After last week’s disappointing fishing trip on the forebay and hearing a great report from Brian about the lake, I was really looking forward to a successful day on the water. I set out a little early to fuel up the boat, but soon found myself stuck in standstill traffic on Highway 152 near San Felipe Road. Around 6 a.m., a sedan traveling eastbound on Highway 152 just east of San Felipe crossed into the westbound lane and collided head-on with a big rig. Sadly, the driver of the sedan was killed. The crash caused a massive traffic jam, with vehicles backed up for miles and very few options for escape. After about an hour, most of the cars ahead of me had made U-turns to find alternate routes. As more cars left the line, I eventually reached San Felipe, within sight of the accident, and was able to take the detour.

Semi vs sedan

I launched at 10:00 a.m., which may have turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The winds were quite strong earlier in the morning, and the yellow light was still on. When I arrived at the racks, I found six boats tightly hugging the piers. With the upwelling in full swing, I decided to switch plans and fish the rocks on the dam at the Bay of Pigs, waiting for the crowds to clear out.

I started in the middle of the Bay of Pigs, in about 20 feet of water, and quickly caught two 17-inchers. The way the fish were hitting made me hopeful that the baitfish had arrived. The threadfin shad had definitely been in the Forebay last week, and I thought they might have made their way to the lake too. The lake had risen 20 feet since last week, with water pumped in from the Forebay. Fishing the rocks on the dam paid off. The wind had pushed large mats of algae against the rocks, creating a high-oxygen canopy perfect for snacking stripers. By the time I worked the wall from the Bay of Pigs past the Guardrail, I had landed 15 fish, though only one was over 20 inches. The fish are strong fighters this time of year—I had to grip my 9-weight Hardy Marksman with both hands on some of the smaller ones.

In the afternoon, I headed over to the Trash Racks. The six boats that were there in the morning had cleared out by noon. I scanned the racks and noticed that the schools were deep, around 60 feet. I tried my luck with some fish at 30-40 feet, but got no bites. I moved out into the outflow and found fish deep there as well. Sometimes these deep schools move up the water column later in the day, and I’ve seen the action turn on like a light switch—but not today.

After striking out at the racks, I decided to work the dam again, from the Glory Hole to Monument.   Once again, I picked up fish right against the rocks. A couple of months ago, I caught a big one off that section, so I made sure to fish it carefully.  After landing another half dozen solid fish, I decided to give the racks and outflow one more try.   Still nothing, so I wrapped it up around 3:30 with somewhere around 20 fish total.

When I cleaned the two bigger ones, I found shrimp inside them again, but no minnows. It makes me wonder what’s happening to the lake’s forage fish. While I was fishing along the wall, Tony Yap called, and I ended up Facetiming him while catching a fish at the same time. That got me thinking—it would be amazing to take someone on a virtual fishing trip from the boat. Imagine this: the Starlink Mini on the bow connected to a multicam video streaming router with two camera views, streaming the entire day over IP. It would be almost like being there, with real-time conversations. It would be cool to do that someday, especially when I can no longer physically fish, since it’s the hunting and the talking that I would miss the most.

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