What a day. I was chasing a repeat of last week’s fishing magic, but the forecast said, “Hold my beer.” Still, I spotted a small window of opportunity and figured I could squeeze in a half-day trip before packing for Destin, Florida. A last hurrah before beach fun with my grandson River and some serious seafood buffets.
I started late to let the fog and wind blow through the pass—a rare stroke of patience that paid off. By 9:00 AM, the lake was doing its usual “abandon all hope” routine with yellow wind lights blinking like a Vegas slot machine. As I was driving up, Ken Oda had sent me a facebook video of an acre-wide blitz of stripers at Cottonwood Bay that was recorded a day ago. It was enough to make me swerve off the road and yell “SEND LOCATION!” I thought last week that the bait was gone. First stop today was there.
When I got there, the baitfish were still hanging around, but the stripers were off somewhere nursing hangovers. I had missed the party by a day, as usual. A large herd of Tule elk were hanging around the wters edge. The tule elk herd at San Luis Reservoir is a wildlife rags-to-riches story—reintroduced in the 1970s with just a few shaggy optimists, and now roaming the hills over a thousand strong. To me, these elk aren’t just scenic—they’re also alinked to the solonar tables. My old mentor the late Len Bearden swore that when they were lying down and not grazing, it meant the solunar tables were not ideal. Fish feed when elk feed. After wandering the coves and exchanging meaningful glances with the herd, I headed to the Bay of Pigs, armed with shrimp flies I tied the night before and a 7-weight Bad Ass Glass rod—because apparently, I enjoy suffering.
I tied on two shrimp patterns using a dropper technique I saw on Instagram (so you know it was suspect). It was a dropper made by tying a non slip loop knot and cutting the loop asymetrical. First cast off the dam rocks—bam! Fish on. Wait—two fish on. Things got western. I hit spot lock and started swinging. The glass rod bent like a pool noodle in a hurricane, and the mono shooting line was about as cooperative as a cat in a bathtub. I was using a T-14 Outbound Short head, which cast like a wet sock into the wind with the ultra slow Echo Bad Ass Glass 7 wgt. The mono shooting line was great for distance but hard to grip and hand strip. Plus it was constantly slipping out of my had on the set and with the slow rod and streatch, I was setting on fish like a wimp. Braided running line is going back on the reel—mono is dead to me at San Luis.
I lost more flies than I care to admit—dropper knots failing left and right as well as snags taking two flies instead of one. Blood knots, triple surgeons, loop knots—they all came undone like a bad marriage. I think it’s the way the knots are pulled—too much wishbone action. The one dropper knot that held up? A looped blood knot Mark Won showed me—bulletproof with two strands and keeps the fly swinging free.
Despite the chaos, I landed 18 fish, including three doubles and a couple more near-doubles that turned into wishbone breaks. One of the funnier moments: I tossed a cast to the deep water just to clear a tangle and caught a fish on a stationary fly. Another time, I casually dropped the flies overboard after releaseing a fish and while organizing the running line and got hammered by a striper right under the boat. Can’t make this stuff up—I was trying to screw up and still caught fish.
Autopsied two of the bigger ones: shrimp stuffed, and the grand finale—a six-inch goby. The moral? Get to the bottom, and if you’re not snagging once in a while, you’re fishing too shallow. Oh yeh, bring lots of flies, you will loose them two at time when you fish doubles near the bottom but oh do they work .
Fishing two flies might be the new play—especially in algae soup. I landed 4 doubles today but think I may have hooked 7 doubles based on fish landed with one fly stripped off. Tying the loop dropper on 20 lb test is the ticket – 15 lb test is too weak to lift two 5 lb fish onto the deck and good luck trying to net a fish with a fly trailing it. This means the top fly need a big eye on the hook too to fit two pieces of 20lb through it. Vaughn and I brainstormed on the phone on the drive home: What if we made a hookless tube teaser fly to sit above the main fly, maybe stabilized with a bobber stopper or swivel? Sounds like something to try after Florida. For now, I’m off to trade shrimp flies for sunscreen and sand crabs.
