Hobby Sports

Another Pig Redear on a Five Weight.  Weighed just a hair under 2lbs.

Even with wacky weather this past week, Chul and I hit MVL once more before he sets off to the Tahoe area to fish some "real" trout waters.  With rain, overcast and cold weather we were hoping the bass would not be lock jawed.  Theoretically the bass should be still in the three stages of the spawn but given the early warm weather this spring I was not sure if they spawned early and are now finished.  Speaking with the boys at the marina, the bass we still spawning and the bluegill were just beginning. 

I gave Chul the Sage DS2 590-2 I built him and he fished that first with a gurgler.  Armed with my RPLX 10 wt, I started with a monster rattle popper Webb gave me.  The Charleton Reel, I was using was loaded with an ancient shooting head.  So ancient that the running line wasnt even integrated into the head.  This set up sucks.  Do they even still make set ups like this?  I certainly hope not.  I bored rather quickly with the 10 wt, as I usually do when I fish big rods.  So I switched to my recently repaired T&T 5wt.  Ive said it before and I will say it again, I absolutely love this rod.  Going from the 10 to 5 wt was like night and day.  I felt like I was casting air.  After seeing some bass in the shallows Chul switched to his 6 wt and sinking line.

The Days Arsenal.

Chul continued to get short struck until he finally landed a trout sized juvenile bass on an olive clouser.  I had snagged my Gourmet Silverside Minnow fly on some submerged structure thereby losing that fly, so I switched to a lightly dumbell eyed  purple wooley bugger.  Within a few cast I got hit hard.  I yanked him to the surface and it was another monster Redear.  Unlike the last time I caught one here, this one had a prominent red mark behind this gill spot.  This one measured just barely under 2lbs.  Although I come to MVL for the bass, I will never turn down monster panfish.  Both of us would missed a few more hits here in this location until we decided we should move.  The boat was crapping out on us so we had to go back to the marina and get a new one.  Very disappointing.

From then on, the rest of the day it shut down.  Literally.  Hundreds of casts and various flies produced not even a single strike.  The sun was starting to poke out of the clouds by then.  For whatever reason the fish became lock jawed and would follow the fly for a bit but refused to honor us with a take.  We did find two other locations that held monster bass.  I would guess at least 10 lbs maybe bigger.  Its always hard to judge fish size when they are in the water, they always look smaller than they actually are.  Towards the end of the day we did find a bluegill nest with at least 10 huge bluegills in the immediate area.  They were fighting, mating, spawning, or protecting but none wanted to open their damn mouth.  I have no ideal what happened to the water and why it just shut down.  Although the fishing sucked after having to come back to the marina, we at least managed not to get skunked.  We found 2 new locations where some of the monster bass are located.  Chul got to fish his new rod and I managed to fish two of my favorite rods that are now finally back in my arsenal (Sage RPLXi 890-3 and my T&T Helix 5wt S).

Someone was out float tubing in pure darkness.

Yesterday I had planned to fish Los Alamitos Bay at night but a last minute call from The Major changed that idea.  Since it was his last few days in California before he gets reassigned to the War College, I met all the boys at the local brewery instead of getting my line wet.  So today I decided I would make up for that.

Its been forever since Ive fished the surf especially at night.  The last time was years ago when Kyung and I slammed the corbina around midnight.  I believe that was one of the first corbina I ever caught on a fly.  With the tide charts predicting a strong tide, I was confident Id get on some fish.  Casting the Long Beach Leader system took some getting used to,  I hadnt used that system in such a long time, it was hard to get the timing down.  Trying to cast your entire floating line with 20 or more feet of straight mono is a pain in the ass.  No wonder I stopped fishing here years ago.

No luck tonight.  Perhaps another night.

Fishing tonight was slow.  I arrived just after the sun set and fished to about 10pm.  Not one strike.  I did see a very small bait fish swimming everywhere .  With the headlamp I could see they were greyish with blue eyes.  Not sure what they were though.  I tried a hoonie, hoonie 2 and a small clouser after I noticed all the small fish.  None proved effective.  Decided to call it quits as I need to wake up early for trout tomorrow.  I did see another flyfisherman out there in a tube.  What a nutcase.  Speaking with him briefly on the way out, he let me know that he managed a few dink sand bass.

Mission Viejo Lake looking toward the dam

The Carnitas Wet Burrito Lunch special at Olamendis Express

A pair of 5 pounders taunting every fishermen who passes the marina.

After this weekends stellar trout fishing, Chul invited me again to fish MVL to redeem ourselves from our last poor outing here.  We met for lunch At Olamendis and afterwards hit the lake. We spent less than 3 hours and we on the once we hit our favorite cove.  The cove where Big George and Martha we seen the first time we came.  While those two beast did not show their faces, we managed a pretty good bite on juvenile bass with the best weighing in at a pound.  We caught a few within that range and a few less than that.  After about 10 or so we moved to the other side of the lake and hit the area we saw the two other beasts (8 pounders).  This time we saw three of them all within that size.  Both of us missed a couple here, when Chul noticed a lone 8 pounder cruising below us.   We didnt have a good angle for a cast, not that it really matters.  Ed once told me that those big shore runners generally dont eat.  Most people catch those mammoths in the deep water as the guy at the marina later confirmed to us when we chatted him up.  I casted all my stripped line at an angle that the fish was taking and started to strip.  The line began to jerk and I set the hook.  It didnt feel big but it was fighting.  It turned out to be a respectable bluegill.  As the wind drifted us Chul again noticed a pair of bruisers cruising just to the Port side.  The two were at least 8 pounder.  Again we didnt have the right angle to make a decent cast but we tried anyways without any luck.  We called it a day after that and while we didnt get any impressive fish, we had a good time killing a few hours after work.  Today was our best day here in terms of numbers so we cant complain.