Monday Sept 3, 2018 – Today I almost got seasick on San Luis Reservoir. The San Luis Gentleman’s club hit the racks with success yesterday landing over 100 fish between them all in calm weather and no Dam Police. Today’s weather report looked like yesterdays-a little wind in the morning dying down by 9:00 am. Labor Day 2018 turned out to be an all day roller coaster ride with 1 to 2 foot white capping wind waves all day long. It reminded me of my windsurfing days with the wind and the swells but after 6 hours of trying to stand and cast from the pitching rear deck, it felt like deep sea fishing.
I was the eighth boat to launch at Basalt at 8:00 with the yellow light on. There were big white caps around the racks as I launched to I decided to fish BOP until I could make a run for the racks. I fished till 10:00 and still no lull so I headed over to Portuguese cove to get out of the wind NW wind which was blowing about 15mph. The morning was slow with no fish from BOP or mouse ears so I decided to run for the racks despite the white caps and then head home. When I got to the racks, I was all alone. With no Dam Police around, I hid behind the south tower out of the wind and fished the crap out of the tower. I could hardly stand in the boat on the west or north side of the racks and my Minn Kota was anchoring me at 10 fighting the winds at max throttle. Casting and timing my drop with my IWatch for 60 seconds, I kept it together most of the day because I really wanted some of those big stripers I caught two weeks ago. My strategy today was to probe all around the racks till I found the school of big fish. Ive noticed in the past that the size of fish varies around the rack. Schools of same size fish hang out in different spots around the racks. When the fish get big around the racks, you usually catch the same size fish in the same places. This has been especially noticeable in the past I have caught several 8-10 lbrs in a row on the east side only to move to the west side and catch no keepers. Today, I metered fish from 20-40 feet all around racks. I also noticed that my line would sink faster if I didnt touch it as it sunk and put alot of slack out for the full minute. In other words cast, strip out a bunch of slack, put the rod in the stripping basket and set the timer on the watch. Take a nap, read email, eat and drink something, and when the alarm goes off in the watch, strip in the slack , snap the rod up once, strip and pause, repeat without falling out of the boat. I caught 8 undersized fish today fishing the racks for two hours. The slump continues…..
I should have fished yesterday with these guys……
