biggest bass you will see all year. Please respect these giant slow growing and rare bass, quickly take a picture and release this magnificent creature to live and fight another day. I always have a camera close by and at the ready as I don't want to keep these incredible treasures out of the water for more than one minute. Always use a large landing net with these big babies, never use a gaff!! When you get one of these big girls, ( all large bass are females, a twelve inch male produces enough sperm to fertilize several large females ) tell someone to get the camera ready so pictures can be taken as soon as the fish comes on board and time out of the water is kept to a minimum.

Please release all bass over four pounds as they are already six to eight years old and are the prime spawners, futures generations of fish and fishermen depend on it!!!!
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Lures for Calico Bass (2/2)

Although calicos can be caught on many different types of lures, there are a few that stand out above the rest. For fishing shallow water the shad type single tail is one of the best. They come in all colors of the rainbow and sizes from three to twelve inches in size. Colors are basicly used by lure company's to get you to buy more than you need, ninety percent of the time I use lime green, rootbeer ( brown ) and rainbow trout. I know there are no rainbow trout in the ocean, but bass just eat rainbow trout colored swimbaits with gusto. Early in the year I use three to four inch models and later in the year when bait fish are larger I go with five to six inch baits.

Any time you are in a hot bite, throw a larger bait and you will catch larger fish. If the bite is really strong and you are catching many three to six pound fish, that is the time to try a eight to twelve inch swimbait. You won't catch as many bass but the ones you catch could be huge. I have caught many bass from seven to ten pounds on these super large swimbaits, remember big fish big bait. One of the best places to fish the large baits is around boiler rocks.

A boiler rock is a rock that sticks out of the water and the waves boil around them. It can either be an offshore reef or a rocky shoreline, usually found around offshore islands where the waves crash into the island. You want to throw right up against the rock and let the bait sink into the boiling water, keep the reel in gear and have the rod tip at about the nine o-clock position.
These boiler rock bass are in this shallow water for one thing, to eat! There is no mistaking the hit of a boiler rock calico, they try to take the rod right out of your hands. When you feel the hit just wind the reel fast until the rod bends down then pull as hard as you can to pull the fish away from his rocky lair, the fish must be short pumped hard and fast or he will rock you and break you off in the rocks. You will lose lots of fish and lots of lures in this kind of fishing but you will also catch some of the biggest bass of your life.

I use a heavy seven to eight foot rod with a quality baitcasting reel loaded with forty to fifty pound test line. This is true mano a mano fishing, and if you don't have the heavy line you will lose most of the rounds. Back in the seventies and eighties I fished Santa Cruz Island and it had miles and miles of boiler rocks and they were loaded with extra large calicos, if I had kept the ten largest fish most days I could have easily had seventy to eighty pound limits ( ten fish ) but even back then I did not keep any calicos over four pounds. I had many days when we caught forty to fifty calicos over five pounds and only quit fishing the boilers because everyone on the boat had "feeble arm", then the gillnetters moved in around the islands and that spelled doom for the fantastic calico bass fishing.

You can still catch quite a few four to six pound bass this way but the really big bass are few and far between. WARNING: This is a dangerous type of fishing as it is best when the waves are three to four feet and it should not be attempted by inexperienced skippers, one small mistake in judging the waves and your boat could end up on the rocks! When fishing like this always have a person at the helm with the motors running, ready to pull away from the rocks at a moments notice as a larger set of waves to six to eight feet is always a possibility. I usually slowly back the boat in to casting distance and let the anglers on the stern make their casts to the boilers, when someone yelled "fish on" I quickly put the boat in gear and used the boat to pull the big fish away from the rocks, our fish count went up and our lost lures went down with this strategy.
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Lures for Calico Bass (1/2)

Calico bass eat much the same lures you would use for freshwater bass, I have used all my freshwater lures and caught fish on all of them, some are better than others, but they all catch calicos. Depending on the type of structure/area you are fishing, lure choice is basically the same as freshwater bass in the same type of area. For fishing breakwaters parallel to the rocks my old favorite comes up again, the Bagley DB3 in chartreuse and white really shines, early and late in the day, calicos will really clobber the DB3.

I use my trolling motor to parallel the breakwater and cast the DB3 right up against the rocks in the white water area caused by the breaking waves, this is where the larger calicos like to hang out to prey on hapless bait fish caught in the powerful wave action. The calicos being big and strong can easily overcome the effects of the waves and make easy meals of small fish caught up in the breaking waves. After the DB3 lands next to the rocks, I start a stop and go retrieve to mimic a bait fish thrown about in the powerful currents next to the rocks, these breakwater bass really smash a crank bait hard, you have to use heavy tackle and forty pound test line and have your drag cinched down as tight as you can get it, this is the calicos home court and he knows every nook and cranny and if you give him a foot he will get in behind a rock and you might as well say good by to a five dollar crank bait, as the line will break before you pull the bass from his hole.

The best time to fish with the DB3 is on an incoming tide through high tide and the first hour of the outgoing tide. The outside of the wall, as the breakwater is called, is usually the best place
to fish but you can also catch fish on the inside when the wind and waves make it to dangerous to fish the outside. Always use caution when fishing the wallas many very large boats are always going in and out and their passing makes very large waves that if you aren't being watchful can push your boat into the rocks in a heartbeat, always wear your life preserver at all time when fishing the wall on the outside or inside. Even on the inside there are lots of large fast moving boats going by a mile away, and you may suddenly be hit with a very large wake that can throw you out of the boat. Don't fish the wall unless your boat is in tip top shape and always starts right up, first time every time.

Make sure all your running lights are in good working order and you have at least two large volume bilge pumps that work, I have almost been swamped several times when large wakes came out of nowhere and hit me broadside, you need to remove water quickly before it does any damage to your motoror electrical systems in the motor area. I usually fish with three people in the boat, two fishing and one watching out for large wakes or waves. The lookout sits in the drivers seat where he can see a wave or wake coming and quickly start the motor as he shouts "wave" and turns the bow into the oncoming threat as this is the best way to take a wave is head on. We usually change watches every every fifteen minutes and with three guys you watch for fifteen minutes and fish for a half hour.
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Calico Bass Secrets part 2

The single hook surface iron works great thrown in channels in the kelp, but when the current is running and the kelp is laying just under the surface in the current, this is the best time to catch calicos on iron. The lure can be cast way back over the kelp beds and the bass will follow it and blast it as it passes over the holes in the kelp. Another great lure for this is the five inch floating Rapala in the mackerel pattern, I remove the two treble hooks and attach a single 6/0 Owner hook to the rear split ring with the hook point facing up. With this lure you can cast back into kelp beds and the lure runs only a few inches deep, when you come to a hole in the kelp stop your retrieve and just wiggle the lure in place for a couple of seconds ( little one inch pulls on the rod tip does this ) then resume the retrieve.

A good strategy for this kind of fishing is to anchor the boat just to the outside of the kelp in a spot where you have many channels to cast to, always fish the channels first because it is much
easier to get the fish to the boat through an open channel in the kelp. Only fish back into the kelp beds as a last resort when the fish refuse to hit in the channels. Usually before I begin casting I will spend about five minutes tossing live and dead chum into the surrounding kelp beds, this will usually get the fish in a feeding mood. After running from the launch site to the area you intend to fish about ten percent of your live bait will have died, I clean them all out of the bait tank and cut them in three or four pieces, then I take two or three packages of frozen squid and cut them in three pieces and put them in a pail with the cut baitfish, now you have lots of chunk bait to chum.

Throw out a couple of handfuls of chunks then five or six live baits, this will really stretch your live bait. Now just throw single chunks to channels in the kelp and occasionally a single live bait. By now you should see bass feeding on the chunks or chasing the live chum, when you see fish flash on the chum or bust a fleeing sardine on the surface immediately cast the iron past where you saw the fish and reel it by the fish and hang on, as these fish will try to rip the rod from right out of your hands.

I usually make a cast , then throw a couple of live chum, then make another cast. After I cast the surface lures, I will switch to plastics, a four to six inch green or brown bait is my personal favorite. Look into the water and try to see the bait the fish are eating, try to match the color and size of the bait in the water. Nine times out of ten I will use the green swimbait as the calicos just eat it up!

If you haven't caught any fish after ten minutes move to a new spot and start again. The first thing I look for in a kelp bed to fish is the presence of seagulls, or turns in the area, this indicates fish are chasing bait to the surface, or I may see cormorants diving, this tells me bait fish are in the area. I always prefer to fish areas with gulls and terns diving or sitting on the water as this tells me there must be fish present to chase bait to the surface. Cormorants just tell me there
is bait but maybe no fish. If there are no gulls I will fish the spot with Cormorants before a spot with no birds unless I know from experience that this paticular kelp bed holds calicos.

The calicos when active are usually suspended in the top third of the water column, and are actively chasing bait, this is where you want to use a 1/4 or 3/8 oz. lead head on your swim bait as this will let it sink slower and keep it in the strike zone longer. When the fish are inactive and holding near the bottom a 3/4 to 1oz lead head needs to be used to get past the unproductive upper water and down to the bottom where the fish are holding.

When the fish do not seem to want to eat the artificial lures a whole squid on a 1oz white leadhead sometimes seems to be just what they want. When fishing this rig during slow times, be sure to give the fish time to get the whole squid and leadhead in his mouth before setting the hook. When fishing squid as opposed to plastic on the jig, you must set the hook hard as you may need to penetrate a balled up squid as well as the fish's bony mouth. Always use premium leadheads with laser sharp wide gap hooks, you will double your catches with these super sharp hooks.
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Calico Bass Secrets

Calico bass are to me are one of the ultimate light tackle game fish here on California's west coast. They are found in good numbers south of Point Conception about midway down the Mexican coast of Baja on the Pacific side, and there are good populations around the offshore islands in that area.

I used to take my 4X4 Suburban down the coast of Baja with an eighteen foot aluminum skiff on the roof and a fifteen HP outboard for go. It had the large sand wheels on the back so it could be rolled over the sand and into the surf. I knew several places where large rocky points stuck out into the ocean and there was calm water behind them where launching the skiff was pretty
easy. My basic tackle was a med-heavy casting rod seven and a half feet long with a Newell 220 size reel loaded with twenty to twentyfive pound Trilene line for fishing plastic and bait fishing with squid. My other rod was a eight foot jig stick with a Jigmaster fast retrieve reel for throwing surface iron. Back then plastic lures were basically limited to scampi's the twin tail plastic that started the ocean plastic revolution.

Now there are hundreds of plastics on the market, but back then the bass loved the scampi in green or rootbeer color. There were no laser sharp hooks so we sharpened the ones we had.
The general plan was to drift the edge of the kelp and cast into pockets in the kelp, leadheads hung up to often so we put the scampi on a freshwater hook with a wire weedguard and put a half ounce bullet sinker in front of the scampi and pegged it up against the hook with a toothpick pushed into the hole in the sinker and broken off, with this weedless rig we could cast it back
into the kelp Forest and reel it across the top of the kelp and stop it in holes in the kelp and let it sink, we caught some huge bass that way, sometimes the bass would explode up throught the kelp and hit the scampi as it was being reeled over the kelp, super exciting! This still works well today as most fishermen fish the edges and miss the large wary bass that live way back in the kelp.

Most of your hits come as the lure is sinking, once it hits the bottom I quickly reel it back in and make another cast. The shad single tail baits so popular now work well on the wind so cast it out let it sink then wind it back to the boat. In summer a faster speed gets more hits but in colder water the best plan is to cast it out let it sink then slowly hop it along the bottom all the way back to the boat. When fishing is slow and always in cold water add a squid strip or head to the hook, this results in many more hits and the fish will hold on much longer giving you plenty of time to set the hook. Don't set at the first tap, let the fish bend the rod down before you set the hook and you will double the number of hookups. When clients ask me how hard to set the hook, I cast out put the rod in a rod holder and when the rod is bent double I pick it up and reel it in, "that hard" I say. With the new laser sharp hooks, just let the fish pull the rod tip down and wind the reel quickly and you will miss fewer fish.

One of the most fun ways to fish for calicos is on the surface iron, I prefer the single hook model surface iron, the single hook is easier to release fish from as opposed to treble hooks and do much less damage to the fish. I take pliers and pinch the barb down about ninety percent and it easily comes out of the fishes mouth and does no damage at all. My favorite colors are wounded
soldier ( a dull military green with a red head ) and mackerel, though color rarely makes any difference, once the color is worn off the jig it still catches bass. The secret is to take a rubber band, loop it on the line ring on the front of the lure then stretch it back and hook it under the barb on the hook, this makes it totally weedless, you can cast it way back in the kelp without fear of getting hung up.

I use forty pound test for this fishing, as you will hook some real monsters back in the kelp and you need the heavy line to get them out. Also you will catch some really big white sea bass on the iron. There is nothing quite like seeing a large fish explode through the kelp to eat your lure as it is running right on top of the kelp. Yeeeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!
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Calico Bass

Calico bass are probably my favorite saltwater fish of all, they look just like a freshwater bass, can be caught on all the same lures, are strong fighters and taste great! Back in the late sixties and early seventy's the calicos were caught by the thousands during the spring to fall time period, by party boats and small boat anglers.

I had my introduction to the calico on my uncle Ed's boat in 1962, when my family came to California to visit my moms sister. Uncle Ed was married to my Dad's sister and was an awesome saltwater fisherman. He soon invited us to go fishing with him. He had what was at the time a state of the art island skiff. It was a wooden open skiff with twin fifty horsepower merc's. It had a trashcan bait tank that kept one scoop of anchovies alive for most of the day, though the bass at that time didn't care if the bait was dead or alive. Ed's boat made it to Catalina Island in about an hour and soon after arriving we were anchored in West Cove on the west end of the island.

There was kelp everywhere and the water was very clear, you could see the bottom in thirty feet of water. About half of the anchovies had perished on the trip over, and my Uncle fished most of the dead ones out of the bait tank and started tossing them out behind the boat and we watched them slowly sink in the clear water, suddenly hundreds of calicos came out of the kelp forests and started eating the chum my Uncle had thrown out. We quickly baited up with live anchovies and cast them out where the bass were feeding on the chum, instant hookups! We were catching two to four pound bass as fast as we could cast out a bait, boy, I was in heaven.

Then my Uncle picked up a eight foot heavy rod with much heavier line and cast out a large iron lure into a channel in the kelp, seconds later he was winding in a very large calico of six to eight pounds. He caught several more large bass in the next few minutes, then asked me if I would like to try it, would I like to try it? Hell yes, I would! My Uncle handed me the rod and I aimed a cast in the general direction he was casting and gave a mighty heave, and instantly got the mother of all backlashes. My Uncle laughed and laughed, and then put the rod away as it would take hours to get the backlash out. We fished for several more hours, and caught many, many calicos, most of which we let go. This was a concept I was unused to, In Georgia we kept all the fish we caught as the limits were very liberal, and letting fish go was new to me.

My Uncle explained that although there seamed to be unlimited amounts of fish there were much less than when he first started fishing twenty years ago. This always stuck with me, and I always let most of the fish I caught go to live and fight another day. Now I see the wisdom in my uncle's words as the calico bass stocks are down to twenty percent of what they were in the 60's, as are most of the other game fish stocks. The majority of the ten percenters ( the ten percent of the fishermen that catch ninety percent of the fish ) release most of the calicos they catch, at least all of the big ones.

Most of my regulars that fish with me regulary have been doing that for twenty five years, we keep several one to two pound calicos for a great tasting meal of fresh bass yuuummmmmmmmy! There are few fish that can match the mouth watering goodness of the calico bass.
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Cranking for Bass part 4

Summertime is the time that the balsa crankbaits really shine, this is the time when most of the bass are in the twelve to eighteen foot depth range. The perfect tool for fishing this depth range is the deep diving crank that runs inthe ten to fifteen foot range and my favorite is the Bagley's DB3 in chartreuse over white. I have fished this lure and color combo all over the U.S. and Mexico and have caught bass, crappie, catfish, white bass, stripers, wipers and many others on this one lure. I have caught fish in all calender periods, ( it would not work when the lake was frozen ).

In the cold water periods there are better lure choices, but you can almost always catch fish on it. In cold water periods I putit on a downrigger and slowly swim it just under shad schools sometimes sixty to eighty feet deep, and catch bass and some really big catfish on it. Speed of the lure is an important trigger in the summer, you can't reel too fast for a bass to catch it. If I need to fish the DB3 at a medium speed I opt for a conventional reel with a five to one or a six to one gear ratio and mate it with a six and a half to seven foot medium action fiberglass rod. This rod has a little more bend in it before it loads up and seems to hook more fish than its graphite
counterpart, and since its not as stiff as graphite it is more forgiving when the fish is near the boat and you will have less hooks pull out when the fish is thrashing near the boat.

When more speed is needed to trigger bass I go with a seven and a half foot medium action spinning rod and a medium saltwater spinning reel loaded with thirty pound spectra, a woven superline with a line diameter close to ten pound monofilament. This small line diameter with no memory like monofilament casts fifty percent farther than with a conventional reel with, TA DA, no backlashes! When you get a backlash with spectra on a baitcasting reel it usually turns out to be the" Mother of All Backlashes" and you might as well put that rod away until you get home because you and it are going to spend a good deal of time together getting that backlash out!

I will put spectra on a baitcasting reel that I intend to fish a dropshot rig on, then put a five foot leader of flourocarbon mono at the end. This is a rig meant to be fished straight down under the boat, and spectra excells at this. Also the spectra with its small diameter will let the DB3 dive four to five extra feet deep and if I need more depth I can KNEEL-N- REEL, put the rod tip straight down in the water almost to the reel and you can get it down another five feet, with
this method you can get the DB3 to hit twenty five foot depths, if I see bass on my depth finder at that depth. The spinning reel lets me take up twenty five percent more line with each turn of the reel handle which makes the lure go that much faster.

In clear water this is necessary so the bass does not have time to get a good look at the lure or the line as spectra is highly visible. The fish either eats the lure or it escapes. Sometimes you need even more speed than just reeling can give you, the solution here is to reel the lure down to its programed depth then with the rod tip almost to the water sweep the rod up to the twelve o-clock position as fast as you can, then reel as fast as you can while dropping the rod tip back to the water, then do it again until the lure is back to the boat, the slight pause while the rod is being lowered and the line is taken up allows the lure to stop and float up a bit then scream off again as if every bass in the lake is after it.

Bass are always competing with each other for food and when a prey gets away from one another is right there to gobble it up. This tactic has caught bass for me when nothing else worked. Another good tactic to do with a crank is bend the line tie a little to the right or left,
this causes the bait to run off to one side or the other, normally you want the bait to run straight, but by making it run to the side you can make it run under a pier or overhanging bush, this lets you fish the bait in places where bass do not usually see a crankbait. I have caught some really nice bass this way, when fishing cranks, I have two other rods rigged, one with a crank that runs right on the right side of the boat and one that runs left on the left side of the boat.

When fishing boat docks with cranks I drift by with the wind and make casts down both sides of the dock then circle around and cast the lures that go off to the side and let them run back under both sides of the dock, I usually catch more fish on the lures that run under the dock than the ones that go straight down the sides as that is the way 99% of the other fishermen fish them. Sometimes you just have to show the fish something a little different than what they are used to.
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Cranking for Bass part 3

As I stated before I now use very few lures for most of my fishing for bass. Most of the articles you read are written by pros or other fishermen that have ties to or are sponsored by lure companies and their agenda is to make you think you need every lure made by their sponsor and in all the colors of the rainbow.

I have no ties to any tackle manufactures or lure makers. When I fished the pro bass circuit, I had the good fortune to have fished with some of the best bass fishermen in the world. Most of them had their rods rigged with just a few lures, and they spent all day fishing without changing them very often. The most seen combos were, 1 rod with a plastic worm, one with a crankbait, one with a spinnerbait, one with a topwater lure and a flipping stick with a jig and trailer or a plastic bait. None of them spent all day changing colors to see what the fish wanted, they may of had favorite colors but mostly they all caught fish no matter what color they fished.

What I learned from this was that color was maybe 5% of the equation, lure type was 10% of the equation, lure speed was 10% and fishing where the fish were was 75% of the equation. A lure is only a tool to help you catch bass in the most efficient way possible once you have found them. Say it is during the spring spawning period and the bass are shallow in brush, what would you fish? A crank would not be too good because It would get hung up too often and you would scare all the bass in an area when you got close to unhook it from the brush, a plastic worm or jig would be too slow for you to cover the maximum amount of water and show the lure to the most fish.

The perfect lure for this situation is the spinnerbait. It can be buzzed on the surface, it can be fished just a little bit slower and run a few inches under the surface causing it to make a little wake on the surface, or it may be reeled slowly by the roots of the brush and right through the beds, even if the bass don't want to eat it, they will want to kill the intruder to keep it away from the nest where the eggs they are guarding are. And it is very weedless, it doesn't get hung up very often. I always have several rods rigged with the same spinnerbait on them, that way if I do get hung I can just pick up one of the other rods and continue fishing until I have fished the area efficiently, then I go retrieve the hung lure and go to my next area.

A spinnerbait is also a crankbait that gives you so many options on how to fish it. It can be fished topwater, or one to thirty or more feet down. It can be cast out and let it settle to the bottom ( always have the reel in gear and the rod in the seven o-clock position as its sinking, as bass love to hit this lure on the sink and the rod needs to be in the best position for a good hookset.) I cast it out and let it sink to the bottom and count it down, one thousand and one, one thousand and two, until it hits the bottom. If it hits the bottom at one thousand fifteen, the water is approximately fifteen feet deep, now if on my next cast into the same depth, my line goes slack at one thousand and ten, I know a fish has probably hit it and I set the hook hard, maybe it wasn't a fish, but the lure stopped on the top of a bush in ten feet of water, when I set on nothing the lure really jumps off that bush at warp two, by the time my rod is at the twelve o-clock I know there is no fish there so I continue to let it keep sinking on a tight line and follow it down with the rod tip, dropping the rod tip just fast enough so there is no slack in the line and I can feel the spinner vibrating as it sinks, if the spinner stops vibrating or the line jumps or goes slack, I presume a bass has hit it and set the hook, anytime something feels different set the hook!!!

I have caught a lot of bass after I set the hook on nothing and quickly jumped the lure from where it was to six or more feet away in one second, this quick escape move by the lure got the bass's attention, and when it stopped and slowly made its way back to the bottom, it became on easy meal for the bass and he ate it. This is much the same way a crawdad tries to escape, a quick charge to the rear and a slow sink to the bottom watching out for danger as it sinks, but another predator behind and below the escaping crawdad is not seen and easily captures the hapless prey.

If I could only fish one lure for the rest of my life it would be a spinnerbait!
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Crankbait Tactics for Bass

A crankbait is just that, a bait you cast out and crank it in. Cranks have a different size and shape to the diving bill to make it do different things.

A long bill at a forty five degree angle to the body of the bait will cause it to dive to a medium depth, ( eight to twelve feet ) and have a wide wobble, hence a strong viabration that calls bass in from afar, a long bill that runs parallel to the lure body will dive the deepest of all, ( twelve to eighteen feet ) and a lure with a short stubby bill will stay shallow and wobble and wiggle and send out lots of vibrations to alert all nearby bass here is an easy meal.

But just because cranks have a built in action and a maximum depth they can dive to, does that mean there is only one way to fish them? Not at all, you can reel them fast or slow, you can quickly reel them down to their programed depth then twitch them along with quick short pulls of the rod tip. You can sweep the rod tip quickly from the seven to the twelve o-clock position and the lure will really scoot, this is a great triggering action as predators are programmed to catch fleeing prey.

You can use a stop and go retrieve, reel the lure down to its programmed depth, stop let the lure float up for a second or two, then crank it for three or four turns of the handle, stop, let the lure float up a bit, then resume cranking. Always pay attention to the line where it comes off the rod tip, if it twitches or goes slack, a bass has grabbed it, set the hook hard!!!! Always pay attention to the line and what it is doing right now, soon you will know when a bass has grabbed it even if you did not feel it, sometimes all you feel is the vibrations stop for a second, then resume. This is probably because a bass sucked it in his mouth then spit it out because he discovered it was not real food. In this situation you have maybe one half of a second to react or the bass is gone. But all is not lost, if the day is a slow one with few bites I will wait a few minutes, then cast a jig-n-pig ( a jig with a pork rind as a trailer ) back to the area where I know there is at least one fish that wants to bite.

If the day is one where I am getting lots of bites, I will immediately cast the jig and if the fish does not hit I will continue down the bank casting the crankbait. Cranks are usually best, here in Southern California, when fished parallel to the banks. We have very little offshore structure, so unless you encounter bass busting shad on the surface out towards the middle of the lake stick to the shores for cranks if they are the deep diving type. I mostly fish the Bagley DB3 in chartreuse and white, in warm clear water I fish it as fast as I can crank, in stained water I slow down a little and in muddy water I fish much slower as bass zero in on the lures vibrations as they can't see very good in the muddy waters.

I have caught some of my biggest bass on giant cranks in muddy water. These work best in waters stocked with trout, they are usually eight to twelve inches long and giant bass will eat them when they refuse any other lure. Remember BIG BAIT, BIG FISH!! These large bass are used to eating stocker trout as they have never seen a predator before and bass just swim up and eat them.

The Castiac Soft Trout is the most realistic looking of all the trout lures and many large bass have fallen to them. These work best in the first few days after the trout have been stocked as the bass are competing for the easy prey. Although you can catch the bass of a lifetime on one of these giant crankbaits giant bass are few and far between, even after a trout stock. The DB3 targets the size bass most fishermen want to catch, and tournament fishermen need to upgrade their limits.

When I fished the pro circuit, I started out fishing spinnerbaits if the water was over sixty two degrees because I could cover lots of water, but when the spinner bite slowed down I got out my trusty DB3 and covered lots of water. I had usually put together a pattern during prefish and knew where to fish the crank for best results. Bagley also makes a DB2 that runs about four to six feet deep, but for fish in this depth range a spinnerbait is the pros bait of choice, you can cover more water and hang up much less, the time you spend retrieving a hung up lure is fishing time lost. The more casts you can make and the more water you can cover, usually translates to more fish at the end of the day.

Even one more keeper in most tournaments could mean the difference between tenth and first place, a difference of many thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. In one U.S. Open I fished, the difference between first and second place was two hundredths of a pound, one shad that one fish ate meant the difference of forty thousand dollars. Most of the fishermen reading these articles will never be in these situations, but it never hurts to manage your time and maybe catch a few more fish in a day.
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Bass Fishing - Bassin' with Crankbaits

Today we are going to talk about deep diving crankbaits, the Bagley DB2, and DB3 in particular. These belong to the family of "fat" crankbaits started back in the 70's, with the introduction of the "Big O", a hand carved crank from Tennessee that was the best crank I have ever fished.

Back inthe 70's my parents, who lived in Tennessee, sent me six of these deadly lures. I was probably the first person in Calif. to have these lures, and boy,did they ever catch fish! I was already a "crank nut", I threw cranks about 75% of the time between post spawn and fall turnover. I mostly fished Lake Casitas, and caught lots of three to seven pound bass, plus a few larger ones, but cranks are lethal on medium sized bass as they are just the size of prey preferred by bass this size. The Bagley DB series, is very close in action and success to the Big O, the lures are hand carved from balsa wood as were the originals.

Now Rapalla has some very good fat baits on the market. I don't know what it is about the fat shape that has the effect on bass that it does, but ,boy, bass love 'em!!! There have been a lot of plastic imitations made, but the balsa lures just seem to get bit the best. I have caught lots of fish on the plastic fatties, but if I had a choice it would be the balsa baits on the end of my rod!! When I got my first "Big O's" I broke two off before I learned what a prize I had and changed to twenty pound test line. This cut down on the depth they would dive to, but it did not seem to matter to the bass, they ate them up no matter what depth they dived to.

Cranks are at their best when they are bumping into something, and the Big O is no exception, whether t is careening off rocks, brush or sand. You really ave to be a line watcher and pay attention to your rod tip, as bass will swim up bhind the lure and the only way you will know you had a hit is the linewill momentarily go slack and the bend in the rod tip will go away for a second s the bass sucks in the lure and then spits it out. I fish the lure with my rod tip near the waterand aimed almost at the lure as it comes through the water, when I see the line go slack or the slight bend in the rod straighten out I can uickly set the hook when the rod is held low to the water.

If the rod is held high and a fish comes up behind the lure and engulfs it, you don't have the
chance of the proverbal "ice cube in hades" to set the hook, just another, "OhNo! Just missed a good one." I don't like to miss any fish, let alone good ones,so I always have the rod in the best position for a good hookset! I really thinkfish have a network of spies, because you could have made fifty casts withthe rod in the perfect position to set the hook, but you could not keep up the"being totally in the zone" and as soon as you relaxed a little and the rod tip was held higher because it was easier, it seems that is when you got the hit ofthe year, the one you had been waiting for, for a long time, and you missed it because the rod tip was in the wrong position to get a strong hook set.

Beenthere, done that! When you get tired and begin to lose concentration, TAKE A BREAK!! Or the fish and their spies will be down under the water laughingat you. I hate that!!! When I catch myself losing concentration, I put the roddown, have a soda or a smoke, and give myself the time to regroup and getmy concentration back so I don't miss the fish of a lifetime!!!!

Next time:Crankbait tactics.

P.S. click on the fishing lure links (2) then Bass Pro Shops link to accessthe best place to find the Bagley DB series lures ( Get chartreuse or white) You will not be sorry you put one of these fish catchers on your rod " I guarantee it!!
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Bass Fishing - My Number One Bass Secret

Well the results are in and most of the readers of my fishing blog want me to continue the bass series, so at least for the next couple of articles I will continue writing about bass. You may have noticed I don't talk about very many lures. When I was younger I had tackle boxes full of all the hot new lures and boxes of older lures that had fallen out of favor, and many boxes full of plastic worms in every color, size and brand. But as I got older ( and hopefully wiser ) instead of changing lures, lure colors, and lure sizes all day looking for the hot combo that bass couldn't resist, I came to the realization that "lures were just tools to help me catch fish with."

Bass will eat just about anything they can get in their mouth. Fishing is just like hunting, you may have the best gun with the best bullets money can buy, but if you are hunting in an area with no animals or birds, you will have nothing to shoot no matter how good of a shot you are.

The same with fishing, no matter how good your tackle is, how well equipped your boat is or how proficient you are at casting, you will catch no fish unless you are fishing where the fish are!!!! Ninety five percent of the fish are found in five percent of the lake or river you are fishing. The same holds true of the ocean too.

When I learned this lesson, I became a much better fisherman, I did not waste my time running around the lake, throwing everything in my tacklebox's at the fish in the hope I might catch one. I now go to one area of the lake that has the most different kinds of cover and depth ranges in one spot ( the forty five degree bank ) and sit there and methodically search each depth and cover type until I start catching fish, then I use the best lure ( tool ) to fish that cover type and depth range in the most efficient way possible.

Read the preceding paragraph many times until you understand it. Then you may want to go back and read the articles on fishing a forty five degree bank to figure the depth fish are using. I have narrowed down the lures and colors I use to just a few that work for me. Most of the lures I mention can be found at the Bass Pro Shop's website. You can quickly get there by clicking the fishing lure icon under google ads on the right side of this column, on the next page again click the fishing lure icon on the left side then click on " Fishing Lures and Kits at Bass Pro" they have one of the largest stocks of lures on the internet or any where for that matter, and their prices are lower than most tackle shops.
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A note to my readers: Questions or Requests

Hello out there in my blog reader land. First I want to thank all you wonderful people who read my blog, I know there's lots of you because of the number of hits I'm getting, but I never hear from very many of you. I have been writing about freshwater bass for some time now, are you happy with this or would you rather me write on other types of freshwater or saltwater fishing? Please let me hear from some of you, I want to keep you happy and coming back to my blogspot. I have more than five decades of fishing experience to pass on to you, please let me know what kind of fishing you do, and what you would like me to write about. I know I can make you a more successful fisherman. Thank you and God bless


Captain Roy Lawson
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Bass Fishing - Best Way to Locate Bass (5/5)

Now we have two hundred feet of shoreline to fish without running the trolling motor or starting the big gas motor. We can sneak up and down the shoreline as many times as we want, fishing water from six inches to sixty feet. We can use live bait, or artificials. We can cast to the shoreline or fish straight up and down , AND DO IT ALL IN STEALTH MODE!!!

Once the anchors are down and the fish come out of their hiding places, we can fish all day in the stealth mode and not scare the fish one time. This works super in early spring when the fish are making their first forays into the shallows in search of crayfish. They are super hungry, and super spooky. Set up on a steep rocky bank, put a small rubber band around the "bug" and put the hook under the band, this way you do not have to put the hook into the bug and it will stay alive all day with no hook through it.

I cast up near the shoreline if the water is stained, or start out in fifteen feet if the water is clear. Cast the bait out and let it sit for thirty seconds then jump it five feet down and repeat or if the fish are really spooky just move them a few inches at a time by turning the reel handle one quarter of a turn at a time. This is slow fishing sometimes but it will catch some of the biggest bass of your life. I always fish the biggest bugs I can find, I want to get the attention of the largest bass in the area! Here in Calif. we have to buy a stamp for our license to fish with two rods, DO IT!!

The bugs fish themselves, let them crawl around and do their own thing while you drop shot a worm straight down into the brush and other hiding holes under the boat. ( don't leave them for too long as they will crawl under a rock or bush and hide ) As soon as you feel a bump set the hook, bass don't fool around they just "eat the bug". This is why I use the largest bugs I can find, It keeps the bluegills and small bass away. If it eats the big bug, its a good fish.
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Bass Fishing - Best Way to Locate Bass (4/5)

Lets say we have caught several bass in the thirty foot range, and we see more down there on our sonar but they just refuse to bite. They are probably responding to heavy boat traffic and fishing pressure. Here in Southern California we have only a few small ( two to four thousand acres ) lakes for many thousands of pleasure boaters, jet skiers, and of course fishermen.

As far as fishermen go, bass soon learn to associate trolling motor noise with danger. Sometimes I just tie my boat to a tree in a brushy cove and watch bass go about their business without trying to catch them, you can learn a lot from observation of your quarry, sometimes much more than catching them.

One major thing I learned from bass watching is that when a bass boat comes around the corner with its trolling motor running the bass just drop back into the heaviest cover and stay there until the bass boat is gone. After the bass boat leaves the bass start appearing again and do what they were doing before the trolling motor alerted them to danger. Here in So. Cal. the bass are educated and fairly hard to fool, the most successful anglers are mostly tournament fishermen with bass boats with all the latest electronics and most know how to use them, they belong to that group that compromises ten percent of the fishermen that catch ninety percent of the fish, and being tournament fishermen they usually release most if not all bass they catch.

While this is very commendable, you soon get a lake with most of the bass having been caught several times. This makes for some very smart and hard to catch bass, especially under adverse conditions. Lots of fishermen, jet skis, pleasure boaters, little or no clouds, clear water, weekend crowds, etc., etc.

I use my two anchors to take away the trolling motor sounds and still be able to put my bait precisely in the spot I want and hold it there for as long as I want, How, you ask?? I first drop the rear anchor in thirty feet of water, let out some scope and tie a bumper ( boat side protector ) to the rope, then using the trolling motor carry the front anchor as far forward as the length of anchor rope will allow, and drop the front anchor. Now we have the boat anchored front and rear in thirty feet of water with about two hundred feet of line between the anchors.

Now by letting out about twenty feet of line on the front anchor and pulling in the same amount on the rear line we can quietly sneak down the bank, no trolling motor noise and the boat stays steady so we can fish straight up and down in the same spot as long as we want. Impossible on a windy day using the trolling motor with one foot while trying to balance yourself with the other. Pretty sneaky eh!!??
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Bass Fishing - Best Way to Locate Bass (3/5)

Now after fishing the jig downward through the fifteen to thirty foot level we start hooking some bass at about the thirty foot level, this tells us most of the bass in this area of the lake will be concentrated at or near this depth. Normally I use my depthfinder to meter diving bird schools to see where the baitfish are located, this is the level where you will find most of the bass as shad is their primary food source in the summer on our local lakes.

You will find many of the bass have now left the shoreline for the midlake regions as this is where most of the shad are. Midlake bass are very tough to catch for the inexperienced angler without the proper electronics, so for now we will concentrate on shoreline bass. The bass also know the shad are in the thirty foot depth range so they set up shop near that depth and wait for a school of shad to wander by, then they rush out of their hiding place to grab as many as they can before the shad swim out of range.

Then it's back to their hiding place to wait for the next shad school. These bass are opportunistic feeders and will feed any time a school of shad or other prey come within range. Midlake bass follow shad schools around in schools of ten to fifty individuals and since the food is always near they go on feeding flurries two to three times a day. They hunt in packs ( schools ) so it takes
them less time to eat their fill than the bass whose strategy is to set and wait for their meals to come to them.

So unless you are there when they go on a feeding rampage, you won't catch many. In a later chapter I will tell you my methods for being in the right place at the right time to make some outstanding catches. After we have caught several bass off our "private bank" the fishing will always slow down, thats when I will change colors on my jig or maybe switch to a plastic worm to catch a few more before the bite goes away. If thelake is real crowded I will sit on the same spot all day as other similar spots will have been fished hard by other boaters and the bass just seem to turn off due to heavy fishing pressure and quit biting. When things get slow I usually
rest the spot for an hour or so and have lunch, then I can usually catch a few more fish before they shut down again.

Most fishermen spend the day running up and down the lake quickly fishing one spot after another and at days end have very little to show for their efforts except for empty $3.00 a gallon gas tanks. I ran to my favorite bank and set there all day using zero gallons of gas. It was a relaxing day of fishing and we usually catch quite a few bass by day's end. Sometimes when the fish quit hitting the artificial lures I switch to nightcrawlers fished weightless on a small weedless hook. Just cast it out and let it slowly sink to the bottom, once it gets to the bottom I let it sit for a couple of minutes and wiggle, after a minute or so I slowly reel it back to the boat. It should take about five seconds to turn the reel handle one time. Sometimes you will catch more fish while you are SLOWLY reeling the worm back to the boat, this is why you should always reel the live worm back slow and steady without any extra rod action.

Up next: Why I always carry two anchors with long ropes, this saves the day when the fish just don't seem to want to bite.
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Bass Fishing - Best Way to Locate Bass (2/5)

Now that we have eliminated the top fifteen feet of water, its time to fish the fifteen to thirty foot range. If the fish were at all active we should have caught a few in the upper levels of the water, this is usually but not always true, sometimes the baitfish are deeper in the water column and the majority of bass are where the food is, deeper.

In lakes with healthy bass populations, I have no qualms about keeping a few one to two pound fish for the dinner table. ( check local regulations, or state Fish and Game regulations to make sure this size is legal to keep ) The first legal small fish I catch, I clean right away and look in the stomach to see what he was eating. Usually in the deeper summer waters I find shad, shad are found from twenty five to fifty feet deep in the summer, with the average being thirty-five to forty feet deep. I usually know beforehand what depth they are using because in prior days I have metered them under bird schools, with my Lawrance depth finder.

But lets say you don't have this information, so you have to slowly work down the forty five degree bank ( thirty five to fifty five degrees is ok ) untilyou start catching bass. For fishing the deeper water I will use a 1/2 to 3/4 oz. white weedless jig with a small Berkley Gulp singletail trailer on the hook.I fish this on a six and one half to seven foot med/hvy spinning rod with a medium size spinning reel ( the larger ones cast farther and have better drags ) loaded with Berkley Vanish, fluorocarbon line in ten or fifteen pound test depending on the amount of snags in the water. Casts are made parallel to the bank, and the lure is counted down ( one thousand and one, one thousand and two, etc ) until it hits the bottom and the line goes slack. As this lure sinks at about one foot per second, you can judge about how deep the water is where you cast your lure, but the main reason is we make multiple casts into the same depth range to strain the water, and if the lure has been hitting bottom at the count of fifteen and this time the line goes slack at twelve, a bass has hit it on the sink, and you should immediately turn the reel handle fast until the rod starts to bend the set the hook by sweeping the rod upward quickly, then pumping the fish quickly to get it away from the snags down there.

Pumpingis lifting the fish with the rod, when the rod is overhead, reel quickly as you lower the rod. The fish is lifted with the rod, not the reel, if you try to reel the fish up you will twist the line. Only use the reel to take up line as you drop the rod from twelve o'clock to nine o'clock, never reel when the fish is pulling drag.

Let the fish run against the drag and when it stops pulling line, lift it with the rod then reel as you drop the rod to gain line. You should keep a bend in the rod at all times, if you let the rod go straight, the fish will have slack line and will come unhooked easily. After a while this pumping will become second nature and you catch count will go up. Pumping will work on all fish that are big enough to pull drag on the reel you are using, from bluegills to bluefin tuna.

In the fall and spring when crawfish are the food of choice for bass, I cast into the bank and hop the lure down the bank, keeping it near the bottom where the "bugs" live. But in the summer when the fish are feeding on shad the lure is cast parallel to the bank and fished in a swimming retrieve, this is just reeling fast enough to keep the lure at about the same depth range. You want it to be bumping into limbs and brush occasionally, but not so often that you are always hung up, I vary my reeling speed until I have a happy medium between hangups and not brushing the brush at all. Always watch the rod tip carefully and be aware of the amount of bend in the rod, if the bend suddenly disappears, a fish has the lure in its mouth and is swimming towards you, set the hook right away!! This is why I like the Berkley Gulp trailers, they are made from real food and the fish tasting food, will hold on to the lure for quite a while, giving you plenty of time to set the hook.

FISH BITE AND WON'T LET GO!!
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Bass Fishing - Best Way to Locate Bass (1/5)

I always try to fish during the weekdays if possible, weekends are a total zoo around here. But if the weekend is the only time you have to fish this technique is your best bet for putting some fish in the boat. I try to get to the lake early to assure I am one of the first boats on the lake.

Most lakes in Southern California have a forty five degree shoreline like the one described in bass 22, most have quite a few. Shorelines dropping off into deep water are best most of the year, but in the spring spawning season you will do best in the back of coves in more shallow water. Lets say it is the summer season and the lake is crowded with fishermen, skiers, jet skiers and pleasure boaters, the worst possible conditions for fishing, that's why I choose weekdays. Lets say we have gotten to one of our favorite banks and we are the first ones there, we want to tie our boat abouta long cast from the nearest point, bow in to the bank, and anchor off the stern to hold the boat in position. I always carry two anchors with at least 200 feet of rope at all times, the anchors should be at least twelve pounds each, this gives you extra holding power in windy conditions.

More on why I have so much extra anchor line with me later. I carry a surf rod loaded with 25 pound test yellow line on a saltwater spinning reel, I tie a two ounce sinker below a very large float and cast it out about fifty feet out from the point, this is my "scarepeople." When someone comes around the point I politely say " Hey Bro, I have a line in the water there" 99% of the
time the other boat gives the line a wide berth. You don't have to worry about the game warden because there is no hook or bait on it. ( sneaky, sneaky ) Now we can fish either side of the boat and cover about one hundred and fifty feet of the bank, and have it to ourselves all day for the most part.

I start out with the Rapala Frenzy and make several casts as near to the bank as I can without getting hung in the brush, I work it fairly quickly reeling medium fast while giving the rod tip quick jerks. After four or five casts to the right, I turn around and make some casts to the left of the boat. I then make the next series of casts about ten feet farther out from the bank. Then I turn around and fish the left side, if I am fishing with someone, I fish one side and they fish the other. I always wear a good pair of polarized sunglasses, this gives me the ability to see underwater brush and snags, not just to keep from hanging up, but to see structure that will hold bass.

After I have made a series of fast casts close, ten and twenty feet out from the bank I make the same series of casts about half the speed of the first series, and if I have spotted any underwater brush I will stop the lure just before I get to it, ( always try to stop to the outside if possible, so you can pull a fish away from the bush before it can dive into the bush and hang you up ) then
I let the lure float to the surface and give it several small twitches, let it sit a moment and start my retrieve again. If I haven't caught anything yet, I will really slow my retrieve down, I cast the lure out and let it sit for about ten seconds then just barely twitch it, let it sit and twitch it again all the way back to the boat. This is done the same way as before, close to the bank, ten feet out and twenty feet out. This takes some time, but it tells me that there are probably no fish shallow. We have thoroughly fished the top fifteen feet of water and eliminated it as holding any fish.

Next time: Fishing the fifteen to thirty foot range.
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