San Luis Reservoir- The Green Puddle

I haven’t fished the main lake in a year, Ive been avoiding it because I don’t recognize it now that its down to about 17 percent full. Full of hope and memories of phenomenal October Days in the past, I woke up at 5:00 and got on the lake before sunup hoping for a topwater bonanza and bigger fish than the forebay. The Basalt launch is too soft to launch at. Today, I launched at Dinosaur Point and I didn’t see any trailers at Basalt. I decided to look for some topwater action back in whats left of Portuguese Bay. The first things I noticed when the sun came up was that the lake is below 20% and dropping. There was nothing but mud lining the shoreline -no weeds or “velcro” to be found. I found some working fish although they seemed pretty small. Whatever they were, or eating on top is still a mystery to me. My guess that it was small stripers feeding on grass shrimp, but I couldn’t get them to even look at a popper or gurgler and had problems getting them to hit a clouser casting into working fish. Also, the green layer is now thicker and there is no clear water on the lake at all which seems almost as big as the forebay now. There was no wind on the lake today and the fish were lazy. I managed to cast a fly at every corner of the lake today fishing spots I haven’t fished before. With the water level so low, all the old productive spots are gone and I find it necessary to re write the book. Low water conditions are so different at San Luis with the green sludge and lack of currents complicating things. One thing that seems the same, is the fact that the big striper I caught today was stuffed with blood midges and the other one was not. Looking at the lake, you might guess that just swimming around breathing would pack you gut with midges.

I ended the day with half a dozen nice fish fishing a yellow and white clouser and pulse disc. It was tough fishing today on the lake and even though the fish were bigger , at times I miss the forebay where there is definitely more action. I took some pics of the trash racks and the Romero area as well as the Rock pile.

In preparation for Redfishing in South Carolina this week, I practiced flying some of the advanced functions on the Phantom 3 Drone. I found out today that I can’t use a non cellular tablet in “follow me” mode. I switched to my iphone and was able to get a good enough GPS lock for the drone to follow. Also, I figured out how to program the drone to rotate and film around a single point. It should be useful next week.