November 9, 2026 /  San Luis Reservoir:  About 481 feet, 1,295,079 acre-feet, or 63% of capacity, at 1 p.m.
Weather: Sunny; the forecast called for a high of 69–75°F and north winds up to 10 mph. The conditions on the water felt perfect.

Fishing has always been more than just a hobby for me. It’s been my therapy, my escape, and sometimes my salvation. During some of the most depressing times in my life, fishing gave me something to look forward to when the rest of the world seemed to be falling apart. It helped me get through COVID, when isolation, uncertainty, and the constant barrage of bad news made life feel pretty bleak. There was something incredibly healing about being out on the water, surrounded by nature, concentrating on something as simple as finding fish and figuring out how to catch them. For a few hours, the world’s problems disappeared. The only things that mattered were the wind, the water, the fish, and maybe figuring out why the hell they weren’t biting.

Now, fishing is helping me cope with something else that’s been weighing heavily on my mind—the increasingly radical left-wing politics that I believe are threatening the values and freedoms that made this country great. Watching the political and cultural direction of America has been genuinely depressing, especially at this stage of my life. I worry about the country my children and grandchildren will inherit. But I’ve learned that obsessing over things I have little control over accomplishes nothing except making me miserable. Out on San Luis Reservoir, politics doesn’t matter. The stripers don’t care whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, and the only thing that’s truly left-wing is a gull circling the boat. Fishing reminds me that there’s still an incredible amount of beauty, freedom, and happiness in this world. And as long as I can launch my boat, cast a fly, and chase a few fish, life is still pretty damn good.

I decided the lake might be good medicine—even though Roger George had rated the fishing a two out of ten.  I’d also heard reports from O’Neill Forebay of a dozen fish in a day, all around fourteen inches. I wasn’t eager to spend the day catching minnows. I’d rather catch one big fish, so I headed to the main lake.

There were maybe a dozen boats out. At the inspection station, the attendant checked my boat and cleared me to go—but didn’t have pliers to cut off my inspection band. Cutting the band off seemed like a fairly important part of the job. Apparently, not important enough to bring pliers.

I started at Las Piedras with the new LiveScope dialed in. I could see fish tight to the shoreline, but they turned out to be largemouth bass, not stripers. I caught one nice bass and saw very few stripers. Usually, the stripers cruise just off the bank in pairs or small groups. I didn’t see those familiar schools today.

The algae is mostly gone now, with the cooler weather. I moved over to Three Trees, but there was no surface activity—not a single blitz all day, even with the water calm. I did mark a few scattered fish in sixty feet of water, but found nothing in the shallows under thirty feet. The fish were proving difficult to locate.

At the Bay of Pigs, I couldn’t find schools in twenty feet, so I worked the rock wall between Dave’s Rock and Guard Rail. There, LiveScope showed some impressive fish close to shore. They followed the fly as I swung it along the bank, but wouldn’t take.

After watching at least half a dozen fish trail the fly without eating, I’d make another pass and change patterns. I did that six times. I tried my usual Delta smelt pattern, crawdad and shrimp patterns, Ken Oda’s sparse, lightly weighted Clousers, heavily dressed flash-tail Clousers, yellow and red patterns, and SV Clousers.  Finally, a heavily weighted red-and-brown Clouser got a fish to commit. It was another largemouth, not a striper. I had two nice bass for dinner, but the stripers were still keeping their distance.

Next I metered the trash racks all the way around. There was current coming from the North Tower, and a ton of shad around the grate and pump. The trouble was, the grates sit about eighty feet down at this water level.   LiveScope showed fish gathered around them, but that was too deep to reach effectively with a fly.

Only one tower had current, and it was the one holding the fish. I started checking the causeway pilings. Around the second piling from shore, whose base sits about sixty feet deep, I found a school. I counted the fly down thirty feet and caught my only striper of the day—a twenty-two-incher. I couldn’t get another one to eat.

I finished by fishing along the face of the dam down to Monument. I didn’t see fish or get a hit.

The final tally was two largemouth bass and one 22-inch striper. It was a tough day, but LiveScope told a useful story: the fish were deep, absent from the shallow water, and reluctant to eat even when they followed the fly. Sometimes the best thing a fishing day gives you is a better idea of what the fish are doing—and confirmation that a two-out-of-ten report wasn’t kidding.

I cleaned the fish for diner and found some huge shrimp in the striper.   Also  in the contents was a small gobi and a small delta smelt.    I didn’t see any big schools of baitfish on the livescope,    Maybe everything is in the deep water.

I’ve also started using AI to correlate historical water levels at San Luis Reservoir with fishing reports from my blog over the past 20 years, along with Len’s catch journals and diaries. With AI’s help, I’ve managed to compile 30 years of daily reservoir water levels. That’s a lot of data!

Going forward, I’m going to start including reservoir water levels and trends in my fishing reports. I’m beginning to suspect that water level—and especially changes in water level—may be the single most important variable affecting fishing success at San Luis. Now comes the fun part: seeing whether AI can find patterns and relationships buried in decades of fishing reports that we’ve never recognized before. Maybe we’ll finally figure out some of the mysteries of San Luis Reservoir.

A whole new science is born: Fishing Informatics!

Who knows? After 40 years of trying to figure out these damn fish, maybe AI will finally give me some answers.

Reservoir reading: NOAA California-Nevada River Forecast Center observation for 1 p.m. PST, November 9, 2026. Weather: National Weather Service forecast for the San Luis Reservoir area.